
Gass _ 
Book_ 


COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 























































































— 




























EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 

M, V.»' O’SHEA 

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN 

MADISON, WISCONSIN 

EDITOR 

ELLSWORTH D. FOSTER 

ASSOCIATE EDITOR NEW PRACTICAL REFERENCE LIBRARY; AUTHOR OF 

CYCLOPEDIA OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT 


EDITOR FOR CANADA 

GEORGE H. LOCKE 

* 

LIBRARIAN, TORONTO PUBLIC LIBRARY, TORONTO, ONTARIO 


ASSISTED BY ONE HUNDRED FIFTY DISTINGUISHED SCIENTISTS, EDUCATORS, 
ARTISTS AND LEADERS OF THOUGHT IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 


In Eight Volumes Volume One 


HANSON-ROACH-FOWLER COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 


CHICAGO 

KANSAS CITY 1917 NEW YORK 

















































I \ 










y 


PREFACE 


I T IS a large task to select out of the world’s knowledge all that is most interesting, 
illuminating and useful, and present it in an orderly manner so that it can be com¬ 
prehended, enjoyed and utilized alike by young and old. I feel that this task has 
been well accomplished in The World Book. My confidence in the value and service¬ 
ableness of these volumes steadily increased as the work of preparation pro¬ 
gressed. No one could observe without admiration and enthusiasm the building of 
The World Book, which has required the organization and attractive presentation 
in story and picture of the important truths in every department of human interest, 
achievement and investigation. Many minds and hands, and I think I may say 
many hearts also, have cooperated in the making of these books, and each has done 
his special work faithfully and enthusiastically, because he has felt the spirit and pur¬ 
pose behind The World Book, — so to present all important knowledge that it will 
make a strong appeal to every normal person and become a comfort and guide to him 
in his daily life. 

Men and women of these times have the same sort of problems that people had 
centuries ago. But earlier peoples had to solve their problems largely by trial and 
error. They did not have access to the wisdom of the past as a guide for the present. 
People to-day, though, may profit by all the experiences of those who have gone before 
us, and in The World Book these experiences are described and their outcome por¬ 
trayed. Particular attention has been given to modern developments in the sciences 
that deal with human welfare, and with human nature in its physical, mental, social, 
economic, political, ethical and moral aspects. The stories are told in a simple, 
straightforward way, the purpose being to make all truth of whatever sort intelligible 
and attractive. 

It is more important to-day than it ever has been to conserve the time and energy 
of young people in school. Knowledge is accumulating rapidly; there is much more 
to learn now than there was a few decades ago. Upon teachers and parents rests 
the responsibility of guiding the young so that they will master all really vital knowl¬ 
edge readily and without waste. In the preparation of The World Book the needs 
of those who instruct youth have been kept constantly in view. Every subject of 
instruction in the elementary and high schools is discussed herein. The story of each 
branch is presented in the proper place, and it is shown how it has been developed, 
what role it plays in human life, what its value in modern education is, and how each 
topic can best be presented so as to enlist the interest of the learner, and so that it 
will remain with him and be assimilated into his thought and conduct. 

For the benefit of parents, teachers, and all who would keep in touch with the 
development of education there are articles on many special subjects, such as the 
measurement of the intelligence of children, the use of standards and scales in determin¬ 
ing progress in educational work, the use of museums as an aid in making teaching 
concrete, the development of cooperative work among teachers and parents, the ex¬ 
tension of the principles of the Montessori system to general education, the principles 
underlying the Gary educational system, and so on. 

As a rule encyclopedias are apt to be quite formal and technical. A faithful effort 
has been made in The World Book to avoid this common defect. Every-day, simple 
language is used, and technical terms are employed very sparingly. Whenever they 


in 















9 


Preface—Continued 


are utilized, the context and illustrations will enable the reader readily to comprehend 
them. All articles have been scrutinized by the editors for the purpose of securing 
clearness. Every writer has had it impressed upon him that each sentence should 
be so constructed that the reader will not have to go over any part of it a second time 
in order to grasp its meaning. 

It was decided when the plans were being prepared for The World Book that it 
should be abundantly and effectively illustrated. This decision has been carried out 
fully. Over five thousand pictures appear in these volumes. Topics in any depart¬ 
ment which could not well be illustrated by photographs are made clear by diagrams 
and sketches which show all significant facts of structure, function and relation. 
Pictures illustrating historical events are given in plenty. Animal and plant life 
are richly illustrated with photographs and designs showing structure, function, and 
adaptation to environment. Every geographical topic is made concrete by the use 
of maps and photographic illustrations of physiographic and political conditions. 
Ancient and modern architecture is pictured so that the reader can hardly fail to get 
the essential characteristics of any style, and there are reproductions of renowned 
works of art. All pictures, maps, reproductions, and illustrations of every kind were 
made especially for The World Book by artists working in connection with the 
editors. 

It is essential, of course, that every topic in an encyclopedia should be treated 
accurately and authoritatively. In order to insure accuracy as well as timeliness in 
this work, the editors were assisted by a large staff of specialists in every department 
of learning and achievement. All important articles have been contributed or re¬ 
viewed by these authorities. No topic has been allowed to escape careful scrutiny, 
to the end that no error of fact might be permitted to enter into this work. 

In order to assist the reader, all long articles have been presented under subheads. 
The chief points in each of these articles can thus be quickly grasped. In many of 
the articles an outline of points is presented for the guidance of the teacher, the parent 
and the pupil, and review and original questions are given upon the contents of these 
articles. Extensive use has been made of cross references and lists of related topics, 
so that the reader in the study of any subject can quickly turn to all the articles that 
relate in any way to it. Generous use has been made also of departmental and general 
indexes which will enable the reader to locate any subject in which he is interested 
without loss of time or energy. The correct pronunciation of all unusual or difficult 
terms is given. 

Special mention should be made of the exceptionally valuable services of the editor, 
Mr. Ellsworth D, Foster. The completion of The World Book would have been 
impossible without his varied and extensive knowledge, his organizing skill and 
his devotion. 

M. V. O'Shea. 

The University of Wisconsin 
January , 1917 , 



iv 










MAKERS OF THE WORLD BOOK 


Editor-in-Chief 
M. V. O’SHEA 

Department of Education, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 

Editor 

ELLSWORTH D. FOSTER 

Associate Editor, New Practical Reference Library; Author of Cyclopedia 

of Civil Government 

Editor for Canada 
GEORGE H. LOCKE 

Librarian, Public Library, Toronto, Ontario * 


Authors , Editors and Reviewers 

The person whose initials appear at the end of an article in these volumes either wrote it as 

original matter or became responsible for its accuracy as critical reviewer of the manuscript of another. 

Allen, Edward E., Director, Perkins Institution and Massachusetts School for 
the Blind, Watertown, Mass. 

Ancizar, R., Charge d’Affaires, Embassy of Republic of Colombia, Washington, D. C. 

Andrews, Benjamin Richard, Assistant Professor of Household Economics, Teachers 
College, Columbia University, New York City. 

Arnold, Sarah Louise, Dean of Simmons College, Boston, Mass. 

Babcock, Maud Mae, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah. 

Bagley, William Chandler, Dean of the School of Education, University of Illinois, 
Urbana, Ill. 

Ball, T. R., Registrar, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md. 

Bancroft, Jessie Hubbell, Assistant Director of Physical Training, Public Schools 
of Greater New York, N. Y. 

Bargelt, Louise James, Art Editor, Chicago, Ill. 

Beard, Daniel Carter, Artist; author; founder of the Boy Scouts of America, 
Flushing, Long Island, N. Y. 

Beech, S. C., M. D., Evanston, Ill. 

Belfield, L. M., Staff Editor. 

Benson, O. H., In charge of Boys’ and Girls’ Club Work, Department of Agriculture, 
Washington, D. C. 

Bestor, Arthur, President, Chautauqua Institution, Chautauqua, N. Y., and 
Chicago, Ill. 

Boyd, Thomas D., President, Louisiana State University and Agricultural and 
Mechanical College, Baton Rouge, La. 

Bradford, Mary C. C., State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Denver, Colo. 

Brannon, Melvin A., President, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho. 

Bridges, H. V., Principal, Provincial Normal School, Fredericton, N. B. 

v 













Makers of the World Book—Continued 


Brilliant, Oscar, Staff Editor. Formerly on editorial staff Encyclopedia Britannica, 
London, England. 

Brooks, Eugene Clyde, Professor of Education, Trinity College, Durham, N. C. 
Brummitt, Dan B., Editor, Epworth Herald, Chicago, Ill. 

Bryan, W. S., President, University of Indiana, Bloomington, Ind. 

Bryce, Rev. George, Author and educator, Winnipeg, Man. 

Bunker, Robert E., Professor of Law, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich. 

Burbank, Luther, Naturalist; originator of new fruits and flowers, Santa Rosa, Cal. 

Burns, Elmer E., Instructor in Physics, Joseph Medill High School, Chicago, Ill. 

Burris, William Paxton, Dean of College for Teachers, University of Cincinnati, 
Cincinnati, O. 

Burroughs, John, Author; naturalist; West Park, N. Y. 

Cabot, Richard Clarke, Author; physician; Boston, Mass. 

Calderon, Don I., Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from Bolivia 
to the United States, Washington, D. C. 

Camp, Walter, Author on athletics and sports, New Haven, Conn. 

Carrington, J. B., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, San Antonio, Tex. 

Cary, A., Staff Editor. 

Chadsey, Charles E., Superintendent of Schools, Detroit, Mich. 

Clark, G. A., Academic Secretary, Leland Stanford Junior University, Stanford 
University, Cal. 

Coakley, J. S., Staff Editor. 

Cobb, Joseph Pettee, Dean Hahnemann Medical College, Chicago, Ill. 

Coleman, A. P., University of Toronto, Toronto, Ont. 

Cooke, E., Staff Editor. 

Cooke, Flora J., Principal, Francis W. Parker School, Chicago, Ill. 

Coonley, Avery, Christian Science, Committee on Publication, Chicago, Ill. 

Curtis, Edward S., Author; geographer; Seattle, Wash. 

Dale, J. A., Professor, McGill University, Montreal, Que. 

Denny, George FI., President, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Ala. 

Donlin, G. B., Staff Editor. 

Dopp, Katherine Elizabeth, Instructor, Correspondence Study Department, 
University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill. 

Dunlap, J. D., Secretary, University of Montana, Missoula, Mont. 

Eberhart, Adolph O., Former Governor of Minnesota, Mankato, Minn. 

Elliott, Edward Charles, Chancellor, University of Montana, Helena, Mont. 

Enrich, Baron, Charge d ’Affaires, Austro-Hungarian Embassy, Washington, D. C. 

Evans, William Augustus, Physician; Editor Health Department, Chicago Tribune, 
Chicago, Ill. 

Evans, W. Sanford, Chairman, Georgian Bay Canal Commission, Ottawa, Ont. 
Falk, J. R., Chicago, Ill. 


vi 










Makers of the World Book—Continued 


Farrand, Livingston, Anthropologist; President, University of Colorado, Boulder. 
Colo. 

Farrell, George E., Expert on the Preservation of Food Products, Department of 
Agriculture, Washington, D. C. 

Farrington, Edward Holyoke, Professor of Dairy Husbandry, University of 
Wisconsin, Madison, Wis. 

Finegan, Thomas E., Assistant Commissioner for Elementary Education, State 
Education Department, Albany, N. Y. 

Fisk, Eugene Lyman, Director of Hygiene, Life Extension Institute, New York, N. Y. 

Foster, Ellsworth D., Editor, The World Book. 

Futrall, J. C., President, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Ark. 

Gaston, Lucy Page, Reformer; editor; Woman’s Temple, Chicago, Ill. 

Gignilliat, Leigh Robinson, Superintendent, Culver Military Academy, Culver, Ind. 

Gillis, Ezra L., Registrar, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Ky. 

Girling, George, Secretary, Australian Society, Chicago, Ill. 

Grafton, T. W., Pastor, Third Christian Church, Indianapolis, Ind. 

Grosvenor, Gilbert H., Editor, National Geographic Magazine, Washington, D. C. 

Groves, K. A., Staff Editor. 

Guitteau, William Backus, Superintendent of Schools, Toledo, Ohio. 

Hagen, Fred E., Registrar, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colo. 

Hart, Albert Bushnell, Professor of Government; Harvard University, Cam¬ 
bridge, Mass. 

Havenith, E., Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from Belgium to 
the United States, Washington, D. C. 

Helmholz, Henry F., Physician and Surgeon, Chicago, Ill. 

Henderson, V. H., Secretary of the Regents, University of California, Berkeley, Cal. 

Higgins, Annas, Instructor in Mathematics, University College, University of 
Chicago, Chicago, Ill. 

Hitchcock, H. A., Secretary, Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y. 

Hoag, Ernest Bryant, Physician; Child Specialist; Director of Hygiene and Child 
Study, Los Angeles, Cal. 

Hodge, Clifton Fremont, Professor of Civic Biology, University of Oregon, 
Eugene, Ore. 

Holbrook, Florence, Principal, Forrestville School, Chicago, Ill. 

Holmes, E. Burton, Author; Traveler and Lecturer; New York City. 

Hoover, M. A., Staff Editor. 

Hoskins, C. H., Staff Editor. 

Howard, Leland Ossian, Entomologist, Chief, Bureau of Entomology, United 
States Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C. 

Hughes, James L., Author; educator; Toronto, Ont. 

Hughes, Sir Sam, Ex Minister of Militia, Canada. 

IIulley, Lincoln, President, John B. Stetson University, Deland, Fla. 

vii 

















Makers of the World Book—Continued 


Hunt, Caroline L., Specialist in Dietetics, Washington, D. C. 

Hutchins, H. B., President, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich. 

Jastrow, Joseph, Professor of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis. 

Jastrow, Morris, Jr., Professor of Semitic Languages and Librarian, University of 
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa. 

Jessup, Walter A., President, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa. 

Jones, E. Lester, Superintendent, Coast and Geodetic Survey, Washington, D. C. 

Jusserand, Jean A. A. Jules, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary 
from France to the United States, Washington, D. C. 

Kellogg, John Harvey, Physician; Superintendent of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, 
Battle Creek, Mich. 

Kellogg, Vernon Lyman, Professor of Entomology and Lecturer in Bionomics, 
Leland Stanford Junior University, Stanford University, Cal. 

Kent, Charles William, Professor of English Literature, Rhetoric and Belles 
Lettres, University of Virginia, University, Va. 

Kirkland, M., Staff Editor. 

Larkin, William F., Doctor of Dental Surgery, Chicago, Ill. 

Lathrop, Julia Clifford, Chief of Children’s Bureau, Department of Labor, 
Washington, D. C. 

Leininger, G., Staff Editor. 

Lindsey, Benjamin B., Judge; reformer; Denver, Colo. 

Lingelbach, William E., Professor of Modern European History, University of 
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa. 

Locke, George H., Librarian, Toronto, Ontario, Public Library; Editor, The 
World Book, for Canada. 

Loris, John D., Authority on Marksmanship. 

Mackay, A. H., Provincial Superintendent of Education, Halifax, N. S. 

Maclean, James Alexander, President, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Man. 

Mann, Charles Riborg, Associate Professor of Physics, University of Chicago, 
Chicago, Ill. 

McCaig, James, Editor of Publications, Provincial Department of Agriculture, 
Edmonton, Alberta. 

McCaleb, A., Staff Editor. 

McFarland, Raymond, Professor of Pedagogy, Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vt. 

McClelland, Kellogg D., Assistant to the President, Knox College, Galesburg, Ill. 

Meyer, R. D., Associate Editor, The Dial, Chicago, Ill. 

Mohler, J. R., Assistant Chief, Bureau of Animal Industry, Department of Agri¬ 
culture, Washington, D. C. 

Montgomery, Edward Gerrard, Professor of Farm Crops, Cornell University. 

Morcira, A. de Franema, Secretary, Brazilian Embassy, Washington, D. C. 

Morse, Mrs. T. Vernette, Dean of Vocational Art Institute, Chicago, Ill. 

Montessori, Dr. Maria, Founder Montessori System in Education; Directress, 
Houses of Childhood, Rome, Italy. 


vm 













Makers of the World Book—Continued 


Mundelein, Most Rev. George W., Archbishop of Chicago, Chicago, Ill. 

Munsterberg, Hugo, Former Professor of Psychology and Director of Psychological 
Laboratory, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. 

Naon, Romulo S., Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary from Argentina to 
the United States, Washington, D. C. 

Nicholson, S. E., Editor , American Friend (Anti-Saloon League), Richmond, Ind. 

Oliver, E. H., President, Presbyterian College, Saskatoon, Sask. 

Oliver, Frank, M. P., Editor Bulletin, former Provincial Minister of Interior, 
Edmonton, Alberta. 

Olson, John C., Professor of Chemistry, Cooper Union, New York. 

O’Shaunnessy, James, Advertising Expert, Chicago, Ill. 

O’Shea, M. V., Department of Education, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis.; 
Editor-in-chief, The World Book. 

Panaretoff, Stephan, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from 
Bulgaria to the United States, Washington, D. C. 

Platt, E. B., Staff Editor. 

Ramsey, Allan, Staff Editor. 

Redway, Jacques W., Author of Natural Geography Series, Mount Vernon, N. Y. 

Reury, A. E., Staff Editor. Assistant Editor, Human Interest Library. 

Rocheleau, W. F., Staff Editor. Author of Great American Industries and 
Geography of Commerce and Industry. 

Rodin, Carl B., Assistant Librarian, Chicago Public Library, Chicago, Ill. 

Ross, Edward A., Professor of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis. 

St. Austell, Francis, Staff Editor. 

Savage, Elmer Seth, Professor of Animal Husbandry, Cornell University. 

Savage, Herbert K., Assistant Editor, Field and Stream, New York City. 

Schemann, C. H., Assistant to the President, State College of Agriculture and 
Mechanic Arts, Ames, Iowa. 

Schoenwerk, M., Staff Editor. 

Schoff, H. K. (Mrs. Frederic), Reformer; President, National Congress of Mothers 
and Parent-Teachers Association, Philadelphia, Pa. 

Seton, Ernest Thompson, Author; artist; lecturer; naturalist; New York City. 

Shaw, William, General Secretary, United Societies of Christian Endeavor, Boston, 
Mass. 

Skinner, Hubert M., Author, Chicago, Ill. 

Snell, John F., Professor of Chemistry, Macdonald College, Macdonald College, Que. 

Snow, Bonnie M., Author; artist; Supervisor of Art Instruction, Milburn, N. J. 

Steidtmann, Edward, Assistant Professor of Geology, University of Wisconsin, 
Madison, Wis. 

Stewart, Cora Wilson, Founder of the Moonlight Schools; President, Kentucky 
Illiteracy Commission, Frankfort, Ky. 

Stoner, Winifred S., Author; educator; Wilmington, N. C. 


ix 












Makers of the World Book—Continued 


Tanaka, I., Imperial Library of Japan, Tokio, Japan. 

Tappan, Eva March, Author, Worcester, Mass. 

Terman, Lewis M., Associate Professor of Education, Leland Stanford Junior 
University, Stanford University, Cal. 

Thompson, D., Staff Editor. 

Tivnen, Richard J., M. D., Eye Specialist, Chicago, Ill. 

Tsur, Ye-Tsung, President, Tsing Hua College, Peking, China. 

Turley, M. R., Staff Editor. 

Tyrrell, J. B., Mining Engineer, Toronto, Ont. 

Vandewalker, Nina C., Principal of Kindergarten Training Department, State 
Normal School, Milwaukee, Wis. 

Vincent, George S., President (until June, 1917) University of Minnesota, Minne¬ 
apolis, Minn. 

Wagner, George, Assistant Professor of Zoology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 


Wis. 


Weaver, Thomas S., Superintendent of Schools, Hartford, Conn. 

Weddell, T. R., Insurance Editor, Chicago Herald, Chicago, Ill. 

Weir, M., Staff Editor. 

Weller, C. H., University Editor, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa. 

Westerman, William Lynn, Professor of History, University of Wisconsin, Mad¬ 
ison, Wis. 

Wheeler, Harry A., Vice-President, Union Trust Company, Chicago, Ill. 

White, B. M., Staff Editor. 

Williams, Walter, Dean, School of Journalism, Missouri State University, Col¬ 
umbia, Mo. 

Wilson, Harry Bruce, Superintendent of Schools, Topeka, Kan. 

Withers, John W., President, Harris Teachers College, St. Louis, Mo. 

Wright, John D., Specialist in Education of the Deaf, New York City. 
Zimmerman, W. F., Staff Editor. 


STAFF OF ARTISTS 


Abelmann, Kate 
Bennett, Olive M. 
Braidwood, Beatrice 
Brey, Laura 
Dulin, James H. 
Finch, Helen 


Gronemann, Carl F. 


Haines, Helen M. 
Hardman, Anna M. 
Harmon, Dorothy 


Hazelton, Helen A. 
Seeley, Sue 


Seron, Nouart 
Sharp, Olive 


Shriver, Uldine 


Snow, Bonnie 
Weddell, Iris 


x 

















CONTRIBUTORS OF LOCAL INFORMATION 


The persons named below accepted assignments to secure reliable data relating to their 
respective cities. 


Adam, Jessie, Secretary, Commercial Club, Lewis¬ 
ton, Idaho. 

Adams, A. G., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Auburn, New York. 

Adams, G. B., Secretary, Business League, Staun¬ 
ton, Virginia. 

Aiken, P. O., Manager, Chamber of Commerce, 
Huntsville, Alabama. 

Aitken, G. A., Mayor, Georgetown, Prince Edward 
Island. 

Alford, Benjamin F., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Anderson, Indiana. 

Allingham, A. W., Mayor, Broadview, Saskatche¬ 
wan. 

Anderson, J. C., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Chillicothe, Ohio. 

Andrus, S. Glen, Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Sacramento, California. 

Ansorge, Herman, Secretary, Merchants Associa¬ 
tion, Green Bay, Wisconsin. 

Ardern, Frank, Deputy City Clerk, Saginaw, 
Michigan. 

Arnett, Will H., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Kokomo, Indiana. 

Arnott, George D., City Clerk, Swift Current, 
Saskatchewan. 

Auld, John J., Mayor, Amherstburg, Ontario. 

Austin, Chas., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Butte, Montana. 

Austin, E. S., Secretary, Commercial Club, Jeffer¬ 
son City, Missouri. 

Babb, E. L., Secretary, Business Men’s Associa¬ 
tion, Xenia, Ohio. 

Bailey, D. D., Secretary, Merchants Association, 
Coffeyville, Kansas. 

Baldwin, W. J., Mayor, Aurora, Ontario. 

Banset, Ren6, Assistant City Clerk, Montreal, 
Quebec. 

Batt, W. G., Secretary, Merchants Retail Associa¬ 
tion, Bedford, Indiana. 

Battle, Joseph, Mayor, Thorold, Ontario. 

Bayliss, H. B., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Lake Charles, Louisiana. 

Beatty, James R., Secretary-Treasurer, Saint 
Lambert, Quebec. 

Beck, W. F., Mayor, Penetanguishene, Ontario. 

Beer, L. C., Secretary, Merchants Association, 
Bakersfield, California. 

Bell, Ralph N., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Amsterdam, New York. 

Bellman, L., Membership Secretary, Commercial 
Club, Omaha, Nebraska. 

Bender, Albert J., Mayor, Montmagny, Quebec. 

Bennett, F. S., Secretary, Commercial Club, Iola, 

KS-11S3-S 

Bennett, George M„ Historian of Commercial 
Club, Urbana, Illinois. 

Bennett, Grant S., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Battle Creek, Michigan. 

Bernier, J. A., Mayor, Edmundston, New Bruns¬ 
wick. 

Bethel, J. C., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Lakewood, Ohio. 

Bevitt, E. D., Managing Secretary, Greater Mus¬ 
kogee Association, Muskogee, Oklahoma. 

Bierce, Lee H., Assistant Secretary, Association of 
Commerce, Grand Rapids, Michigan. 

Biggers, L. G., Secretary, Board of Trade, Palm 
Beach, Florida. 

Black, George, Commissioner of Yukon Territo¬ 
ries, Dawson, Northwest Territories. 

Blackburn, A. W., Secretary, Merchants Associa¬ 
tion, Monessen, Pennsylvania. 

Blackman, G. N., City Clerk, De Kalb, Illinois. 

Bleich, C. H., City Hall Building, Alliance, Ohio. 

Blough, John, Secretary, Merchants Association, 
Goshen, Indiana. 

Bobolini, Louis, Secretary, Board of City Devel¬ 
opments, Brownsville, Texas. 

Bogle, Jerome, Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Brazil, Indiana. 

Bonham, R. T., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Evansville, Indiana. 

Bonnet, A. E. S., Secretary-Treasurer, Lachine, 

Quebec. 


Boulay, H., City Clerk, Hull, Quebec. 

Bourue, H. W., Town Treasurer, Woodstock, New 
Brunswick. 

Bowlby, J. W., Mayor, Brantford, Ontario. 

Bowler, Alen T., General Secretary, Chamber of 
Commerce, Raleigh, North Carolina. 

Bowles, J. L., Secretary, Board of Commerce, 
Knoxville, Tennessee. 

Boyer, L. Jos.,. City Clerk, Salaberry de Valley- 
field, Quebec. 

Bracewell, B. C., Municipal Clerk, Penticton, Brit¬ 
ish Columbia. 

Braden, Geo. C., Secretary, Board of Trade, War¬ 
ren, Ohio. 

Bradley, John, Secretary, Commercial Club, Eu¬ 
reka Springs. Arkansas. 

Bramlee, M. E., Secretary, Business Men’s Asso¬ 
ciation, Olean, New York. 

Breitenstein, A. J., Secretary, Commercial Club, 
Great Falls, Montana. 

Briggs, Robert W., Secretary, Board of Trade, 
Amesbury, Massachusetts. 

Brooks, Jos. T., San Jose, California. 

Broughton, J. D., Secretary, Board of Trade, 
Parry Sound, Ontario. 

Brown, Chas. E. W., Secretary-Treasurer, Cham¬ 
ber of Commerce, Asbury Park, New Jersey. 

Brown, Edgar, Secretary, Commercial Club, Hen¬ 
derson, Kentucky. 

Brown, E. E., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. 

Brown, Emmett, Superintendent of Schools, Cle¬ 
burne, Texas. 

Brown, Fred A., Secretary, Board of Trade, Dover, 
New Hampshire. 

Brown, James T., Cardston, Alberta. 

Brown, L. M., Secretary, Gila County Abstract 
Company, Globe, Arizona. 

Brown, Peter J., Chilliwack, British Columbia. 

Brown, R. B., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Zanesville, Ohio. 

Browning, Earl S., Secretary, Commercial Club, 
Iowa City, Iowa. 

Brusely, R. G., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Bloomington, Indiana. 

Buckner, N., Secretary, Board of Trade, Asheville, 
North Carolina. 

Bundschu, C. C., Secretary and Treasurer, Busi¬ 
ness Men’s Association, Independence, Missouri. 

Burns, F. S., Secretary, Commercial Club, Belle¬ 
ville, Illinois. 

Bussard, Gormant V., Secretary, Board of Trade, 
Hagerstown, Maryland. 

Butler, F. C., Secretary, Board of Commerce, 
Jamestown, New York. 

Butterfield, George, Secretary, Board of Trade 
and Merchants Association, Fitchburg, Massa¬ 
chusetts. 

Byam, C. A., Mayor, Liskeard, Ontario. 

Caldwell, Chas. B., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Vincennes, Indiana. 

Calvin, Martin V., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce. Waycross, Georgia. 

Camp, Clement D., Clerk, Board of Education, 
Port Chester, New York. 

Campbell, A. G., Wallaceburg, Ontario. 

Campbell, A. L., Secretary, Merchants and Manu¬ 
facturers Association, Columbia, Pennsylvania. 

Campbell, W. F., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Bellingham, Washington. 

Canfield, J. E., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Kingston, New York. 

Cann, A., Mayor, Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. 

Carrington, John B., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Ban Antonio, Texas. 

Carroll, M. V., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Sedalia, Missouri. 

Carter, W. H., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Columbus, Mississippi. 

Cartier, A. O., City Clerk, Sorel, Quebec. 

Casady, H .E., Secretary, Retail Merchants Asso¬ 
ciation, Council Bluffs, Iowa. 

Casey, Daniel N., Secretary, Board of Trade, Ha¬ 
verhill, Massachusetts. 


XI 















Contributors of Local Information—Continued 


Chambers, George P., Secretary, Federated Com¬ 
mercial Club, Sandusky, Ohio. , 

Childs, R. W., Secretary, Commercial Club, Boise, 
Idaho. 

Chipley, C. E., Industrial Secretary, Sault Sainte 
Marie, Michigan. 

Clark, H. S., Secretary, Board of Commerce, Man¬ 
istee, Michigan. 

Clarke, W. W., Charlottetown, Prince Edward 
Island. 

Clarkson, Fred H., Secretary-Treasurer, Melville, 
Saskatchewan. 

Clay, S. H., Secretary, Commercial Club, Salt 
Lake City, Utah. 

Cleghorn, D. P., Secretary, Commercial Associa¬ 
tion, Kankakee, Illinois. 

Cobb, J. H., Secretary, Commercial Club, Sapulpa, 
Oklahoma. 

Cobb, R. G., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce 
and Business League, Mobile, Alabama. 

Cole, Heath K., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Tiffin, Ohio. 

Collier, Paul S., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Oneonta, New York. 

Collins, D. J., Mayor, Grand Falls, New Bruns¬ 
wick. 

Collins, Walter L., Secretary, Board of Trade, 
Milford, Massachusetts. 

Commerford, A. B., Secretary, Board of Trade, 
Newport, Rhode Island. 

Conant, G. O., Mayor, Oshawa, Ontario. 

Conkling, Lawrence S., Secretary, Chamber of 
Commerce, Middletown, New Jersey. 

Conkling, Wm. H., Secretary, Commercial Club, 
Springfield, Illinois. 

Cooney, John E., Secretary, Business Men’s Asso¬ 
ciation, Cohoes, New York. 

Cornell, H. A., Jr., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Ossining, New York. 

Cox, George H., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Owensboro, Kentucky. 

Coyne, C. E., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Holyoke, Massachusetts. 

Crawford, D. J., Secretary, Business Men’s Asso¬ 
ciation, Homestead, Pennsylvania. 

Cross, H. M., Secretary, Commercial Club, Supe¬ 
rior, Wisconsin. 

Crowley, W. M., Town Clerk, Oakville, Ontario. 

Cull, Geo. F., Secretary, Commercial Club, Apple- 
ton, Wisconsin. 

Cummings, M. W., Superintendent of Schools, 
Olyphant, Pennsylvania. 

Curry, Chas. M., Secretary, Board of Trade, Cam¬ 
den, New Jersey. 

Curtis, J. Clare, Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Berlin, New Hampshire. 

Davidson, G. S., Mayor, Indian Head, Saskatche¬ 
wan. 

Dennison, O. F., Assessor, Transcona, Manitoba. 

D'Evelyn, Norman F., Publicity Manager, Cham¬ 
ber of Commerce, Stockton, California. 

Devenny, J. A., Town Clerk and Treasurer, Ren¬ 
frew, Ontario. 

Dickie, L. P., Secretary, Board of Trade, Tampa, 
Florida. 

Dill, W. B., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Atlantic City, New Jersey. 

Dinsley, T. A., Town Clerk, Wilkie, Saskatche¬ 
wan. 

Dittemore, C. L., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. 

Doherty, Thomas, Mayor, Sarnia, Ontario. 

Dolbeare, Harris M., Secretary, Merchants and 
Business Men’s Association, Wakefield, Massa¬ 
chusetts. 

Donlon, Wm. J., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Worcester, Massachusetts. 

Doremus, R. H., Secretary, Business Men’s Asso¬ 
ciation, East Orange, New Jersey. 

Douglass, James D., Secretary, Commercial Club, 
Logansport, Indiana. 

Drury, Wells, Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Berkeley, California. 

Duncan, E. A., Cobourg, Ontario. 

Duncan, L. G., Secretary, Business Men’s Associa¬ 
tion, Bowling Green, Kentucky. 

Duncan, W. A., City Clerk, New Westminster, 
British Columbia. 


Duncar, P. C., Mayor, Estevan, Saskatchewan. 

Dysard, H. R., Secretary, Board of Trade, Ash¬ 
land, Kentucky. 

Eckel, Frank E., Secretary, Commercial Associa¬ 
tion, Boulder, Colorado. 

Elliott, Cyrus M., Secretary, Business Men’s As¬ 
sociation, Loclchaven, Pennsylvania. 

Elsworth, R. IT., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Traverse City, Michigan. 

Emington, T. G., Secretary, Commercial Associa¬ 
tion, Streator, Illinois. 

Ennis, H. D., Secretary, Commercial Club, Saint 
Joseph, Missouri. 

Ersland, Arthur, Secretary, Merchants Associa¬ 
tion, Chickasha, Oklahoma. 

Evans, S. R., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Mattoon, Illinois. 

Fallen, A. J., Secretary, Board of Trade, Martins 
Ferry, Ohio. 

Farrally, J. F., Secretary, Improvement Associa¬ 
tion, Bristol, Rhode Island. 

Farris, Edward N., Secretary, Commercial Club, 
Corpus Christi, Texas. 

Felt, A. T., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Alexandria, Louisiana. 

Ferrel, R. W., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. 

Fisher, Jas. T., Cashier, State Savings Bank, 
Laurium, Michigan. 

Fitzgerald, H. B., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Anderson, South Carolina. 

Fitzgerald, J. M., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Paterson, New Jersey. 

Fletcher, Robt. S., Jr., Secretary, Merchants and 
Manufacturers Association, Jackson, Tennessee. 

Foley, R. A., Secretary, Business Men’s Associa¬ 
tion, Cortland, New York. 

Foreman, W. M., Chatham, Ontario. 

Foster, George W., Town Clerk, Orange, New 
Jersey. 

Fouts, J. E., Secretary, Business Men’s Associa¬ 
tion, Muncie, Indiana. 

Fowler, J. A., Chatham, New Brunswick. 

Frank, W. H., Poughkeepsie, New York. 

Freeman, Harry H., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Hazleton, Pennsylvania. 

Fuller, A. E., Danvers, Massachusetts. 

Fulton, Jas. M., Secretary, Industrial Associa¬ 
tion, Keokuk, Iowa. 

Gabig, A. J., Secretary, Board of Trade, Carnegie, 
Pennsylvania. 

Gage, Frank L., Marlborough, Massachusetts. 

Gareau, M., Town Clerk, Hawkesbury, Ontario. 

Garvey, J. M., Secretary, Commercial Association, 
Iron Mountain, Michigan. 

Gayle, D. G., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Coshocton, Ohio. 

Gibb, F. D., President, Chamber of Commerce, 
Monroe, Louisiana. 

Gibbs, Leroy M., Secretary, Commercial Club, 
Sioux Falls, South Dakota. 

Gidney, C. M., Secretary, Commercial Club, Santa 
Barbara, California. 

Gilcreast, W. L. S., Secretary, Real Estate Own¬ 
ers Association, Methuen, Massachusetts. 

Givens, Frank M., Secretary, Business Men’s As¬ 
sociation, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. 

Glover, R. O., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Mount Vernon, New York. 

Goffrey, John, Secretary, Young Men’s Business 
League, Palestine, Texas. 

Goldsborougli, A. S., Managing Editor, Municipal 
Journal, Baltimore, Maryland. 

Goll, Oscar K, Secretary, Commercial Club, 
Douglas, Arizona. 

Gorton, Chauncey B., Secretary, Board of Trade, 
Medford, Massachusetts. 

Graham, Dugald, Mayor, Strathroy, Ontario. 

Grant, Ray A., Secretary, Business Men’s League, 
Salem, Oregon. 

Graves, C. W., Secretary, Commercial Club, 
Grand Forks, North Dakota. 

Gray, Jos. H., Secretary, Commercial Club, Bis- 
bee, Arizona. 

Gray, P. A., Secretary, Commercial Club, Pueblo, 
Colorado. 

Gray, Walles S., Secretary, Board of Trade, Irv¬ 
ington, New Jersey. 


Xll 














Contributors of Local Information—Continued 


Greer, C. R., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Hamilton, Ohio. 

Grieve, W. R., City Clerk, Portage la Prairie, 
Manitoba. 

Grimmer, F. Parker, Mayor, Saint Stephen, New 
Brunswick. 

Gruber, Eugene F., President, Business Men’s 
Association, Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania. 

Guay, P. E., Secretary and Treasurer, Black 
Lake, Quebec. 

Haeder, J. A., Secretary, Commercial Club, North 
Yakima, Washington. 

Hafey, James E., Secretary, Board of Trade, 
Chicopee, Massachusetts. 

Haines, H. H., Secretary and Traffic Manager, 
Commercial Association, Galveston, Texas. 

Hakes, C. C., Assistant Secretary, Commercial 
Club, Davenport, Iowa. 

Hale, Fletcher, President, Lake City Business 
Men’s Club, Laconia, New Hampshire. 

Hall, John O., Secretary, Board of Trade, Quincy, 
Massachusetts. 

Hall, Thos., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Ashtabula, Ohio. 

Hamilton, John J., Secretary, Commercial Club, 
Fort Madison, Iowa. 

Hammersmith, A., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Massillon, Ohio. 

Hampton, R., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Dallas, Texas. 

Hanes, C. O., Secretary, Commercial Club, Co¬ 
lumbia, Missouri. 

Hardison, F. K., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Geneva, New York. 

Hardy, J. P., Secretary, Commercial Club, Fargo, 
North Dakota. 

Hargan, W. F., Secretary, Commercial Associa¬ 
tion, Boone, Iowa. 

Harris, Emory S., Secretary, Board of Trade, 
Bennington, Vermont. 

Harrison, F. W., Secretary, Business Men’s Asso¬ 
ciation, Anaconda, Montana. 

Harsolais, A. L., Secretary-Treasurer, Joliette, 
Quebec. 

Harvey, Paul L., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Youngstown, Ohio. 

Hatcher, H. R., Walkerville, Ontario. 

Hay, Thomas A. H., Secretary, Board of Trade, 
Easton, Pennsylvania. 

Hays, T. W., President, Business Men’s Associa¬ 
tion, Huntington, West Virginia. 

Hazlett, Fred R., President, Galesburg Club, 
Galesburg, Illinois. 

Heal, W. F., City Commissioner, Moose Jaw, Sas¬ 
katchewan. 

Hebbe, C. R., Manager, Chamber of Commerce, 
Cincinnati, Ohio. 

Heidler, C. D., Athens, Georgia. 

Heinpel, Carl A., Secretary, Board of Trade, 
North Attleboro, Massachusetts. 

Henderson, A. W., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Colorado Springs, Colorado. 

Henderson, Leland J., Secretary, Chamber of 
Commerce, Columbus, Georgia. 

Hildebrandt, O. F., Secretary, Greater Moline 
Committee, Moline, Illinois. 

Hogan, Lewis R., Secretary, Municipal League, 
Millville, New Jersey. 

Holcrombe, R. W., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Columbia, South Carolina. 

Holbein, Will E., Secretary, Builders and Traders 
Exchange, Minot, North Dakota. 

Hollenga, D. S., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Fulton, New York. 

Holmes, W. E., Secretary, Commercial Club, 
Sioux City, Iowa. 

Horne, G. K., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Rocky Mount, North Carolina. 

Hovey, Merlin R., Secretary, Commercial Boost¬ 
ers Club, Logan, Utah. 

Howe, D. F., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Utica, New York. 

Howe, H. M., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Alpena, Michigan. 

Howe, J. Ed., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Shreveport, Louisiana. 

Huber, Roy, Newspaper Correspondent and Ad¬ 
vertising Writer, Norristown, Pennsylvania. 


Hudson, J. H., Secretary, Commercial Club, 
Bloomington, Illinois. 

Hulett, A. A., Secretary, Commercial Club, Well 
City, Missouri. 

Hume, T. M., Secretary, Commercial Exchange, 
Burlington, Iowa. 

Humphrey, John, Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, New London, Connecticut. 

Huntress, C. B., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Marion, Ohio. 

Hurlbut, Clayton E., Mayor, Preston, Ontario. 

Hyman, E. H., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Americus, Georgia. 

James, Edgar, Secretary, Commercial Club, Flor¬ 
ence, Alabama. 

Jarvis, Sturgis C., Secretary, Board of Trade, 
Brookline, Massachusetts. 

Jeffrey, Frank M., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Torrington, Connecticut. 

Jewett, E. C., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Brockton, Massachusetts. 

Johnson, B. Frank, Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Wichita Falls, Texas. 

Johnson, Harry G., Secretary, Board of Trade, 
Malden, Massachusetts. 

Johnson, Harvey, Assistant Secretary, Chamber 
of Commerce, Atlanta, Georgia. 

Johnson, J. K., Acting Secretary, Chamber of 
Commerce, Johnstown, Pennsylvania. 

Johnson, V. R., Secretary, Commercial Club, 
Beatrice, Nebraska. 

Johnson, W. H. C., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Macon, Georgia. 

Johnston, C. R., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Marinette, Wisconsin. 

Jones, P. G., Assistant Secretary, Chamber of 
Commerce, San Diego, California. 

Kaiser, Richard F., Secretary, Civic and Com¬ 
merce Association, Eau Claire, Wisconsin. 

Keene, Geo. W., Director of Industrial Affairs, 
Niagara Falls, New York. 

Kelleher, Geo. H., Secretary and Treasurer, 
Greenfield, Massachusetts. 

Kelley, J. Will, Secretary, Commercial Club, 
Topeka, Kansas. 

Kellim, C. J., Secretary, Civic Club, Kewanee, 
Illinois. 

Kelly, L. W., Secretary, Commercial Club, Mo- 
berly, Missouri. 

Kennedy, B., General Secretary, Chamber of 
Commerce, Montgomery, Alabama. 

Kennedy, J. C., Secretary, Board of Trade, Prince 
Albert, Saskatchewan. 

Kennedy, Jno. J., Secretary, Board of Trade, 
Northampton, Massachusetts. 

Kerr, J. A., Town Clerk, Perth, Ontario. 

Kerwin, Robert E., President, Board of Trade, 
Framingham, Massachusetts. 

Kestler, G. E., Concord, North Carolina. 

Ketchum, Chas. M., General Manager, Commer¬ 
cial Association, Wheeling, West Virginia. 

Ketchum, Chas. M., Managing Secretary, Wash¬ 
ington Board of Trade, Washington, Pennsyl¬ 
vania. 

Ketey, L. A., Secretary, Board of Trade, Mont¬ 
pelier, Vermont. 

Kiddie, S. T., Jr., Secretary. Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Saint Augustine, Florida. 

King, H. C., Assistant Secretary-Treasurer, 
Sherbrooke, Quebec. 

King, W. M., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Denison, Texas. 

Kiser, M. C., Manager, Business People’s Pro¬ 
tective Bureau, Anniston, Alabama. 

Knapp, H. R., Secretary, Merchants Association, 
Pottsville, Pennsylvania. 

Knight, Geo. A., Mayor, Brockville, Ontario. 

Knowlton, Henry, Secretary, Board of Trade, 
Cadillac, Michigan. 

Kock, H. I., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Allentown, Pennsylvania. 

Koenemann, A. D., Secretary, Board of Trade, 
Gloucester City, New Jersey. 

Krake, H. G., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Benton Harbor, Michigan. 

Krueger, E. H., Secretary, Elgin Commercial 
Club, Elgin, Illinois. 


Xlll 





















Contributors of Local Information—Continued 


Kunmel, Harry J., Secretary, Merchants Associa¬ 
tion, Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania. 

Lacey, Jno. B., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Newport News, Virginia. 

Lakin, Egerton S., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Palo Alto, California. 

Lamont, R. M., Secretary, Industrial Club, Chey¬ 
enne, Wyoming. 

Landsberg, Theodore, Manager, Commercial 
Club, Erie, Pennsylvania. 

Larson, J. Baird, Secretary, Publicity Bureau, 
Weber Club, Ogden, Utah. 

Latta, H. A., Secretary, Commercial Club, Med¬ 
ford, Oregon. 

Laughlin, J. H. M., Secretary, Commercial Club, 
Monmouth, Illinois. 

Lawler, J. E., Secretary, Commercial Club, Rib¬ 
bing, Minnesota. 

Lawson, E. H., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Watertown, New York. 

Lee, W. G., Secretary to the City Manager, Day- 
ton, Ohio. 

Lefebvre, J. E., Secretary-Treasurer, Farnham, 
Quebec. 

Lehman, L. J., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Columbus, Indiana. 

Leidy, Paul A., Jackson, Michigan. 

Leopold, Jos. F., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Frankfort, Kentucky. 

Leur, H. C., Secretary, Board of Trade, Arling¬ 
ton, Massachusetts. 

Lewis, G. W., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Oil City, Pennsylvania. 

Libbey, MacLean, Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, McKeesport, Pennsylvania. 

Linabury, E. B., Secretary, Board of Commerce, 
Flint, Michigan. 

Linsley, Frank J., Secretary, Business Men’s As¬ 
sociation, New Haven, Connecticut. 

Lippe, D. L., Town Clerk, Megantic, Quebec. 

Little, Dr. Geo., Secretary, Board of Trade, Tus¬ 
caloosa, Alabama. 

Little, R. D., Mayor, Owen Sound, Ontario. 

Littlejohn, W. A., City Clerk, Toronto, Ontario. 

Lochner, Walter O., Secretary, Commercial Club, 
Wabash, Indiana. 

Lockwood, James T., Town Clerk, Warwick, 
Rhode Island. 

Long, W. E., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Austin, Texas. 

Lovelace, D. D., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Danbury, Connecticut. 

Ludlow, J. L., Winston-Salem, North Carolina. 

McCarthy, Geo. D., Assistant Secretary, Commer¬ 
cial Club, Duluth, Minnesota. 

McCartney, Joseph, Galt, Ontario. 

McCarty, E. C., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, East Chicago, Indiana. 

McCrea, C. W., City Treasurer, Sault Sainte 
Marie, Ontario. 

McCrery, J. F., Secretary, Commercial Club, 
Greeley, Colorado. 

McDougall. Horace, Town Clerk, Truro, Nova 
Scotia. 

Mclnnis, A. H., Secretary, Board of Trade, Key 
West, Florida. 

McKinley, Eugene F., Secretary, Business and 
Professional Men’s Association, White Plains, 
New York. 

McNaughton, Alexander, City Clerk, Fort Wil¬ 
liam, Ontario. 

McPeck, Edwin K., Secretary, Business Men’s 
Association, Adams, Massachusetts. 

McQuarrie, H. A., Mayor, Westville, Nova Scotia. 

Macdonald, N. G., Mayor, Antigonish, Nova 
Scotia. 

Magee, J. S., City Clerk, Moncton, New Bruns¬ 
wick. 

Malherbe, A., Aylmer, Quebec. 

Mann, W. J., Mayor, Aylmer West, Ontario. 

Manning, C., Mayor, Verdun, Quebec. 

Marks, H. L., Secretary, Business Men’s League, 
Carthage, Missouri. 

Marr, C. H., Mayor, Wyandotte, Michigan. 

Marsh, H. M., Commissioner of Industries, Ham¬ 
ilton, Ontario. 

Martigny, Camille-L. de, Saint Jerome, Quebec. 


Martin, Donald K., Manager, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Columbus, Ohio. 

Martin, Eugene L., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Bristol, Pennsylvania. 

Martin, F. J., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Cape Girardeau, Missouri. 

Martin, M. W., Secretary, Business Men’s League, 
Helena, Arkansas. 

Mattison, R. H., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Seattle, Washington. 

Mead, W. L., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Hartford, Connecticut. 

Meller, Frank J., Secretary, Commercial Club, 
Galena, Illinois. 

Melville, A. *H., Secretary, Board of Commerce, 
Madison, Wisconsin. 

Memolo, Martin, Chief Burgess, Old Forge, Penn¬ 
sylvania. 

Merrill, John F., Secretary, Commercial Club, 
Red Wing, Minnesota. 

Messick, E. L., Secretary, Merchants Protective 
Association, Pittston, Pennsylvania. 

Metzgar, J. C., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Santa Ana, California. 

Milks, Geo. R., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Lackawanna, New York. 

Milligan, Will L., Secretary, Commercial Club, 
Bellaire, Ohio. 

Milne, F. F., City Clerk, Port Arthur, Ontario. 

Mitchell, Fred J., Mayor, Dominion, Nova Scotia. 

M’Lean, Chas., Chairman on Statistics, Commer¬ 
cial Club, Dubuque, Iowa. 

Mock, John H., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Albany, Georgia. 

Moodie, Thos. H., Secretary, Commercial Club, 
Virginia, Minnesota. 

Moore, Dr. Charles P., Mayor, Weyburn, Sas¬ 
katchewan. 

Moore, Harold, Secretary, Board of Trade, New¬ 
ton, Massachusetts. ' 

Moore, Robert, Mayor, Fort Frances, Ontario. 

Morgan, F. E., Secretary, Business Men’s Associ¬ 
ation, Bridgeport, Connecticut. 

Morgans, T. J., Commercial Secretan^ Mitchell, 
South Dakota. 

Morin, Ren6, Mayor, Saint Hyacinthe, Quebec. 

Morrison, A. M., Coleman, Alberta. 

Morrison. John, City Clerk. Woodstock, Ontario. 

Morrow, W. E., Secretary, Board of Trade, Louis¬ 
ville, Kentucky. 

Morse, O. S., Secretary, Commercial Club, Janes¬ 
ville, Wisconsin. 

Mo wry, H. W., Secretary, Business Men’s Asso¬ 
ciation. Providence, Rhode Island. 

Moxley, Harry L., Jr., Secretary, Business Men’s 
Association, Montclair, New Jersey. 

Murphy, C. W., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Champaign, Illinois. 

Murphy, John H., Secretary, Board of Trade, 
Lowell, Massachusetts. 

Murray, Thomas, Town Clerk, Sackville, New 
Brunswick. 

Neal, G. C., Assistant Secretary, Chamber of 
Commerce, Terre Haute, Indiana. 

Nelson, E. A., Secretary, Booster Club, Luding- 
ton, Michigan. 

Nelson, O. H., Alderman, Prince Rupert, British 
Columbia. 

Newbold, Chas., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 

merce, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. 

Newcomb, Bryant B., Mayor, Long Branch, New 
Jersey. 

Newman, Frederick, Mayor, Picton, Ontario. 

Nice, G. S., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Plattsburg, New York. 

Nichols, D. W., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Bristol, Connecticut. 

Noble, A. E., Secretary, Young Men’s Business 
League, Temple, Texas. 

Norris, W. C., Secretary, Business Men’s Associ¬ 
ation, Willimantic, Connecticut. 

Norwood, A., Secretary, Merchants Association, 
and President, Board of Trade, Saint Peters¬ 
burg, Florida. 

Nuttalt, Henry, Secretary, Commercial Club, 

Provo City, Utah. 

O’Brion, Fulton, Secretary, Board of Trade, 

Somerville, Massachusetts. 


XIV 

















Contributors of Local Information—Continued 


4* 


O'Connor, F. C., Secretary and Treasurer, Mer¬ 
chants Association, North Adams, Massachu¬ 
setts. 

O'Connor, Fergus J., M. D., Mayor, Gananoque, 
Ontario. 

Osgood, E. G., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Clinton, Massachusetts. 

Owen, Thos. F., Secretary, Board of City Develop¬ 
ments, San Angelo, Texas. 

Paden, A. R. G., Carleton Place, Ontario. 

Palmer, C. D., Secretary, Commercial Club, El- 
wood, Indiana. 

Partridge, F. A., Secretary, Business Men’s Asso¬ 
ciation, Mishawaka, Indiana. 

Peffers, Jno. M., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Aurora, Illinois. 

Perry, C. F., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Quincy, Illinois. 

Phelps, H. A., Secretary, Board of Trade, Barre, 
Vermont. 

Philip, Gordon, Secretary, Board of Trade, Lon¬ 
don, Ontario. 

Phillips, F. R. S., Secretary, Boosters Club, Tal¬ 
lahassee, Florida. 

Pittard, W. W., Mayor, Almonte, Ontario. 

Porter, IT. R., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Vancouver, Washington. 

Powell, Arthur A., Secretary, Commercial Club, 
Devils Lake, North Dakota. 

Pratt, N. F., Editor, Weymouth Gazette, Wey¬ 
mouth, Massachusetts. 

Price, G. L., Secretary, Commercial Club, Bis¬ 
marck, North Dakota. 

Puffer, S. P., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Charleston, West Virginia. 

Pullen, G. H., Municipal Clerk, Esquimalt, Brit¬ 
ish Columbia. 

Purintor, John A., Morgantown, West Virginia. 

Purling, David, Chelsea, Massachusetts. 

Purse, Thomas, Secretary, Board of Trade, Sa¬ 
vannah, Georgia. 

Ragsdale, French, Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce .Frankfort, Indiana. 

Ranson, W. J., Prescott, Ontario. 

Raphun, C. W., Director of Publicity, Springfield, 
Missouri. 

Rattray, Alexander L., City Clerk, Nanaimo, 
British Columbia. 

Raymond, Horace W., Schenectady, New York. 

Rayson, W. A., Secretary, Retail Merchants As¬ 
sociation, Tulsa, Oklahoma. 

Reade, John L., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Lewiston, Maine. 

Redmond, W. J., Mayor, Maple Creek, Saskatche¬ 
wan. 

Reed, W. H., Secretary, Commercial Club, Ra¬ 
cine, Wisconsin. 

Reeder, K. A., Rosthern, Saskatchewan. 

Reid, Jno. T., Campbellton, New Brunswick. 

Re Mine, N. B., Secretary, Board of Trade, Bris¬ 
tol, Tennessee. 

Renitges, J. C., Secretary, Commercial Club, 
Granite City, Illinois. 

Rheem, L. M., Secretary, Commercial Club, Hel¬ 
ena, Montana. 

Rhoades, Jas. M., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Bozeman, Montana. 

Richards, John W., Secretary, Business Men's 
Association, Hopkinsville, Kentucl^y. 

Richards, Morgan, Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Selma, Alabama. 

Rittenberg, Sidney S., Publicity Secretary, Cham¬ 
ber of Commerce, Charleston, South Carolina. 

Rix, Geo. E., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Lawrence, Massachusetts. 

Roberts, N., Acting Mayor, Argenta, Arkansas. 

Roberts, O. T., Secretary, Commercial Club, Clin¬ 
ton, Iowa. „ 

Robertson, Wm. F., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Greenville, South Carolina. 

Robinson, Harry A., Secretary, Commercial As¬ 
sociation, Yankton, South Dakota. 

Rochelle, Z. A., City Auditor, Durham, North 

0 j>OJl ^ 

Rodgers, D. H., Secretary, Business Men’s Asso¬ 
ciation, Martinsburg, West Virginia. 

Rodgers, PI. Jay, Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Jacksonville, Illinois. 


Rogers, L. S., Secretary, Merchants Association, 
Gloversville, New York. 

Rogerson, James, Secretary, Business Men’s As¬ 
sociation, Easthampton, Massachusetts. 

Roof, H. H., Secretary, Commercial Club, Biloxi, 
Mississippi. 

Ropes, Wm., New Rochelle Association, New Ro¬ 
chelle, New York. 

Ross, W. J., Town Clerk, Sudbury, Ontario. 

Roy, James, Town Clerk, New Glasgow, Nova 
Scotia. 

Rowe, Ernest H., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Jersey City, New Jersey. 

Rowe, N. R., Assistant Industrial Commissioner, 
Commercial Club, Kansas City. Missouri. 

Russell, H. A., Assistant Secretary, Chamber of 
Commerce, Fort Scott, Kansas. 

Ruttan, G. F., Mayor, Napanee, Ontario. 

Salo, L. S., Copper Country Commercial Club, 
Hancock, Michigan. 

Sampson, E. T., City Clerk, Outremont, Quebec. 

Saunders, J. D., Camrose, Alberta. 

Saunders, Winona M., Secretary, Civic Associa¬ 
tion, Ann Arbor, Michigan. 

Sawin, L. P., Secretary, Board of Trade, Everett, 
Massachusetts. 

Saxton, F. J., Corning, New York. 

Scarff, Will H., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Enid, Oklahoma. 

Schenck, W. P., Secretary, Business Men’s Asso¬ 
ciation, Connellsville, Pennsylvania. 

Schnorbach, P. P., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Muskegon, Michigan. 

Searing, E. F., Secretary, Commercial Club, Man¬ 
kato, Minnesota. 

Seberger, P. J., Mayor, Saint Cloud, Minnesota. 

Seegmiller, W. A., Secretary, Improvement As¬ 
sociation, Owosso, Michigan. 

Sengel, Geo., Secretary, Business Men’s Club, 
Fort Smith, Arkansas. 

Senton, F. S., Secretary, Commercial Club, Lau¬ 
rel, Mississippi. 

Sexaner, C. H., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Lancaster, Ohio. 

Sej^balt, E., Clerk, Board of Education, Ports¬ 
mouth, New Hampshire. 

Seymour, W. J., City Clerk, Niagara Falls, On¬ 
tario. 

Shaefer, H. F., Secretary and Treasurer, Indus¬ 
trial Association, Ypsilanti, Michigan. 

Shaffer, V. N., President, Chamber of Commerce, 
Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. 

Shepherd, R. M., Secretary, Business Men’s Asso¬ 
ciation, Carbondale, Pennsylvania. 

Sherrin, Dr. W. A., Mayor, Souris, Manitoba. 

Shinaberger, J. L., Secretary, Commercial Club, 
McAlester, Oklahoma. 

Shipper, J., Assistant Secretary, Chamber of 
Commerce, Miami, Florida. 

Silverton, G. E.. Copper Cliff, Ontario. 

Simonds, R. H., Publicity Commissioner, Board of 
Trade, Fredericton, New Brunswick. 

Sipfle, Phil. H., Secretary, Association of Com¬ 
merce, Pekin, Illinois. 

Smith, A. M., Secretary, Board of Trade, Bmns- 
wick, Georgia. 

Smith, A. R., Secretary, Commercial Club, Mc¬ 
Kees Rocks, Pennsylvania. 

Smith, C. W., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Conneaut, Ohio. 

Smith, Giles, Assistant Secretary, Commercial 
Club, Tacoma, Washington. 

Smith, Kirby, Secretary, Commercial Club, Mount 
Vernon, Illinois. 

Smith, Louis S., President, Business Men’s As¬ 
sociation, Beverly, Massachusetts. 

Smith, M. C., Mayor, Burlington, Ontario. 

Soots, Orpheus C., Secretary, Commercial Club, 
Walla Walla, Washington. 

Smith, Rene W., Auburn, Maine. 

Sparkes, Grace M., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Prescott, Arizona. 

Spencer, H. E., President, Merchants Associa¬ 
tion, Dunmore, Pennsylvania. 

Spicer, W., Mayor, Parrsboro, Nova Scotia. 

Steven, R.. Mayor, Petrolea, Ontario. 

Stevens, Vincent S., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Akron, Ohio. 


XV 













Contributors of Local Information—Continued 


Stevenson, C. T., Reno, Nevada. 

Stevenson, G. H., Secretary, Board of Trade, 
Bessemer, Alabama. 

Stewart, E., Superintendent, Rocky Mountains 
Park, Banff, Alberta. 

Stuttle, Luther A., Secretary, Business Men's As¬ 
sociation, Hattiesburg, Mississippi. 

Sullivan, V. T., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Salem, Massachusetts. 

Sumner, Chas. G., Editor, Tribune, Pocatello, 
Idaho. 

Sumner, W. K., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Glens Falls, New York. 

Summers, Nora E., Secretary, Merchants Retail 
Association, Santa Fe, New Mexico. 

Talbot, E., City Clerk, Fraserville, Quebec. 

Tallmadge, H. C., Assistant Secretary, Civic and 
Commercial Association, Denver, Colorado. 

Taylor, Fred W., Secretary, Business Men’s As¬ 
sociation, Lebanon, Pennsjdvania. 

Taylor, H. E., Business Manager, Association of 
Commerce, Marion, Indiana. 

Thayer, W. W., Concord, New Hampshire. 

Thomas, Geo. H. O., Mayor, Bracebridge, On¬ 
tario. 

Thomas, R. E., Secretary, Business Men’s Asso¬ 
ciation, Portsmouth, Ohio. 

Thompson, Robert W., Secretary, Commercial As¬ 
sociation, La Salle, Illinois. 

Thompson, Troy, Secretary, Business Men’s Asso¬ 
ciation, Amarillo, Texas. 

Thomson, P. B., Town Clerk, Areola, Saskatche¬ 
wan. 

Thomson, W. D., Secretary, Commercial Club, 
Delaware, Ohio. 

Thorpe, Elmer C., Secretary, Commercial Club, 
Lead, South Dakota. 

Toly, Clarence, Assistant Secretary, Civic and 
Commercial Association, Minneapolis, Minne¬ 
sota. 

Tomkins, J. A., Granby, Quebec. 

Tousley, W. E., Industrial Commissioner, Cham¬ 
ber of Commerce, Cleveland, Ohio. 

Towne, O. B., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Kalamazoo, Michigan. 

True, Geo. C., Oskaloosa, Iowa. 

Turley, G. T., Town Clerk, Minnedosa, Manitoba. 

Tuther, Jno. M., Secretary, Business Men’s Club, 
Chamber of Commerce, Memphis, Tennessee. 

Ullman, Carl W., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Salem, Ohio. 

Ullriek, C. W., Secretary, Board of Trade, Engle¬ 
wood, New Jersey. 

Vallely, Chas. E., President, Business Men’s As¬ 
sociation, Sanford, Maine. 

Van Auken, C. S., Secretary, Board of Trade, La 
Crosse, Wisconsin. 

Vanderburgh, W. F., Secretary, Association of 
Commerce, Cairo, Illinois. 

Vanderlieth, E. D., Secretary, Business Men’s 
Association, Carson City, Nevada. 

Vannier, Ls. Rod., Town Clerk and Treasurer, 
Sturgeon Falls, Ontario. 


Vant Hub, J. C., Jr., Assistant Secretary, Asso¬ 
ciation of Commerce, Saint Paul, Minnesota. 

Van Vleck, Chas., Secretary, Commercial Club, 
Waterloo, Iowa. 

Wahl, Fred J., Secretary, Board of Trade, West 
Chester, Pennsylvania. 

Warburton, Jas. II., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Marietta, Ohio. 

Ward, W. E., Secretary, Merchants and Manu¬ 
facturers Association, Little Falls, New York. 

Warehime, O. C., Secretary, Board of Trade, 
Frederick, Maryland. 

Watkins, H. B., Secretary, Commercial Club, 
Danville, Virginia. 

Watson, Robert W., Secretary, Commercial Asso¬ 
ciation, Crawfordsville, Indiana. 

Weaver, R. E., Mayor, Hespeler, Ontario. 

Webster, Charles H., Commissioner, Winnipeg 
Industrial Board, Winnipeg, Manitoba. 

W^eidenfeller, J. N., Secretary, Commercial Asso¬ 
ciation, Ottumwa, Iowa. 

Weinbaum, Edw. N., Statistician, Chamber of 
Commerce, Portland, Oregon. 

Weiser, Eugene F., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, York, Pennsylvania. 

Werne, J. H., Jr., Saint Charles, Missouri. 

Werner, Fred L., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Guthrie, Oklahoma. 

Westbrook, Wm. E., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Ogdensburg, New York. 

Wheeler, C. L., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Taunton, Massachusetts. 

White, Robt. McKinney, Secretary, Board of 
Trade, New Castle, Pennsylvania. 

Whitehead, Miles C., Secretary, Board of Trade, 
Garfield, New Jersey. 

Whiting, H. L., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 

merce, Olympia, Washington. 

Whittemore, L. H., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, Beacon, New York. 

Williams, C. B., Secretary, Commercial Associa¬ 
tion, Huntington, Indiana. 

Williams, C. S., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 

merce, Mansfield, Ohio. 

Williams, T. H., Mine Superintendent, Edwards- 
ville, Pennsylvania. 

Williamson, Geo., Mayor, Simcoe, Ontario. 

Willis, Paul, Secretary, Commercial Association, 
Waukegan, Illinois. 

Wills, P. L., Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Danville, Illinois. 

Wiltse, Hal F., Secretary, Chamber of Com¬ 

merce, Chattanooga, Tennessee. 

Wood, John, Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, 
Roanoke, Virginia. 

Wright, M. N., Secretary, Business Men’s Asso¬ 
ciation, Gardner, Massachusetts. 

Wunderlich, Secretary, Commercial Club, Cedar 
Rapids, Iowa. 

Yale. F. L., Secretary, Commercial Club, Joplin, 
Missouri. 

Yoerger, J. G., Mayor, Humboldt, Saskatchewan. 

Young, A. McG., Mayor, Saskatoon, Saskatche¬ 
wan. 


XVI 














ft 









KEY TO PRONUNCIATION 

The pronunciation of titles is indicated by accenting the word 
or by respelling it phonetically in italics. In the phonetic spelling, 
letters are used to indicate the sounds which they most commonly 
represent. 

A vowel is short when followed by a consonant in the same 
syllable, unless the syllable ends in silent e. It is also short when 
alone in an unaccented syllable. 

A vowel is long when accented and standing alone or in a 
syllable which ends in silent e, or when ending an accented syllable. 

5 is always soft, and never has the sound of z. 

The hard sound of c is represented by k. 

The foreign sounds which have no equivalent in the English 
language are represented as follows: 

K for the German ch, as in Bach: (BACH, baK). 

N for the French n, as in Breton: (BRETON, bre toN'). 

6 for the German 6, as in Gottingen: (GOTTINGEN, go' ting cn ). 

ii for the German ii, as in Bliicher: (BLUCHER, bluK'ur). 









ORGANIZED 

KNOWLEDGE 


TRADE MARA REGISTERED 


IN'STORY 
PICTURE 




A. Almost all the alphabets of the world, 
no matter how unlike they may be in other 
ways, have a as their first letter. But while 
in most of the languages in use to-day a 
stands but for one sound, that heard in 
father, in English it represents eight sounds, 
as in the words father, fat, fate, fare, final, fall, what and ask. It is used, moreover, 
to form digraphs, as in heat and boat. 

It seems probable that the Phoenicians, who'invented the alphabet, represented by 
their capital A an ox’s head; but when the Greeks adopted the alphabet they turned 
this first letter upside down, making it look much like a capital A to-day, and thus the 
letter lost all of its picture quality. See Alphabet. 

In music, A is placed, in the treble clef, on the second space, second added line 
below and first added line above. In the base clef it is on the first space and fifth 
line. It is the sixth note in the dia¬ 
tonic scale of C. See Music. 



A i, a term which, when used in its popular 
sense, is a slang phrase, but not objectionable. 
It is intended to denote a high quality of excel¬ 
lence or of a condition perfectly satisfactory. 
The origin of A 1 is due to Lloyd’s agency in 
London for the insurance of vessels, and when 
placed opposite the name of a boat indicated 
absolute seaworthiness. 

The leading American financial reporting 
agencies adopted the symbols, with variations, 
to indicate a business man’s credit rating and 
capital. These are discussed at length under 
the heading Commercial Agency. 

AACHEN, ah'ken, since 1815 the name of 
Aix-la-Chapelle (which see). 

AARD-VARK, ahrd-vahrk, meaning earth- 
pig in Dutch, is an ant-eater found in South 
Africa. It has a pig-like snout, a long and flex¬ 
ible tongue covered with sticky saliva, large 
pointed ears and short, reddish hair. The 
limbs are very muscular. On the front feet are 
four, and on the hind feet, five powerful claws 
with which it burrows or tears to pieces the 


hills of ants on which it feeds. It sleeps by day 
and feeds by night. The total length of the 
animal is about five feet. The tail is about 
thirty inches in length. 

The flesh is eaten by natives, though it tastes 
of formic acid derived from the bodies of the 



AARD-VARK 


ants it eats. It is easily caught by closing its 
burrow while it is absent. When alarmed, it 
rushes to its home and endeavors to dig itself 
out of sight. A sharp blow with a stout stick 
will kill it. 

AARD-WOLF, ahrd-wulf, meaning earth- 
wolf in Dutch, is a South African flesh-eating 


1 































































AARHUUS 


2 


ABALONE 


animal resembling a hyena in its sloping back 
and its color, the body being gray, irregularly 
striped with black. It has five toes on the fore 
feet and the head is pointed. It feeds on dead 
animals, bugs and ants, but not on living 
animals, as its weak jaws and teeth prevent 
it from overcoming any but the very smallest 



of vertebrates. Its flesh is not edible. It is a 
night prowler, remaining secluded during the 
day, and it usually is very timid. It trusts to 
burrowing, rather than to flight, to escape from 
its enemies. 

AARHUUS, awr' hoos, Denmark; a very old 
town and a seaport, on the eastern coast of 
the peninsula of Jutland, noted primarily for 
its great Gothic cathedral, which dates from 
1201 and is the oldest Christian church in the 
kingdom. Aarhuus has been the seat of a 
bishop since the year 948. Next to Copen¬ 
hagen, the capital, it is the largest city in Den¬ 
mark. Population, 1910, 51,909. 

AARON, air' un, the first high priest of Israel, 
the elder brother of Moses. Because he was a 
more fluent speaker than his brother he acted 
as spokesman when Moses w’as working to 
bring about the deliverance of the Jews from 
the Egyptians, and he himself called down 
several of the most grievous plagues upon 
Pharaoh. While Moses was receiving his won¬ 
derful vision on Mount Sinai, Aaron listened 
to the pleadings of the Israelites and made for 
them an idol in the form of a golden calf. Be¬ 
cause of the same sin wdiich kept Moses out 
of the promised land Aaron, too, w^as excluded 
from Canaan, and the early Christians pointed 
out his grave on Mount Hor. See Moses. 

ABACUS, ab' a kus, a simple device for indi¬ 
cating numbers in addition and subtraction. 
It w'as in common use among the ancient 
Greeks and Romans, and is still to be seen in 
the shops in remote towns of Persia and other 
countries of the Far East. The Chinese abacus 


is called shwanpan, meaning reckoning board. 
In the United States and Canada the abacus 
is little more than a curiosity, but it w^as long 



ABACUS 

The number indicated by the position of the 
beads is 91,500. The method of counting is ex¬ 
plained below. 

used in primary schools for teaching the ele¬ 
ments of number. It consists of a rectangular 
frame, in wdiich are fixed parallel rods. On 
each rod are strung seven beads or balls, two 
above and five below the horizontal bar. When 
in use the abacus should be held so that the 
beads will stay in any position desired. 

Method of Counting. Each bead below the 
bar counts one, and each bead above counts 
five; but to be included in a number the bead 
must be pushed close to the bar. In the illus¬ 
tration no beads are pushed up to bar in the 
right-hand or units column, or in the next col¬ 
umn to the left, the tens column. From right 
to left, in order, the remaining figures are 5 in 
the hundreds column, 1 in the thousands and 9 
in the ten-thousands, making the number 
91,500. The size of the number wdiich can be 
indicated by an abacus is limited only by the 
number of columns of beads; the highest num¬ 
ber possible on the abacus showm in the illus¬ 
tration is 999,999,999. 



ABALONE, OR EAR SHELL 


ABALONE, abalo'ne, from its shape also 
called ear shell, is a mollusk wdiose shell re¬ 
sembles a small shallow dish and w r hose flesh 












































ABBEY 


3 


ABBOTT 


is an article of food near the seacoast of China 
and Japan. The shell is valuable for its lining 
of mother-of-pearl. The abalone lives on rocks 
at the bottom of the sea near shore, and is 
caught in scoops or taken by divers. In Amer¬ 
ica it is found only on the California coast, but 
is not eaten. 

AB'BEY, in its original sense, a monastery 
or convent governed by an abbot or abbess 
(see Abbot). Very commonly, now, however, 
the term is applied to a church which is or -was 


18 




“if 

—4 : 16 | 


i 15 1 h— 

_L’. ! 


MizlJL 

T 


1ZJ 




n\n 


rzr 


T 


H □ 
T 


i_i 


nr 


i_i 


ABBEY OF SAINT GALL 


A typical monastery of the ninth century. The 
church was the center, about which clustered the 
other parts, including the stables and the serv¬ 
ants’ quarters, which are unnumbered in the plan. 


1. High altar 

2. Altar of Saint Paul 

3. Altar of Saint Peter 

4. The nave 

5. Paradise 
6-6. Towers 

7. Monks’ guest-room 

8. Schoolmasters’ lodg¬ 

ings 

9. Lavatory 

10. Refectory 

11. Kitchen 

12-12. Bake-house and 
brew-house 

13. Cellar 

14. Parlor 

15. Houses of novices 

16. Infirmary 

17. Doctor’s house 


18. Garden for medicinal 

plants 

19. Houses for blood-let¬ 

ting 

20. School 

21. Dormitory 

22- 22. Houses for emi¬ 

nent guests 

23- 23. Houses for poor 

guests 
2 4. Cloister 

25. Factory 

26. Abbot’s house 
27-27. Library, sacristy 

and vestry 

28. Garden 

29. Cemetery 

30- 30-30. Kitchens 

31- 31-31. Baths 


once connected with a monastery, as West¬ 
minster Abbey. In England, it may mean a 


private residence which was formerly a part of a 
religious community but was given over by 
Henry VIII to secular purposes. Thus, Lord 
Byron’s home was known as Newstead Abbey. 
See Monasticism. 

ABBEY, Edwin Austin (1852-1911), one of 
the foremost American painters, most widely 
known for his series of mural paintings, The 
Quest of the Holy Grail (see Holy Grail), in 
the book-delivery room of the Boston Public 
Library. He was born in Philadelphia, and 
had become known as an illustrator before his 
removal to London in 1883. There his illus¬ 
trative work, especially that done for editions 
of Shakespeare, won him such fame that in 
1901 he was commissioned to paint the corona¬ 
tion of Edward VII. 

The last years of his life were devoted to 
mural decorations in the Pennsylvania state 
house. These pictures, which portray incidents 
in the history of the state, are recognized as 
his greatest work. 

ABBOT, ab' but, a name derived from a 
Greek word meaning father, and therefore 
identical with the familiar “Abba, Father” of 
the New Testament (see Mark XIV, 36). In 
the early days of the monastic orders the title 
was given to any monk, but later its scope 
became more limited and it was applied only 
to the head of a monastery or abbey. During 
the Middle Ages, when the monasteries gained 
great wealth and importance, the abbots held 
positions of real power, many of them owing 
allegiance only to the Pope, and not to the 
bishops. Some of them gained political power, 
and at one time in England there were twenty- 
six in the House of Lords. Usually the ab¬ 
bot is chosen by the monks of the monastery 
which he is to serve, and is confirmed by a 
bishop or by the Pope. He holds office for life. 

The corresponding head in a community of 
nuns is called an abbess. 

ABBOTTSFORD, the famous estate of Sir 
Walter Scott (which see). In connection with 
the story of Scott an illustration appears. 

AB'BOTT, Jacob (1803-1879), an American 
writer of books for the young, chiefly known as 
the author of the very popular Rollo Books, 
a twenty-eight-volume series of stories of 
travel and adventure, with a youthful hero. 
Abbott was first a teacher and subsequently a 
clergyman, but after 1839 devoted himself en¬ 
tirely to writing. He published in all over 200 
volumes, of which the best known, with the 
exception of those mentioned above, are the 
Franconia Stories. 



























































































































































ABBOTT 


4 


ABBREVIATIONS 


AB'BOTT, Lyman (1835- ), a distin¬ 

guished American clergyman and editor, the 
successor of Henry Ward Beecher, both as 
editor of the Christian Union (now The Out¬ 
look) and as pastor of Plymouth Church, 
Brooklyn. (See 
Beecher, Henry 
Ward.) He was 
born in Roxbury, 

Mass., a suburb 
of Boston, and 
was graduated at 
New York Uni¬ 
versity in 1853. 

His father, Jacob 
Abbott, who 
wrote the Rollo 
Books, and his 
father’s two 
brothers were 
Congrega¬ 
tional ministers, but young Abbott studied and 
then practiced law for several years before he 
felt drawn toward the ministry. After his 
ordination in 1860 he was pastor in Terre 
Haute, Ind., for five years; this service was 
followed by four years at the New England 
Church in New York City. For twenty years 
he was then engaged in literary work, during 
the last years of the period being Beecher’s 
associate as editor of the Christian Union. In 
1888, the year after Beecher’s death, he suc¬ 
ceeded him at Plymouth Church and in 1893 
became editor-in-chief of The Outlook. After 
1899, when he resigned his pastorate at Plym¬ 
outh, he devoted most of his time to writing 
and editing, in which he has wielded a power¬ 
ful influence for good. Among his works are a 
life of Beecher and many volumes on religious 
and social topics. His Reminiscences appeared 
in The Outlook in 1914 and 1915. 

AB’BOTT, Sir John Joseph Caldwell 
(1821-1893), a Canadian statesman, Sir John A. 
Macdonald’s successor in 1891 as Premier of 
Canada. He was born at Saint Andrews, Que., 
and was educated at McGill University, where 
later he became dean of the faculty of law and 
one of the governors. His first appearance in 
public life was in 1857, when he contested the 
representation of his native county of Argen- 
teuil; after an investigation that lasted two 
years he obtained the seat and was successively 
reelected till 1874. In 1862, as solicitor-general, 
he introduced the use of stamps in payment 
of judicial and registration fees in Lower Can¬ 
ada; later he remodeled the jury law, and 


drafted and carried through Parliament an 
insolvency act which is the basis of Canadian 
law on this subject today. From 1887 to 1889 
he was mayor of Montreal and at the same 
time a member of the Dominion Senate. In 
the Cabinet of Sir John Macdonald he became 
a member without portfolio, and after Mac¬ 
donald’s death in 1891 he became Premier. Old 
age and the cares of office overburdened him, 
however, and he resigned December 5, 1892. 
He died May 24, 1893. 

ABBREVIATIONS, shortened forms of 
words, used to save time and space. In ancient 
and medieval times, when manuscripts were 
copied by hand, such labor-saving devices be¬ 
came very common, and after the invention of 
printing many of them persisted. At present, 
the abbreviations in general use are numerous. 
Frequently only the initial letter stands to rep¬ 
resent a word, but since this would often give 
rise to ambiguity, other letters are added. One 
device in common use is the doubling of a let¬ 
ter to designate a plural or a superlative; thus 
/. means loudly and ff. very loudly; p. means 
page and pp. pages. Arbitrary symbols are 
not in reality abbreviations, but are used for 
the same purpose. The following is a list of 
contractions in very common use. 

A. Acre. 

A. B. Artium Baccalaureus , Bachelor of Arts. 

Abp. Archbishop. 

acc., a/c or acct. Account. 

A. D. Anno Domini, in the year of our Lord, 
adj. Adjective. 

Adjt. Adjutant. 

ad lib. Ad libitum, at pleasure. 

Adm. Admiral, 
adv. Adverb, 
aet. Aetcitis, aged. 

Ala. Alabama. 

Alas. Alaska. 

Alta. Alberta. 

A. M. Ante meridiem, before noon ; Ars Magis- 

ter. Master of Arts, 
amt. Amount. 

Anon. Anonymous. 

Apr. April. 

Archd. Archdeacon. 

Ariz. Arizona. 

Arith. Arithmetic. 

Ark. Arkansas. 

Aug. August. 

Aus. Austria. 

Ave. Avenue. 

Avoir. Avoirdupois. 

B. A. Same as A. B. Bachelor of Arts. 

Bapt. Baptist. 

Bart. Baronet, 
bbl. Barrel. 

B. C. Before Christ*; British Columbia. 
b. D. Baccalaureus Divinitatis, Bachelor of 
Divinity. 

Belg. Belgium. 



LYMAN ABBOTT 



ABBREVIATIONS 


ABBREVIATIONS 


5 


Brig. Brigade, brigadier. 

Brig.-Gen. Brigadier-General. 

B. S. or B. Sc. Bachelor in the Sciences, 
bu. Bushel. 

B. V. Bene vale, farewell. 

C. Centum, one hundred; centigrade; circa, 

about. 

Cal. or Calif. California. 

Can. Canada. 

Capt. Captain. 

Card. Cardinal. 

C. B. Companion of the Bath, 
cc. Cubic centimeter. 

C. E. Civil Engineer. 

C. E. F. Canadian Expeditionary Force, 
cf. Confer, compare. 

C. J. Chief Justice, 
cm. Centimeter. 

C. M. G. Companion of (the Order of) Saint 
Michael and Saint George, 
c/o. Care of. 

Co. Company; county. 

C. O. D. Cash (or collect) on delivery. 

Col. Colonel. 

Col. or Colo. Colorado. 

Con. Contra, against, in opposition. 

Cong. Congress. 

Conj. Conjunction. 

Conn, or Ct. Connecticut, 
cts. Cents. 

C. V. O. Commander of the Victorian Order. 
Cwt. Hundredweight. 

d. Pence. 

D. Five hundred; denarius, penny. 

D. C. Da Capo, from the beginning—in music 
it means repeat; District of Colum¬ 
bia. 

D. C. 'Ll. Doctor of Civil Law. 

D. D. Divinitatis Doctor, Doctor of Divinity. 
Dec. December ; declination, 
deg. Degree. 

Del. Delaware; delegate; delineavit, he (or 
she) drew it. 

Dept, or Dpt. Department. 

D. Litt. Doctor of Literature. Same as Litt. D. 
do. Ditto, the same, 
doz. Dozen. 

Dr. Debtor ; doctor. 

D. Sc. Doctor of Science. 

D. S. O. Distinguished Service Order. 

D. V. Deo volente, God willing. 

E. East. 

E. E. Electrical Engineer. 

E. & O. E. Errors and omissions excepted. 

e. g. Exempli gratia, for example. 

E. M. Mining Engineer. 

E. M. F. Electro-motive force. 

Eng. England. 

Esq. Esquire. 

et al. Et alii, and others. 

etc. or &c. Et cetera, and others, and so forth, 
et seq. Et sequcntes, et sequentia, and what 
follows. 

f. Forte, loudly ; franc. 

Fhr. or F. Fahrenheit, 
far. farthing. 

Feb. February. 

ff. fortissimo, very loudly ; following. 

Fig. Figure, 
fl. Florin. 

Fla. Florida. 


f. o. b. Free on board. 

Fr. France ; French. 

F. R. S. Fellow of the Royal Society, 
ft. Foot; feet. 

g. Gram. 

Ga. Georgia, 
gal. Gallon. 

G. A. R. Grand Army of the Republic. 

G. C. B. Knight Grand Cross of the Bath. 

G. C. D. Greatest Common Divisor. 

G. C. L. H. Grand Cross of the Legion of 
Honor. 

G. C. M. G. Knight Grand Cross of Saint Mi¬ 
chael and Saint George. 

G. C. V. O. Knight Grand Commander of the 

Victorian Order. 

Gen. General. 

Ger. Germany. 

Gov. Governor. 

Gov.-Gen. Governor-General, 
gr. Grain, 
hhd. Hogshead. 

H. M. S. His (or Her) Majesty’s Ship, or 

Service. 

Hon. Honorable, 
hr. Hour. 

l a. Iowa. 

ib. or ibid. Ibidem, in the same place, 
id. Idem, the same. 

Ida. Idaho. 

i. e. Id est, that is. 

Ill. Illinois. 

in. inch ; inches. 

incog. Incognito, unknown. 

Ind. Indiana; index. 

Inst. Instante mense, this month, 
interj. Interjection. 

I. O. U. I owe you. 

I. S. O. Imperial Service Order. 

It. Italy. 

Jan. January. 

J. P. Justice of the Peace. 

Jr. Junior. 

Kan. Kansas. 

K. B. King’s Bench ; Knight of the Bath. 

K. C. King’s -Counsel. 

K. C. B. Knight Commander of the Bath. 

K. G. Knight of the Garter. 

K. C. M. G. Knight Commander of St. Michael 
and St. George. 

K. G. C. B. Knight of the Grand Cross of the 

Bath. 

Kil. Kilometer. 

Kilo. Kilogram. 

Knt. or Kt. Knight. 

Ky. Kentucky. 

L. Fifty. 

La. Louisiana. 

lb. or lbs. Libra or librae, pound or pounds in 

weight. 

L. C. Lower Canada ; Lord Chamberlain. 

L. C. J. Lord Chief Justice. 

L. C. M. Least Common Multiple. 

L. I. Long Island. 

Lieut. Lieutenant. 

Litt. D. Doctor of Literature. 

LL. D. Legum Doctor, Doctor of Laws. 

LL. M. Legum Magister. Master of Laws, 
loc. cit. Loco citato, in the place cited. 

M. Monsieur; meridiem, noon; one thousand; 

meter; mark. 






ABBREVIATIONS 


6 


ABBREVIATIONS 


M. A. Master of Arts ; Military Academy. 

Maj. Major. 

Man. Manitoba. 

Mar. March. 

Mass. Massachusetts. 

M. B. or Mus. B. Musicae Baccalaureus, Bach¬ 
elor of Music. 

M. C. Member of Congress ; Master of Cere¬ 
monies ; Master Commandant. 

M. C. E. Master of Civil Engineering 1 . 

M. D. Doctor of Medicine. 

Md. Maryland. 

Mdse. Merchandise. 

Me. Maine. 

M. E. Methodist Episcopal; Military or Me¬ 
chanical Engineer. 

Messrs. Messieurs, gentlemen. 

Mex. Mexico, or Mexican, 
mi. Mile. 

Mich. Michigan, 
min. Minute. 

Minn. Minnesota. 

Miss. Mississippi. 

Mile. Mademoiselle. 
mm. Millimeter. 

Mme. Madame, Madam. 

Mo. Missouri; month. 

Mont, or Mon. Montana. 

M. P. Member of Parliament; Member of Po¬ 
lice ; Methodist Protestant. 

M. P. P. Member of Provincial Parliament. 

M. R. Master of the Rolls. 

Mr. Mister. 

Mrs. Mistress. 

M. S. Master of Science; Memoriae sacrum, 
sacred to the memory. 

MSS. Manuscripta, manuscripts. 

Mus. D. Musical Doctor ; Doctor of Music. 

M. V. O. Member of the Victorian Order. 

N. North ; noun. 

N. B. New Brunswick ; nota bene, mark well, 
take notice. 

N. C. North Carolina. 

N. D. North Dakota. 

N. E. New England ; northeast. 

Neb. Nebraska. 

Nev. Nevada. 

N. F. Newfoundland. 

N. H. New Hampshire. 

N. J. New Jersey. 

N. M. New Mexico, 
no. numero, number. 

non. seq. Non sequitur, it does not follow. 
Nov. November. 

N. P. Notary Public. 

N. S. Nova Scotia. 

N. S. W. New South Wales. 

N. W. T. North West Territories. 

N. Y. New York. 

N. Z. New Zealand. 

O. Ohio. 

Oct. October ; octavo, eight pages. 

O. K. (Slang). All right or correct. 

Okla. Oklahoma. 

O. M. Order of Merit. 

Ont. Ontario. 

Ore. Oregon. 

oz. Onza, ounce. 

p. Page ; part; piano, softly. 

Pa. or Penn. Pennsylvania. 

P. C. Privy Council. 


P. E. I. Prince Edward Island. 

Penn, or Pa. Pennsylvania. 

Per cent. Per centum, by the hundred. 

Ph. B. Philosopliiae Baccalaureus, Bachelor of 
Philosophy. 

Ph. D. Philosopliiae Doctor, Doctor of Philos¬ 
ophy. 

pk. Peck. 

P. M. Post meridiem, afternoon, evening; 

Past Midshipman ; postmaster. 

P. O. Postoffice. 

Pop. Population. 

pp. Pages ; pianissimo, very softly. 

P. P. C. Pour prendre conge, to take leave. 
Prep. Preposition. 

Pres. President. 

Presb. Presbyterian. 

Prof. Professor, 
pron. Pronoun. 

pro. tern. Pro tempore, for the time being. 
Prox. Proximo mense, next month, 
pt. Pint; part. 

P. S. Postscriptum, postscript, 
pwt. Pennyweight. 

Q. E. D. Quod erat demonstrandum, which 

was to be proved. 

qt. quart. 

Que. Quebec. 

q. v. Quod vide, meaning which see. 

r. Rod. 

reed. Received. 

Rev. Reverend. 

R. I. Rhode Island. 

R. N. Royal Navy. 

R. N. W. M. P. Royal North West Mounted 
Police. 

R. R. Railroad. 

R. S. V. P. Repondez, s'il vous plait, answer, 

if you please. 

Rt. Rev. Right Reverend. 

Ry. Railway. 

S. South ; shilling. 

Sask. Saskatchewan. 

S. C. South Carolina; Supreme Court. 

Sc. B. Scientiae Baccalaureus, Bachelor of 
Science, 
scr. Scruple. 

S. D. South Dakota, 
sec. Second. 

Sept. September. 

Serg. Sergeant, 
sq. Square. 

Sr. Senior. 

S. S. Sunday School. 

St. Street; saint. 

S. T. D. Doctor of Sacred Theology. 

Supt. Superintendent. 

Tenn. Tennessee. 

Ter. Territory. 

Tex. Texas. 

Treas. Treasurer. 

Twp. Township. 

U. C. Upper Canada. 

Ult. Ultimo mense, last month. 

U. S. A. United States of America; United 
States Army. 

U. S. M. United States mail. 

U. S. N. United States Navy. 

U. S. S. United States Senate; United States 
ship. 

Ut. Utah. 


ABDICATION 


7 


ABDOMEN 


Va. Virginia. 

V. C. Victoria Cross. 

viz. videlicet, to wit, namely. 

vs. Versus, against. 

Vt. Vermont. 

W. West. 

W. A. Western Australia. 

Wash, or Wn. Washington. 

W. C. T. U. Woman’s Christian Temperance 
Union. 

Wis. Wisconsin. 

wt. Weight. 

Wy. Wyoming. 

Xmas. Christmas. 

yd. Yard. 

Y. M. C. A. Young Men’s Christian Associa¬ 
tion. 

Y. W. C. A. Young Women’s Christian Asso¬ 
ciation. 

yr. Year. 

For a very complete list, including all abbre¬ 
viations ever used, see an unabridged dictionary. 

ABDICA'TION, the resignation of a ruler or 
sovereign. The word abdication originally had 
the same meaning as renunciation, a voluntary 
withdrawal, and did not apply to forced resig¬ 
nations or depositions. In modern use abdica¬ 
tion may be either voluntary or involuntary. 
The more important abdications since the be¬ 
ginning of the nineteenth century are the fol¬ 
lowing : 


Charles Emmanuel IV of Sardinia. .June 4, 1802 

Charles IV of Spain.March 19, 1808 

Joseph Bonaparte of Naples.June 6, 1808 

Gustavus IV of Sweden.March 29, 1809 

Louis Bonaparte of Holland.July 2, 1810 

,, . , f April 14, 1814 

| June 22, 1815 

Victor Emmanuel of Sardinia. . . .March 13, 1821 

Charles X of France.August 2, 1830 

William I of Holland.October 7, 1840 

Louis Philippe of France.February 24, 1848 

Ferdinand of Austria.December 2, 1848 

Charles Albert of Sardinia.March 23, 1849 

Isabella II of Spain.June 25, 1870 

Amadeus I of Spain.February 11, 1873 

Abd-ul-Aziz of Turkey.May 30, 1876 

Abd-ul-Hamid of Turkey.April 27, 1909 

Pu-Yi of China.January 1, 1912 


In English law the king cannot abdicate 
without the consent of Parliament. 

ABDOMEN, ab doh' men, in man, the cavity 
which contains the intestines, liver, stomach, 
kidneys and other organs. It is the lower part 
of the trunk, and is separated from the thorax, 
or upper cavity, by the diaphragm. The lower 
end of the cavity is bounded by the pelvic 
bones. The term abdomen is also applied col¬ 
lectively to all the organs contained in this 
cavity. The entire cavity is lined by a thin 
membrane called the peritoneum (meaning, in 
Greek, to fold about or over). The peritoneum 
is folded over the organs in such a way as to 


keep them in their proper positions, but also 
to allow them any necessary freedom of mo¬ 
tion. It is subject to an inflammation practi¬ 
cally the same as that which causes appendi¬ 
citis. 


Related Subjects. The anatomy and physi¬ 
ology of this part of the body will be made clear 
by a careful reading of the articles on the fol¬ 
lowing topics: 


Bile 

Chyle 

Chyme 

Diaphragm 

Digestion 

Gastric Juice 

Intestines 


Kidneys 

Liver 

Pancreas 

Pelvis 

Peritoneum 

Spleen 

Stomach 









EXPLANATION OF DIAGRAM 


1. Innominate artery 

14. Trachea 


2. Vena cava 

15. Left carotid artery 


3. Right auricle of 

16. Arch of aorta 


heart 

17. Left ventricle 

of 

4. Right lung 

heart 


5. Liver 

18. Left lung 


6. Duodenum 

19. Cardiac orifice 

of 

7. Pylorus 

stomach 


8. Transverse colon 

20. Stomach 


9. Ascending colon 

21. Spleen 


10. Jejunum 

22. Descending colon 


11. Appendix 

23. Ileum 


12. Head of femur 

13. Thyroid gland 

24. Bladder 



In the above illustration not only is the ab¬ 
dominal cavity shown, with its contents, but also 
the organs above it, that the clear connection 
between the two sections may be evident. 



















































ABDUCTION 


8 


ABERCROMBIE 


ABDUCTION, ab due' shun, a legal term ap¬ 
plied to the forcible removal of a woman in 
order to secure her fortune or her person, or 
to compel her to comply with certain demands. 
In law it is regarded as distinct from like 
removal of a child of either sex, which is called 
kidnapping. Abduction constitutes a criminal 
offense and is severely punished upon convic¬ 
tion. The penalty is most severe in England 
and Canada, where the laws prescribe a mini¬ 
mum penalty of five years’ imprisonment, with 
a maximum sentence of penal servitude for life. 
In the United States the punishment varies 
according to the laws of the state in which the 
offense occurs, usually consisting of a fine and 
imprisonment from one to five years. 

ABD-UL-HAMID II, ahbd ul hah meed ', 
(1842- ), thirty-fourth sultan of the Turkish 

Empire, the man whose harsh treatment of 
Christians called forth from Gladstone the 
famous epithet, “Unspeakable Turk.” He was 
the son of Sul- 
tan Abd-ul- 
M e d j i d, and 
succeeded to the 
throne on the 
deposition of his 
elder brother, 

Sultan Murad 
V, in 1876. Tur¬ 
key at that 
time was in a 
disturbed con- 
d i t i o n , but 
neither then nor 
later did Abd- 
ul-Hamid take 
any serious steps toward reform. The Russo- 
Turkish War (which see) came as a climax to 
the disturbances in Turkey, and the empire 
would have been completely overthrown except 
for the interference of the European powers. 
Turkey, however, lost Bulgaria, Bosnia and 
Herzegovina, Montenegro, Roumania and 
Serbia, together comprising more than one- 
half of its European possessions. 

For the next thirty years Sultan Abd-ul- 
Hamid was a sorry figure. His empire suf¬ 
fered from all sorts of internal disorders. He 
frequently promised reforms, usually at the 
demand of one or other of the European pow¬ 
ers, but seldom fulfilled promises. Finally in 
1908 he was compelled by the revolutionary 
party of Young Turks to grant a constitution. 
In 1909 he was deposed and was succeeded by 
his younger brother, who ascended the throne 


with the title of Mehmet Y. After three years’ 
banishment, Abd-ul-Hamid was taken back to 
Constantinople in 1912 and there kept in close 
confinement. See Young Turks. 

ABECKET, Thomas. See Becket, Thomas 
A. 

A'BEL, the second son of Adam and Eve 
{Gen. IV, 2). He was a shepherd and, accord¬ 
ing to the Biblical story, offered sacrifices “of 
the firstlings of his flock and of the fat there¬ 
of” in such a spirit that they were regarded 
with greater favor by the Lord than were 
Cain’s offerings of the fruits of the ground. 
The latter, enraged at this, slew his brother. 
See Cain, for the story of the first murder. 

ABELARD, Pierre, ab' elard, peair ', (1079- 
1142), a French philosopher and theologian, 
famous in his own time as one of the boldest 
and most original thinkers of his day, but 
remembered in the centuries since his own 
chiefly for his association with Heloi'se. He 
was born at a village in Brittany, went to Paris 
as a student at the age of twenty, and there 
established himself as a philosophical lecturer 
in 1113. His reputation became very great, for 
he could conquer in debate the most eloquent 
masters; and students came to him from 
Rome, from England, and from Germany. 

Chosen by Canon Fulbert as teacher to his 
niece, the beautiful and accomplished Heloi'se, 
Abelard promptly fell in love with his pupil. 
When the affair reached the ears of Fulbert, 
the couple fled. The two were married with 
the uncle’s consent, and Abelard returned to 
Paris, but Heloi'se denied the marriage that 
she might not interfere with his advancement 
in the Church, and the union was annulled by 
Fulbert. Abelard thereupon became a monk 
and Heloi'se a nun, but the former continued 
his philosophical and theological lectures. The 
Church authorities condemned his teachings as 
heretical, however, and he withdrew to Nogent- 
sur-Seine, where he built an oratory which he 
called the Paraclete. Until his death he kept 
up his correspondence with Heloi'se, who sur¬ 
vived him twenty-two years, and her Letters 
to him take rank in literature with the most 
masterly expressions of love and devotion. 
Their bodies were laid side by side at the 
Paraclete, but in 1817 they were transferred to 
Paris. 

ABERCROM' BIE , James (1706-1781), a sol¬ 
dier who commanded the British forces in 
America at the beginning of the French and 
Indian War. He attacked Ticonderoga on 
July 8, 1758, but was defeated with heavy loss. 



ABD-UL-HAMID 


For thirty-three years one 
of the very few absolute mon- 
archs in the world. 


ABERDEEN 


9 


ABERDEEN 


Six weeks later he was ordered home, and was 
succeeded as commander-in-chief by Baron 
Amherst. Later he was elected to Parliament, 
and strongly supported the policy of George 
III against the American colonies. 

ABERDEEN', the fourth largest city of 
Scotland and capital of Aberdeenshire, on the 
North Sea, 130 miles north of Edinburgh, the 
capital of Scotland. It is locally known as the 
“Granite City” because most of its buildings 
are constructed of granite quarried in the vicin¬ 
ity. Aberdeen, like Glasgow, is famous through¬ 
out the world for the extent to which it has 
carried municipal ownership. All public utili¬ 
ties, including electric tram-car service, gas 
and water works, electric light, public baths, 
markets and cemeteries, are owned by the 
municipality. The profits from operation are 
used for improvements and for the reduction 
of taxation. Working people in Aberdeen are 
better housed than in most cities in Great 
Britain; several model tenements erected by 
the city set an example which has been fol¬ 
lowed by some private owners. 

Although Aberdeen was a prosperous com¬ 
munity as early as the middle of the twelfth 
century, it suffered much in the wars between 
England and Scotland and its present prosper¬ 
ity dates only from 1818, when the rediscovery 
of methods for polishing granite laid the basis 
for a new industrial development. Granite in 
all forms, both polished and in the rough, is 
the chief item of export, but fish, coal and 
spirits are also important. The chief manufac¬ 
turing industries yield woolen, cotton, jute and 
linen goods. Aberdeen has an excellent har¬ 
bor, with immense floating docks and a break¬ 
water, and has steamship connection with Lon¬ 
don, Hull and other ports. It is the junction 
point for three main lines of railway. 

Aberdeen is one of the most beautiful cities 
in Great Britain. Union Street, its principal 
thoroughfare, though less famous than Pall 
Mall, Unter den Linden or Champs Elysees, is 
one of the handsomest avenues in Europe. 
Among many notable buildings are the county 
and municipal halls, both of native granite, in 
the Scotch baronial style. Aberdeen is noted 
for its numerous educational institutions, 
among which the University of Aberdeen, with 
an average of 1,300 to 1,400 students, is most 
important. Population of the city in 1911, 
163,891. 

ABERDEEN, John Campbell Gordon, Sev¬ 
enth Earl of (1847- ), a prominent British 

political leader, best known as Governor-Gen¬ 


eral of Canada from 1893 to 1898. Aberdeen 
entered politics as a Conservative, but in 1876 
he forsook the party, and was thereafter a 
leading Liberal and supporter of William E. 
Gladstone. In 1886, during the short third 
ministry of Gladstone, he was Lord-Lieutenant 
of Ireland, and from 1905 to 1915 again held 
that office. Of great personal popularit} 7 ', he 
stands among the best-liked of the men who 
have represented the king at Dublin and at 
Ottawa. While in Canada he was given hon¬ 
orary degrees by Queen’s, McGill, Ottawa, To¬ 
ronto, Laval and other universities. One of his 
minor titles is baronet of Nova Scotia, orig¬ 
inally granted to one of his ancestors in 1642. 

ABERDEEN, S. D., the county seat of 
Brown County and the trade center for a large 
section in the northeastern part of the state. 
It is situated 125 miles northeast of Pierre, the 
capital, and 280 miles west of Minneapolis, on 
the Chicago, Milwaukee & Saint Paul, the 
Chicago & North Western, the Minneapolis & 
Saint Louis and the Great Northern railways. 
Aberdeen was founded in 1880, was incorpor¬ 
ated in 1882, and was one of the first cities in 
the Union to adopt the commission form of 
government. In 1914 the population was 
13,594, an increase of 2,841 since 1910. The 
area is little less than three square miles. 

Aberdeen is a commercial center and is 
largely interested in manufactures, flowing ar¬ 
tesian wells supplying the power for this pur¬ 
pose. Boots, shoes, clothing, flour, chemicals 
and artesian well supplies are the principal 
manufactures, and there are creameries, marble- 
works and several grain elevators. In addition 
to the public schools the city has a state nor¬ 
mal school and a fine library. The Federal 
building, courthouse and city hall are the 
notable buildings. c. of c. 

ABERDEEN, Wash., a city in Chehalis 
County, in the southwestern part of the state, 
noted for its lumber industry. It is situated on 
Gray’s Harbor, sixteen miles from the open 
sea, fifty miles west of Olympia by rail, ninety- 
six miles southwest of Tacoma and 150 miles 
southwest of Seattle. The Northern Pacific 
and Chicago, Milwaukee & Saint Paul railways 
and the Oregon Washington Railway and Navi¬ 
gation Company serve the city. Aberdeen was 
founded in 1889. Swedes, Norwegians, Finns 
and Poles comprise the foreign element of the 
population, which in 1914 was 18,220, an in¬ 
crease of 4,560 since 1910. The area is eight 
square miles. 

Gray’s Harbor is one of the three large 



ABERRATION 


10 


ABORIGINES 


harbors of the Pacific coast of the United 
States; the government has expended $5,000,000 
here on the giant rock and concrete jetties and 
on widening and deepening the channel, which 
now permits the entrance of the world’s largest 
freight carriers. Through this harbor 714,- 
037,000 feet of lumber were shipped in 1915, 
more than from any other port in the world. 
Logging and lumbering were formerly the chief 
industries, but recently much attention has 
been given to agricultural and dairying devel¬ 
opment. The fishing industry is important, 
and extensive salmon and clam canneries are 
located here. Beside fifteen lumber and shingle 
mills, the city has three shipyards, three foun¬ 
dries, and furniture, woodenware and other 
manufactories. Aberdeen has a $75,000 city 
hall, a $100,000 Electric building, the $150,000 
Finch building, the $125,000 Weatherway High 
School and a $40,000 library. The business dis¬ 
trict of the city was swept by fire in 1902 and 
in 1903. c. of c. 

ABERR A' TION, a word which means to 
wander or stray from a given path, or from a 
right course. We apply the term to a condi¬ 
tion known as mental aberration, meaning 
treacherous or defective memory, sometimes 
not serious, but often resulting in total loss of 
that faculty and even in insanity. These con¬ 
ditions are due to causes which only physicians 
can explain. 

In physics, the term is used to indicate the 
failure of rays of light to meet at a common 
point when they are reflected by a concave 
mirror or refracted by a convex lens (see 
Mirror; Lens). During the passage of parallel 
rays through a double convex lens, the rays 
near the edge come to a common point, or 
focus, sooner than those which pass through 
near the center. As a result, an indistinct 
image is formed. In the case of the camera, 
telescope and other optical instruments the 
defect is overcome by means of a diaphragm 
which shuts off the edge. The diaphragm 
serves to make the outline of the image more 
distinct, but diminishes its brilliancy. 

In astronomy, the difference between the 
true and the observed position of a heavenly 
body is called aberration. 

ABILENE, ab' i leen, Tex., a growing city in 
Taylor County, of which it is the county seat. 
It is situated northwest of the geographical 
center of the state, on the Abilene & Southern, 
Texas & Pacific, and Wichita Valley railways, 
160 miles southwest of Fort Worth. Between 
1910 and 1914 the population increased from 


9,204 to 12,806. The area is less than five 
square miles. 

Abilene is the center of a stock-raising, cot¬ 
ton and farming section. It has large grain ele¬ 
vators and manufactories of saddlery, harness 
and lumber, but its chief interests lie in cotton- 
gins and flour mills. Beside the public schools 
the city has a Baptist college and a Carnegie 
Library. Abilene has a Federal building and 
a state epileptic colony. The commission form 
of government is in operation. 

ABOLITIONISTS, ab o lish' unists, in Amer¬ 
ican history, a large number of people in the 
Northern United States who became influential 
during the first half of the nineteenth century 
in urging the immediate abolition of slavery. 
The importance of the movement dates from 
the beginning of the work of William Lloyd 
Garrison in 1829, and the formation of the 
American Anti-slavery Society in 1833. Divi¬ 
sion of opinion soon developed, Garrison and 
his followers advocating abolition even at the 
cost of disunion of the republic, while the 
more moderate party wished abolition through 
constitutional forms. The latter formed the 
Liberty party and later the Free-Soilers, and 
finally, in 1856, joined the Republican party. 
Among the prominent leaders of the radical 
Abolitionists were Wendell Phillips and John 
G. Whittier. 

ABOMEY, ah bo may', before the capture 
of the country by the French in 1892, the cap¬ 
ital of the kingdom of Dahomey, in West 
Africa, near the coast of Guinea. The town is 
surrounded by a mud wall and a trench which 
encloses a large tract of land, most of which 
is under cultivation. An important trade in 
ivory, gold and palm oil is carried on. It was 
at one time an important slave market, which 
traffic the French abolished. Population, 
about 11,000. 

ABORIGINES, ab o ridg' eneez, the first or 
earliest known inhabitants of a section or coun¬ 
try. The word is of Latin origin, and literally 
translated means from the beginning. The 
ancient Romans applied it to the mythical race 
said to have been found by Aeneas when he 
reached the mouth of the Tiber. Some modern 
scholars have suggested Aborigines was the 
proper name for these people, but this theory 
was unknown to the Romans. 

The aborigines throughout the world have 
invariably given way to newer races from other 
parts of the globe. The migration of peoples 
has made it uncertain, in some cases, who the 
original inhabitants were, and the term abo- 


ABOUKIR 


11 


ABSCESS 


rigines is frequently applied in a general sense 
to any native race existing before the white 
man came. Thus the mound-builders, the cliff- 
dwellers, the Aztecs and the other Indians of 
North and South America are aborigines. The 
study of the conditions under which they lived 
is a part of archaeology; and that of their 
relations to other races and to the animal 
world in general belongs to anthropology. Both 
of these terms are explained in this work under 
their titles. See, also, Mound-Builders ; Cliff- 
Dwellers; Indians; Aztecs. 

? ABOUKIR, or ABUKIR, ahbookeer', in 
Egypt, a small village on the Mediterranean 
Sea, thirteen miles northeast of Alexandria. 
In Aboukir Bay, in 1798, occurred the naval 
Battle of the Nile, in which the English fleet 
under the command of Lord Nelson annihi¬ 
lated a French fleet. Near this place, also, in 
1799 Napoleon defeated the Turks under Mu- 
stapha. In 1801 British forces landed here and 
compelled the French to evacuate Egypt; this 
is known in history as the Battle of Alexandria. 

A'BRAHAM, the greatest of the Hebrew 
patriarchs, the real founder of the Israelites. 
His name was originally Abram, and his birth¬ 
place was Ur of the Chaldees, but according to 
the Biblical story he heeded the call of God 
and journeyed toward a new land. When he 
was an old man God made a covenant with 
him and gave him a new name, Abraham, sig¬ 
nifying that he was to be “a father of many 
nations.” Up to this time Sarah, Abraham’s 
wife, had been childless, though Abraham had 
had one son, Ishmael, born to him by Hagar; 
but Sarah afterward gave birth to a son, Isaac, 
who became the legitimate heir of his father. 
Abraham died at the age of 175, “an old man 
and full of years,” and was buried at Mach- 
pelah. His story is told in Genesis, chapters 
XI to XXV. See, also, Isaac; Ishmael. 

ABRUZZI, ah broot' see, Prince Luigi Ama- 
deo, Duke of the (1873- ), an Italian naval 

officer, mountain-climber and Arctic explorer, 
son of Amadeus, king of Spain, and first cousin 
to Victor Emmanuel III, king of Italy. He 
was the first (1897) to ascend Mount Saint 
Elias, and in 1900 gained fame by his attempt 
to reach the North Pole. Though unsuccessful, 
he attained 86° 39' N. latitude, the most 
northerly point reached up to that time. In 
1906 he ascended the peaks of Mount Ruwen- 
zori, in equatorial Africa, and in 1909 led a 
mountain-climbing expedition to the Hima¬ 
layas, where he established a new record for 
altitude by reaching the top of Mount Austen, 


24,600 feet above sea-level. The records of 
these explorations he has published in several 
books. He is of 
peculiar interest 
to the American 
people because in 
1912 only the ob¬ 
jections of the 
royal family pre¬ 
vented him from 
marrying a 
d a u g h t er of 
United States 
Senator Elkins of 

West Virginia. In DUKE OF THE ABRUZZI 
1915, when Italy 

joined the allies in the War of the Nations, 
the Duke of the Abruzzi was placed in com¬ 
mand of the Italian fleet. 

AB'SALOM, the third, and favorite, son of 
David, king of Israel. He was handsome, clever, 
and possessed of a manner that won him uni¬ 
versal love, and 
he made use of 
his popularity 
to stir up a re¬ 
bellion against 
his father. De¬ 
feated in battle 
and fleeing be¬ 
fore the soldiers 
of his father, he 
was swept off 
his horse by 
an overhanging 
branch which 
held him by his 
fl o w i n g curls 
until Joab, one 
of David’s cap- 
tains, ap¬ 
proached and killed him. David was over¬ 
whelmed with grief. This tragic story, which 
is told in II Samuel, is the subject of a 
very popular poem, The Death of Absalom, 
by Nathaniel P. Willis. David’s love for his 
son is strikingly shown in the following lines: 

But oh! for Absalom— 

For his estranged, misguided Absalom— 

The proud, bright being who had burst away 
In all his princely beauty, to defy 
The heart that cherished him—for him he poured, 
In agony that would not be controlled, 

Strong supplications, and forgave him there 
Before his God, for his deep sinfulness. 

ABSCESS, ab' ses, a result of disease or 
injury, which may be described as a cavity 




THE TOMB OF ABSALOM 


In the Valley of Jehosh- 
aphat, close by the lower 
bridge over the Kedron. 












ABSINTH 


12 


ABSORPTION 


filled with pus, and located in the fleshy tissues 
of the human body. No matter what cause 
produces an abscess, the first step in its forma¬ 
tion is an overcharge of blood in the capil¬ 
laries, due to inflammation. The inflammation 
soon slackens the flow of blood; the white 
corpuscles of the blood combat the gathering 
bacteria, and serums form (see Bacteria; Se¬ 
rums). The tissues gradually weaken and dis¬ 
solve, and the resulting cavity becomes the 
seat of the abscess. The pus seeks exit, and 
attacks the weakest portion of the tissue walls, 
usually in the direction of the skin. Abscesses 
usually are very painful, especially just before 
they “break.” After breaking, the cavity 
should be drained and all pus removed. Break¬ 
ing may frequently be induced by poultices 
which draw the infection nearer the surface, 
although quite often the abscess must be 
lanced, to allay the increasing pain. 

AB' SINTH, or AB' SINTHE, the most harm¬ 
ful of all alcoholic liquors. People who habit¬ 
ually drink absinth to excess always have 
weak digestions and disordered nerves, and 
they usually lessen their mental capacity, even 
to the point of idiocy. Absinth is about 
seventy-five per cent alcohol, as compared with 
six to eight per cent in the strongest beer. The 
peculiar harmfulness of absinth is due to ab- 
sinthol, the essential oil of wormwood (which 
see), and to other poisonous oils of strong 
flavors. 

Absinth is called the national drink of 
France. It is to the Frenchman what beer is to 
the German, vodka to the Russian, and Scotch 
and soda to the Englishman. Not all French¬ 
men drink it, but thousands of them enjoy a 
sip or two every day. Even this sip, however, 
was denied them in 1914, soon after the War 
of the Nations began; the French govern¬ 
ment absolutely prohibited the sale or manu¬ 
facture of absinth. Its importation into the 
United States or transportation from one state 
to another has been forbidden since October 1, 
1912. A heavy duty is levied on imports of 
absinth into Canada. 

ABSOLUTION, ab so lu' shun, remission of 
a penitent’s sin, in the name of God. In gen¬ 
eral, a priest of the Roman Catholic Church 
may pronounce absolution if he believes that 
the sinner has made a full and sincere confes¬ 
sion, but there are certain sins from which 
only a higher officer of the Church can absolve 
the penitent. The Roman Catholic Church 
founds its doctrine of absolution upon Christ’s 
words, as recorded in John XX, 23. 


ABSORPTION, ab sorp' shun, a compound of 
two Latin words meaning to swallow away or 
to drink up. Absorption, then, means the in¬ 
termixture of two things in such a way that one 
of them is taken up by the other and apparent¬ 
ly vanishes. We speak of a solid absorbing a 
liquid or a gas and of a liquid absorbing a gas. 
Thus, a sponge absorbs water; a lampwick, oil; 
charcoal, ill-smelling gases; and water, am¬ 
monia gas. The absorbed substance is, of 
course, not annihilated nor is it without effect 
upon the properties of the product. A wet 
sponge differs in many ways from a dry one, 
and ammonia water is obviously different from 
pure water. But the mixed product is more 
nearly like the absorbing than like the ab¬ 
sorbed constituent. 

The quantities of the different gases which 
a given quantity of water will absorb vary 
greatly. At its freezing temperature (32° F.) 
100 gallons of water will absorb only one and 
one-half gallons of nitrogen, two volumes of 
hydrogen or four gallons of oxygen. Of carbon 
dioxide, however, the 100 gallons of water will 
take up 170 gallons, of hydrochloric acid 50,500 
gallons, of ammonia 130,000 gallons, and of 
hydriodic acid gas no less than 157,000 gallons 
(making a mixture which, though nine-tenths 
gas by weight, is in the liquid state—a striking 
instance of the less swallowing the greater. 

Fishes and other animals which live under 
the water are dependent upon the absorbed 
oxygen for their respiratory supply. The 
amount of any gas which any liquid will absorb 
is always greater the lower the temperature and 
the greater the pressure applied. Soda-water is 
water charged with carbon dioxide under pres¬ 
sure. When the cork of a soda-water bottle is 
drawn, the pressure in the bottle is released and 
the excess of gas, bubbling out, produces a foam 
upon the liquid. Beer and champagne behave 
similarly. 

Charcoal (which see) is the solid substance 
which excels as an absorbent of gases, its use 
as a deodorizer being due to this property. 
Calcium chloride and zinc chloride and many 
other substances absorb water vapor from the 
air. In damp weather even common salt will 
absorb enough water from the air to cake in a 
salt-shaker. Dry wool and silk and, to a less 
extent, dry cotton and linen, absorb moisture 
from the air. Caustic soda and caustic potash 
absorb both water vapor and carbon dioxide. 
Some solid substances when brought into con¬ 
tact with a solution absorb one or more of the 
dissolved substances from the water. Boneblack 


ABT 


13 


ABYDOS 


takes up coloring matters from sugar solutions 
(see Carbon) and clay takes up from soil-water 
some of the substances required by plants— 
for instance, potassium, ammonia and phos¬ 
phoric acid. 

In Physics. It is common to speak of the 
absorption of light and of heat. Colored glasses 
absorb some of the colors of white light, allow¬ 
ing the others to pass. When light falls upon a 
bright surface such as a mirror it is not all re¬ 
flected. Part of it is absorbed and converted 
into heat. When the surface is dull and dark, 
much less of the light is reflected and corres¬ 
pondingly more is absorbed. In some projection 
lanterns a glass cell filled with water, placed 
between the electric arc and the lenses, absorbs 
the heat but allows the light to pass through. 
See Light; Heat. 

In Physiology. Here the word absorption is 
applied to the process by which the digested 
food is taken into the blood and tymph. Medi¬ 
cine and poisons are absorbed in the same way. 
The term is applied also to the process by which 
waste matters in the tissues are taken up by 
the blood. When a swelling or an abscess dis¬ 
appears the substances from the blood which 
were temporarily deposited in the sore spot are 
said to have been absorbed (or resorbed) by the 
blood. For the most part plants absorb moist¬ 
ure and nutritive juices through their roots, and 
carbon dioxide through their leaves. Insectiv¬ 
orous plants are able to absorb organic mat¬ 
ter by the leaves. In the lungs of animals the 
blood exposed to the air in the fine thin-walled 
capillaries absorbs oxygen. Chemical union of 
the oxygen with a substance (hemoglobin) in 
the blood corpuscles takes place. The product 
(oxy-hemoglobin) is bright red. This is why the 
blood in the arteries (which has recently been 
aerated in the lungs) is so much brighter in 
color than the blood in the veins (which is on 
its way back from the tissues to the heart to be 
again sent to the lungs for aeration). See 
Circulation of the Blood. j.f.s. 

Related Subjects. A study of the articles on 
the following subjects will make clearer the 
processes of absorption: 

IN PHYSIOLOGY 

Blood Lacteals 

Capillarity Lymphatics 

Digestion Skin 

Hypodermic Injection 

IN PLANTS 

Cell Osmosis 

Leaves Roots 

ABT, Franz (1819-1885), a German writer of 
songs, including both words and music, best 
known to the general public as composer of 


such popular verses as When the Swallows 
Homeward Fly. These songs, while they have 
little of the lasting quality of truly great music, 
make a universal appeal. 

Abt was born at Eilenburg, studied at Leip- 
sig, and in 1841 became music master at the 
court theater in Zurich. In 1852 he went to 
Brunswick as a musical director of the court 
theater, and there he remained until 1881. He 
composed a number of instrumental selections 
for the piano, but they were not as well received 
as his vocal numbers. 

ABU'TILON, a plant which in most sections 
is regarded as a common weed. It is known 
both as velvet leaf, 
from the smoothness 
of its leaves, and as 
butter-print, due to 
the former custom of 
housewives of using 
its d e e p 1 y-v e i n e d 
leaves to stamp its 
design on rolls of but¬ 
ter. The plant has a 
pretty, yellow, bell¬ 
shaped flower. The 
seeds are black and 
glossy, larger than 
most grass seeds, 
which makes it pos¬ 
sible to detect their 
presence before sowing. 

ABYDOS, ahy' doss, one of the most ancient 
cities of Upper Egypt, famous as the burial 
place of Osirio. To this city the bodies of pious 
Egyptians were brought from all parts of Egypt 
for burial near the tomb of the god. Magnifi¬ 
cent temples to Osiris were built here by King 
Rameses the Great and King Seti I. Each of 
these kings left in the temple built by him a 
list of his predecessors on the throne of Egypt. 
One of these tablets was discovered in 1818 
and the other in 1864. The ruins of Abydos 
are six miles from the left or west bank of the 
Nile. The present name is Arabet-el-Madfun. 

Abydos, an ancient city of Asia Minor, fa¬ 
mous for its association with the legend of 
Hero (which see) and Leander. Abydos was 
on the south shore of the Hellespont, now 
called the Dardanelles, at its narrowest point. 
From Abydos Leander swam nightly to Ses- 
tos, on the opposite shore, to see Hero, his be¬ 
loved. In modern times Lord Byron, the 
poet, accomplished this feat once in emulation 
of the ancient hero. Near Abydos, too, Xerxes 
and his army in 480 b. c. crossed to Europe. 



ABUTILON 

TT1 n n rl Inn f 




ABYSSINIA 


14 


ABYSSINIA 



in Northeast Africa, notable as being one of 
only two African countries not directly owned 
or controlled by European powers. The other 
is Liberia, on the other side of the continent. 
The latter was settled by its present govern¬ 
ing population within a century, but Abys¬ 
sinia has the great distinction that it has al¬ 
ways been ruled by its native people. And 
nobody knows how old it is, or who its earliest 
rulers were; records do not reach back far 
enough into the mysterious past. Tradition 
says that the Queen of Sheba, of whom the 
Bible speaks, once ruled the country, although 
some scholars believe she belonged to a coun¬ 
try to the east, across the Red Sea. Certainly 
it was once a part of ancient Ethiopia, hun¬ 
dreds of years before the birth of Christ. 

The country once had an ample seacoast, 
but today, due to the demand of European 
powers, not a mile of shoreline is owned by 
Abyssinia. Britain, France and Italy have es¬ 
tablished themselves on the coast in territories 
called protectorates (see Protectorate), which 
probably only the ill fortunes of war or the 
arts of diplomacy will ever be able to take 
away from them and, even in such event, to no 
advantage to Abyssinia. 

The Country. Abyssinia is the home of about 
8,000,000 people, on 350,000 square miles of 
territory; it is almost twice the size of the 
combined states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, 
Wisconsin and Michigan, and it is of greater 
area than Germany and France, together. As 
itS" southern extremity is only 250 miles north 
of the equator, one would expect it to be an 
exceedingly hot country. This would be true 
if it were low, but nearly the whole of Abys¬ 


sinia is a series of high plateaus from 4,500 to 
10,000 feet above sea level, so only the valleys 
are hot, and they are, indeed, very warm. The 
rainfall is more than plentiful from May to 
September, which is the wet season; the other 
half of the year is called the dry season, al¬ 
though even then there is considerable rain. 

One usually thinks that the Nile River, to 
the west in Egypt, receives the immense quan¬ 
tities of water which annually overflow its 
banks from much farther south in Africa, but 
a great proportion of this great flood pours 
eastward in many rivers from Abyssinia’s high¬ 
lands. Both countries therefore profit exceed¬ 
ingly from the heavy rainfall. The great dif¬ 
ferences in altitude make the climate variable 
and give a great range of vegetable growth. 

The People and Their Occupations. The aver¬ 
age Abyssinian is dark-brown in color, as would 
be expected in a race which for thousands of 
years has lived under equatorial suns. The na¬ 
tives of all classes practise polygamy. The race 
is descended from the Hamites, the descend¬ 
ants of Ham, who after the Deluge peopled 
Northern Africa, and also from Arabians, who 
crossed the narrow strait of Babel-Mandeb. 
Besides these are modern Arabs, Greeks, Ar¬ 
menians, and a few Europeans. Everything 
connected with their life is primitive. The 
average Abyssinian owns nothing of much 
value; he cannot own land, for theoretically the 
ruler, called the negus , owns every foot of the 
soil, and the people pay for whatever privi¬ 
leges they enjoy on it. Naturally agriculture 
is backward among a people who know next 
to nothing about landed property. Their living 
is made from coffee growing, which is on the 
increase, and next in importance, from cotton, 
sugar, oranges, lemons and dates. On the higher 
lands wheat and barley are grown, also a large 
quantity of tobacco. 

In its mineral resources Abyssinia is com¬ 
paratively rich in iron, but it is mined as yet 
only for local manufacture into knives, spears, 
axes and the crude implements of the house¬ 
hold. General commerce is quite impossible, 
owing to lack of transportation to the sea. 
Rubber trees flourish and a good deal of rub¬ 
ber sap is gathered; the methods of its prepara¬ 
tion in the locality where it is found are 
related in the article India Rubber. 

Cities and Communication. The capital city, 
so called, although it is little more than a group 
of rude villages built around the palace of the 
negus, is Addis Abeba. It is 300 miles inland 
from the sea, and almost inaccessible. The only 












ABYSSINIA 


15 


ABYSSINIA 



Watch lower Near Custom 

house 



The Average Native Dwelling 

Wife Whip of Abyssinian e , ^ £ 4 « t r <a> 

Driaeg oom 4. v ^ . n $,.•*.*am* 

h •&* r o <!> *«.. • 

Ji M* ^ '|i ! 'V V ^ 

T.* * *. *y • i> * rt A * 

Specimen of Writing How the Soldier 

is Armed 



Native Women 
Grinding Grain 


Location of Abyssinia, 
Cut off from the Ocean. 




^ — Umbrella K/lade of 

Principal Means of Transportation Banana Leaves 


:ac 


means of reaching it is by a narrow winding 
trail, and mules, horses, donkeys and camels 
are the means of transportation. There is a 
railroad from Jibuti, on the French Somali¬ 
land coast, south to Harrar, and in time this 
will penetrate to the capital. Addis Abeba has 
about 50,000 people, and Harrar is nearly as 
large. No other town exceeds 5,000. The only 
native school in the entire country is in the 
capital city. 

There is a telephone line between the two 
cities above named, and also three other shorter 
lines. Telegraph lines connect all the principal 
cities. However, so little information of a re¬ 
liable nature comes out of Abyssinia that the 
death of the ruler, Menelik, was reported three 
times within the year 1913, but not verified 
until December, when his grandson was known 
to have ascended the throne. 

Government. In theory the hereditary ruler, 
the negus negusti (king of kings) is the su¬ 
preme authority; his power is short of ab¬ 
solute only as he is swayed by those who must 
share more or less in governmental control. 
In the provinces he appoints nominal local 
heads, unless, as is often the case, leaders not 
of his choice become strong enough to dispute 


authority. No serious uprisings have occurred, 
however, so far as is known. Local authorities 
collect taxes; these officials use their own dis¬ 
cretion as to the amount they may assess, for 
there is little restriction upon them. There 
are three principal governmental divisions, the 
sub-kingdoms of Tigre, Amhara and Slioa; 
the latter is the most enlightened and conse¬ 
quently the most powerful. 

Other Items of Interest. Most of the rich 
mud with which the Nile makes fertile its val¬ 
ley in Egypt is brought from Abyssinia. 

In Abyssinia the soil is so fertile that two 
and often three crops a year can be produced. 

Practically all the large game animals of 
Africa, the elephant, lion, hippopotamus, rhi¬ 
noceros, crocodile, leopard, hyena, giraffe and 
buffalo, are plentiful in Abyssinia. 

The year, which begins in September, con¬ 
sists of twelve months of thirty days each. The 
five, or in leap year, six, extra days are placed 
at the end of the year and regarded as holi¬ 
days, for the Abyssinians are very fond of 
festivities. 

The most of the people are still nominal 
Christians, but their religion has largely degen¬ 
erated into superstition. 































































ABYSSINIA 


16 


ABYSSINIA 





Outline 


I. Location 

(1) Latitude—50° 3' to 17° N. 

(2) Longitude—36° to 42° E. 

II. Physical Characteristics 

(1) Size 

(a) Comparative 

(b) Absolute 

(2) Surface Features 

(a) High plateaus 

(b) Valleys 

(3) Drainage 
(a) Nile 

III. Climate 

(1) Temperature 

(2) Rainfall 

(3) Arrangement of seasons 

IV. Industries 

(1) Agriculture 

(a) Primitive methods 

(b) System of land-holding 

(c) Chief crops 

(1) Coffee 

( 2 ) Cotton 
(3) Sugar 
( 4 ) Fruits 


(2) Mining 

(3) Communications 

(a) Trails 

(b) Railroad 

(c) Telephone 

(d) Telegraph 


V. People 

(1) Appearance 

(2) State of civilization 

(3) Elements of population 

(4) Cities 

(a) Addis Abeba 

(b) Harrar 

VI. Government 

(1) Chief ruler—the negus 

(2) Local heads 

(3) Sub-kingdoms 


VII. History 

(1) Legendary 

(2) Authentic 

(a) Contact with Greeks 

(b) Contact with other Europeans 

(c) Present conditions 


Questions 

Why has Abyssinia no seacoast? 

Why is not the country one of the hottest on the globe? 

Why are not greater crops produced? 

Does Egypt owe anything to Abyssinia? 

How does the capital city compare with the capitals of European countries? 

What Biblical character does popular tradition connect with Abyssinia? 

How does the area compare with that of Texas? Of California? Of Ontario? 

On the average, how many people are there to the square mile in Abyssinia? 

What is the negus negustif 
How is the Abyssinian year divided? 

What foodstuff is there which is considered a necessity in North America but 
scarcely ever used in Abyssinia? s 

Why would not the system of land-holding be popular in the United States or 
Canada? 

Would an American or European traveler enjoy a beefsteak dinner in Abyssinia? 
What curious fact proves that news from Abyssinia is not always trustworthy? 

How do the Abyssinians excuse themselves for begging? 

How is the city of Addis Abeba reached from the coast? 

What is the native attitude toward marriage? 


is 
























ABYSSINIA 


17 


ACACIA 


The name Abyssinia means mixture, and has 
reference to the mingling of tribes. 

The proudest Abyssinian is not too haughty 
to beg, for he says “God gave us speech that 
we might beg.” 

Though in recent years a standard coin, 
worth about fifty cents, has been introduced, 
cartridges and bars of rock salt are still cur¬ 
rent as money. 

Salt is too valuable to be used b}^ any but 
the wealthy. To say of an ordinary man that 
he eats salt is to brand him as recklessly ex¬ 
travagant. 

Travelers have stated that the steaks most 
relished by Abyssinians are cut from live cows. 
When they do not follow this cruel practice 
they eat the raw flesh of the freshly-killed ani¬ 
mal while it is still warm and quivering. 

It is a very simple matter to dissolve a mar¬ 
riage, either husband or wife being able to do 
it with a word. 

In 1903 Abyssinia made a treaty of com¬ 
merce with the United States, and the latter 
country and Great Britain furnish a large share 
of the imports. 

History. The early history of the country 
is part of the record of ancient Ethiopia, of 
which most of the present Abyssinia was 
a part. The natives yet call themselves Ethi¬ 
opians. The whole truth cannot be known as 
to the more ancient period, but besides the 
Queen of Sheba, referred to above, her son 
Menelik, whose reputed father was Solomon, 
probably ruled for a period of years. Whether 
or not this is true, later kings assumed the 
name Menelik, the last to bear it dying in 
1913. Grecian influences 200 years before the 
birth of Christ gradually raised the level of 
intelligence until the people accepted a form of 
Christian religion in the fourth century a. d. 

European nations at various times have 
looked with envious eyes upon Abyssinian ter¬ 
ritory. In the sixteenth centuiy Portuguese 
missionaries entered the country, and it was a ' 
more fortunate incident politically than relig¬ 
iously, for the missionaries induced the mother 
country to help Abyssinia against an invasion 
of the then very powerful Turks. In 1870 Italy 
was beginning to look towards Africa for new 
territory and invaded Abyssinia. The inter¬ 
vention of the British in 1889 saved the coun¬ 
try from conditions which would have made it 
an Italian protectorate if not actually Italian 
territory. 

The Emperor Menelik chose as his successor 
his young grandson, Jeassu, and the latter suc¬ 

2 


ceeded to the throne late in 1913, at the age 
of seventeen. The youthful ruler proved un¬ 
satisfactory to the Abyssinians from the first, 
partly because he is a confirmed drunkard, but 
more especially because of his interest in for¬ 
eign affairs and his desire to introduce into the 
kingdom Western innovations. Furthermore, 
the people regarded the selection of Jeassu as 
a great wrong, for it violated the terms of an 
agreement made nearly half a century previous, 
by Menelik and Johannes, king of Tigre, both 
of whom were then aspirants for the Abyssinian 
throne. 

According to this agreement Menelik was to 
become emperor, but he was to bequeath the 
crown to Zeoditu, his daughter by his first wife, 
and to her husband, Prince Arita, a son of 
Johannes. In the course of Menelik’^ reign 
Prince Arita died and Zeoditu married the 
nephew of her stepmother, the Empress Taitu. 
The empress for many years exercised great 
influence over her husband, and at one time, 
assisted by her stepdaughter and her nephew, 
she ruled the country while the nominal ruler 
lay ill. Her influence, however, waned toward 
the close of Menelik’s reign, and not long be¬ 
fore his death the emperor issued a decree 
changing the order of succession and proclaim¬ 
ing Jeassu as his heir. The dissatisfaction of 
the Abyssinians culminated in 1916 in the 
deposition of Jeassu, and his throne is now 
occupied by the Empress Zeoditu. e.d.f. 

ACACIA, akay' sha. The plants which are 
called by this name differ decidedly in certain 
ways, for some are delicate shrubs and others 
great trees, but all have the beautiful feathery 
leaves which make them favorite ornamental 
plants, and many have bright-hued, fragrant 
flowers. Most of the acacias grow only in 
tropical or subtropical countries, but a few 
are cultivated in mild climates elsewhere. In 
the United States the Gulf region and Cali¬ 
fornia produce them, and these sections can 
show few more beautiful plants than an acacia 
tree covered with its spikes of rose-colored 
flowers. Most of the acacias grow in Australia 
and Africa, however, and some of these species, 
notably the wattle tree of Australia, contain so 
much of the extract used for tanning that at¬ 
tempts have been made to introduce them into 
the United States. Some of the African species 
produce a good quality of gum-arabic and one 
of the Indian acacias yields the valuable medi¬ 
cine called catechu. Like the mimosa, which 
they greatly resemble in appearance, certain 
species of acacia have extremely sensitive 





ACADEMY 18 


leaves. Some of these do not open unless the 
sun is shining. 



ACACIA 

Branch and fruit. 

ACADEMY, a school or an association for 
the promotion of literature, science or art. 
Nearly 2,300 years ago the great Greek philos¬ 
opher Plato conducted a school in a shady 
grove a mile from Athens. This grove, accord¬ 
ing to legend, once belonged to a certain 
Academics, a hero of the Trojan War, and from 
him Plato’s school took its name. The term 
academy, as now applied to schools, is used 
mainly in the eastern part of Canada and the 
United States, where it means a secondary 
school, primarily to prepare boys for college. 
Before the development of the high school 
system, these institutions, usually under the 
patronage of a church or religious society, 
afforded the only means of obtaining a second¬ 
ary education. 

Plato’s academy, however, was not a school 
for boys; it was, rather, an association of young 
men, eager for knowledge, who sought guidance 
from a great teacher. The word academy, 
therefore, is also applied to modern associa¬ 
tions of men who are engaged in any learned, 
scientific or artistic pursuits. The most famous 
of all such academies is the French Academy, 
established by Cardinal Richelieu in 1635. Its 
object is to obtain a high standard in French 


ACADIA 

language and literature, partly by the example 
of its members and partly by the ponderous 
method of preparing the standard French dic¬ 
tionary. This dictionary has gone through 
many editions, the last in 1878. To be elected 
a member of the Academy is one of the highest 
honors a Frenchman can receive, and its mem¬ 
bers are popularly called the “forty immortals.” 
There are many other noted European acad¬ 
emies, including the Royal Academy, of British 
artists; the British Academy, of historians, 
jurists, economists, philosophers and philolo¬ 
gists; and the Royal Academy of Sciences at 
Berlin, similar in scope to the British Academy. 

American Academies. The first learned 
academy in America was the American Philo¬ 
sophical Society, founded in Philadelphia in 
1743, largely through the influence of Benjamin 
Franklin. The American Academy of Arts and 
Sciences was chartered by the state of Massa¬ 
chusetts in 1780, and the Academy of Natural 
Sciences of Philadelphia was established in 
1812. The American Academy of Arts and Let¬ 
ters was founded in 1898, the purpose of its 
founders being the organization of a body cor¬ 
responding to the French Academy. The 
membership is limited to fifty, and the chief 
qualification for membership is “notable 
achievement in art, music, or literature.” 
Among its members, past and present, are Wil¬ 
liam Dean Howells, Augustus Saint Gaudens, 
Samuel L. Clemens, Edward A. McDowell, 
Henry James, Theodore Roosevelt, W’oodrow 
Wilson, Daniel C. French, Thomas Nelson 
Page, Joseph Jefferson and Joel Chandler Har¬ 
ris. See American Academy of Arts and 
Letters. 

ACADIA, akay'dia, the name which the 
early French settlers gave to the territory now 
comprising Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, 
has sentimental and romantic associations that 
quite overshadow its historic interest. When 
the French and English began their long and 
bitter struggle for the possession of the North 
American continent (see French and Indian 
War), Acadia was the home of peace-loving 
French farmers— 

“Men whose lives glided on like rivers 

that water the woodlands.” 

During Queen Anne’s War (1697-1713), Port 
Royal, the seat of the Acadian government, 
surrendered to the English, and when in 1713 
the treaty of peace was signed, Acadia was 
definitely ceded to England. During the years 
that followed, the Acadians, though nominal 
subjects of Great Britain, were a source of 




ACADIA UNIVERSITY 


19 


ACCENT 


much anxiety to the British government be¬ 
cause of their sympathy for the French cause, 
and in 1755 they were commanded to take an 
unconditional oath of allegiance to the British 
sovereign. Their refusal to do so was met by 
an order to leave the country; accordingly 
about six thousand men, women and children 
were carried away to the English colonies and 
scattered at various places from Massachusetts 
to Georgia. See Nova Scotia. 

This melancholy chapter in the history of the 
Acadians has been treated poetically in Long¬ 
fellow’s well-loved epic Evangeline, a poem 
which will preserve the name of Acadia as long 
as there are readers to appreciate its pathos 
and its beauty (see Evangeline). Interest in 
the tale centers about the sweet and loyal hero¬ 
ine, whose faithfulness to her lover is the theme 
of the poem. The author has expressed this 
fidelity in the familiar lines— 

Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and en¬ 
dures, and is patient, 

Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of 
woman’s devotion, 

List to the mournful tradition still sung by the 
pines of the forest; 

List to a tale of love in Acadie, home of the 
happy. 

ACADIA UNIVERSITY, an institution for 
higher education, at Wolfville, N. S. It was 
founded in 1838 by the Nova Scotia Baptist 
Education Society, received a charter in the 
next year, and adopted the name Acadia Col¬ 
lege in 1841. The name was changed to 
Acadia University in 1891. The board of gov¬ 
ernors of the university is chosen at the annual 
Baptist convention of the Maritime Provinces, 
and the board must report to the convention. 
Two courses of study, leading to the degrees of 
B. A. and B. S., are offered. The faculty com¬ 
prises thirty professors and instructors, and 
there are about 250 students. In affiliation 
with the university are the Acadia Seminary 
for Young Ladies and Horton Academy, a 
boy’s preparatory school. 

ACANTHUS, a kan' thuss, an order of plants 
or shrubs, most of which are but ordinary 
weeds, although several species form beautiful 
garden and hothouse plants. These latter, with 
their large, white flowers and deeply-indented 
shining leaves, are tropical in habit, and will 
grow in the United States and lower Canada 
only if carefully protected. 

In architecture the name is given to a kind 
of foliage decoration, much employed in Greek 
and Roman times, and later. The convention¬ 
alized form is the characteristic decoration of 


the capital in the Corinthian column, the 
richest and most ornamental type of Grecian 
architecture. See Column. 



ACANTHUS 

The plant, the conventionalized design adopted 
in architecture, and an example of its use in a 
column. 

ACAPULCO, ah ka pool' ko, a seaport of 
Mexico, 200 miles southwest of the City of 
Mexico, has a better harbor than any other 
port on the entire Pacific coast of America. 
In spite of this advantage the town is of little 
commercial importance, for the extremely hot 
and unhealthy climate and the frequent earth¬ 
quakes of the region have been heavy draw¬ 
backs. The city was, in fact, almost wholly 
destroyed by an earthquake in 1909. The 
exports, most of which are sent to San Fran¬ 
cisco, include cochineal, fruit, timber, wool, 
hides and indigo. During the time of the 
Spanish ascendancy in Mexico, Acapulco was 
an important port and had an extensive com¬ 
merce, but since Mexico obtained indepen¬ 
dence, in 1821, its trade has diminished. In 
time it will profit from new trade routes opened 
as the result of the completion of the Panama 
Canal. The population is about 6,000. 

ACCENT, ack' sent. When a word of more 
than one syllable is pronounced, one syllable 
is made more prominent than the others by 
means of special emphasis. This emphasis is 
called accent, and is indicated when words are 
being spelled to show their exact pronuncia¬ 
tion, by the sign ', placed after the stressed 
syllable. Some long words have more than 
one accent—in the word examination, for 
example, the syllables am and na receive more 
emphasis than the others. But there is always 
one accent which is stronger than the others, 
and this is known as the primary accent. In 
the word referred to above, na has the primary 
accent, that on am being secondary . Such a 
secondary stress is indicated by two marks, ", 
or by one which is lighter than the primary 
accent mark. Frequently, no one can say just 
why, accents shift, and there is at present a 
tendency in English to place the accent as near 

































ACCESSORY 


20 


ACCOUNTING 


the beginning of the word as ease of pronun¬ 
ciation will permit. The word peremptory, for 
instance, until a few years ago was accented 
on the second syllable, but to-day authorities 
agree on the pronunciation peremptory. 

The term is commonly used in music also, 
to indicate the stress which is placed on certain 
tones. Normally, the first beat of each meas¬ 
ure receives such an emphasis, and if the 
measure be long, one or more weaker or sec¬ 
ondary accents may be used later. In a 9/8 
measure, for example, the first beat is stressed 
strongly, but weaker accents are placed on the 
fourth and seventh beats. Sometimes, in order 
to produce a certain peculiar effect, the accent 
is shifted and allowed to fall on a beat which 
would regularly be unaccented. This shifted 
accent is the most marked characteristic of 
“ragtime” music. See Music. 

ACCESSORY, ackses' on,or ACCESSARY, 
in law, is a person who has some part in the 
perpetration of a crime, either before or after 
its commission, but who is not present when 
the unlawful act is performed. One who aids 
prior to the act, or who has knowledge that 
it is impending and does nothing to prevent it, 
is an accessory before the fact; if he aids the 
active agent after the crime is committed, or 
has knowledge of it which he suppresses, he is 
an accessory after the fact. 

An accessory is punishable with penalties 
which may be as heavy, in the discretion of the 
court, as those visited upon the one who 
actually commits the offense. A knowledge of 
facts with which a law-abiding citizen acci¬ 
dentally becomes familiar places an obligation 
upon him to assist in punishing law-breakers. 

In physiology, accessory muscles are those 
that control the finer movements of the body, 
as the fingers, the toes, and the tongue in 
making consonantal sounds. 

ACCLIMATIZA'TION, or ACCLIMA'TION, 
the process by which a plant or animal adapts 
itself to a climate to which it is not accus¬ 
tomed. The best examples of acclimatization 
are the cultivated plants, like the potato, 
wheat, barley and other cereals, and the com¬ 
mon fruits; all of these are believed to have 
grown originally only in the warmer zones, 
but now flourish almost to the polar regions. 
Although in most of these acclimatization seems 
perfected, yet certain limitations are always 
appearing; for instance, corn cannot be grown 
in the short, cool seasons of the northern 
temperate regions, while some kinds of wheat 
do not thrive as well in the warmer climates. 


There are countless instances of partial ac¬ 
climatization, where the plant may grow thrift¬ 
ily for a time but fail to mature fruit or to 

bear seeds. 

Animals vary considerably in their power 
to adapt themselves to different climates. 
Some, such as the dog, the cat, the domestic 
fowls and mice, have followed man into all 
parts of the world and seem to thrive wherever 
man does. In general, it is true that any 
animal organism may adapt itself perfectly to 
new conditions if they are presented slowly 
and by degrees, while if thrown suddenly 
among the same conditions it will die. Change 
in climate sometimes affects neither vigor nor 
general health, but merely size, as in the case 
of the Shetland pony. Man himself possesses 
great adapability, yet when changes occur 
suddenly, he may fall prey to fatal diseases. 
Whenever representatives of the races inhabit¬ 
ing the temperate climates are transported to 
the tropics, they find it difficult to preserve 
health and vigor for any great length of time. 
Of all races of men the Anglo-Teutonic seems 
best able to endure changes in climate; this 
ability has made it the greatest colonizing race 
of the world. Modern sanitation and intelli¬ 
gent care, however, enable people to live for 
many years in varying climates, preserve their 
health and even carry on the industries of 
their first home. w.f.z. 

ACCORDION, ackkawr' di on, an old-fash¬ 
ioned wind instrument, one of the smallest of 
such devices, consisting of a bellows of many 
folds, to which a kejdioard is attached. The 
right hand plays the melody by pressing the 
keys, while the 
left hand opens 
and shuts the 
bellows, which 
causes the air 
to pass over a 
set of metal 
reeds, thus pro- 
d u c i n g the 
musical sounds. 

The accordion 
is easy to play, and its music is favored at barn 
and country dances. It was invented in Vienna 
in 1829, but is similar to a wind instrument 
used by the Chinese for centuries. See Con¬ 
certina. 

ACCOUNTING is the science of discovering 
and displaying by means of accounts the exact 
state of affairs in any business which has to do 
in any way with" money or property. It is thus 
























ACCOUNTING 


21 


ACCOUNTING 


distinct from bookkeeping, which records facts 
by rules laid down by accounting and for 
accounting to interpret. The relation of an 
accountant to a bookkeeper is somewhat the 
same as that of a mechanical engineer to a 
mechanic; the first designs machines, the sec¬ 
ond constructs and uses them, and the first 
again studies to see if improvements or correc¬ 
tions are necessary. A good bookkeeper will 
be to some extent an accountant, just as a 
good mechanic knows something of engineering 
practice. See Bookkeeping. 

Accounting, like commercial law, is a subject 
of which every business man should have some 
knowledge. Good bookkeeping, by indicating 
weaknesses in the structure of a business, may 
save even a small concern thousands of dol¬ 
lars, but unless the proprietor knows how to 
make his accounts vital he is apt to have poor 
bookkeeping. The head of a large establish¬ 
ment, though he is able to hire accountants 
to supervise his books, will not have the abil¬ 
ity, unless he has an understanding of account¬ 
ing, to read the full story which the books tell. 

Accountants. Those who practice accounting 
(or accountancy, as it is called in England) 
are of two sorts, private and public. The for¬ 
mer give all their time to directing the ac¬ 
counts of one organization. The latter are at 
the service of all people. Their activities are 
of three sorts: (1) auditing or examining 
accounts to discover if they have been cor¬ 
rectly kept, or to give an impartial report upon 
the affairs of a company; (2) advising what 
accounts are appropriate for a particular busi¬ 
ness; (3) in the British Empire, acting as 
trustees, executors or administrators. 

A public accountant has one of the most 
responsible positions in the business world. If 
he is hired by the directors of a corporation 
to audit its books he must not only look for 
errors on the part of the bookkeepers but also 
discover if the directors themselves, by acci¬ 
dent or intention, are deceiving the stockhold¬ 
ers and creditors with false reports. In a 
certain instance an accountant examined the 
books of a small corporation and certified that 
they were correct. The company had appar¬ 
ently made a handsome profit on the past 
year’s business, and through public faith in the 
accountant’s report it was able to borrow 
money. Only a few months later it failed. 
The discovery was then made that instead of 
earning money the company had been losing. 
Through the incompetence of an accountant a 
number of people had lost their savings. 


To guard against such wrongs most of the 
states of the American Union and the Canadian 
provinces have followed Great Britain in re¬ 
quiring public accountants to pass examina¬ 
tions. A Certified Public Accountant in the 
United States or a Chartered Accountant in 
Canada is one who has shown by examination 
to possess not only a knowledge of bookkeep¬ 
ing principles but of finance, commercial pro¬ 
cedure and law. In some states and provinces 
he must have a high school education or its 
equivalent. 

To be a successful public accountant a man 
should have a liking for analysis and for thor¬ 
oughness and possess the consciousness that 
his responsibility requires not onty honesty 
but constant alertness. 

Cost Accounting. Accountants have saved 
the world millions of dollars by discovering 
and preventing waste. The purpose of cost 
accounting is to assign to each section of a 
business its proper and full share of expense. 
In figuring the cost of manufacturing an article, 
for instance, not only such direct costs as the 
material consumed must be charged to it, but 
also a portion of the overhead expense, and 
indirect costs like interest and insurance on 
the stock and the wear and tear on the ma¬ 
chines which make the article. By overhead 
expense is meant that which goes on all the 
time whether the machines are active or idle; 
salaries of administrative officers and rent of 
buildings are examples of it. 

Without the help of cost accounting a busi¬ 
ness may continue for years losing money on 
supposedly profitable undertakings. The in¬ 
vestigations of the United States Department 
of Agriculture are proving this particularly 
true in the case of farming. 

Farm Accounting. The following is a brief 
outline of a method of determining the exact 
cost of any crop on the farm, and also illus¬ 
trates the principles of cost accounting for any 
business. It is based on the recommendations 
of the United States government and will be 
better understood if read in connection with 
the article Bookkeeping, especially the section 
called Farm Bookkeeping. 

Each crop must be charged with: 

(1) Items which enter directly into its cost, 
such as seed, insect destroying chemicals and 
fertilizer, whether they are products of the farm 
or purchases. 

(2) Labor of men. If the number of hours 
spent on each task is noted every day, and at the 
end of the year the total cost of labor (including 
a reasonable salary for the farmer) is divided by 
the number of hours which have been spent, the 








ACETANILID 


22 


ACETYLENE 


result will be the cost per hour. Of course two 
men working' one hour must be counted as one 
man working two hours. 

(3) Labor of horses. The expenses of the 
horse account will include feed, a reasonable 
charge for space in the barn, and man-labor for 
their care. If they are worth less at the end of 
the year than at the beginning the difference is 
charged to the account. A year’s interest on 
their value, and insurance and taxes on them, if 
any, are added. The account is credited for 
manure produced. The total cost of the horses 
for the year divided by the number of hours of 
work will give the cost per hour. 

(4) Machinery, equipment and harness use. 
The cost of this account for the year is found as 
in the case of horses by charging materials, 
labor, interest, rent, insurance, depreciation and 
taxes. It is important to charge adequate depre¬ 
ciation, or decrease in value. The number of 
hours by which the total is divided should not 
include hours in which equipment was employed 
for the benefit of other equipment, as for in¬ 
stance when harness and wagon are used in 
bringing new machinery to the farm. 

(5) Rent, hail insurance, depreciation and 

taxes on the land used (in proportion to its fer¬ 
tility), and a share of the like costs for buildings 
and fences on the farm. c.h.h. 

ACETANILID, as et an' e lid, a highly poison¬ 
ous drug, frequently given as a medicine be¬ 
cause it has the effect of deadening pain. Its 
presence in numerous headache powders and 
tablets is a source of great danger (see Head¬ 
ache). Such remedies should be avoided, as 
large doses of acetanilid have in many in¬ 
stances proved fatal. It is a white, crystalline 
powder, and is made by treating aniline with 
acetic acid. j.f.s. 

ACETIC ACID, a set' ic (or aseet' ic), in its 
pure and water-free state, is a colorless liquid, 
a little heavier than water. It has a very sharp 
odor and a painful action upon the nose and 
eyes. It is a caustic, that is to say, a substance 
which acts upon the skin, producing severe 
burns. When cooled to 62° F. (the tempera¬ 
ture of a cool room), pure acetic acid solidifies 
into ice-like crystals. For this reason pure 
acetic acid (even when liquid) is called glacial 
acetic acid. Dilute acetic acid, that is, acetic 
acid mixed with water, is cheaper than the 
glacial acid. Druggists keep solutions of six 
and of thirty-six per strength. 

Acetic acid takes its name from the Latin 
acetum, meaning vinegar. It is this acid to 
which the sourness of vinegar is due. The 
interesting process by which acetic acid is 
formed from dilute alcohol is described under 
the title Vinegar. Vinegar contains only from 
four to eight per cent of acetic acid. Concen¬ 
trated acetic acid was first obtained from vine¬ 
gar in the year 1700 by the German chemist 


Stahl. Today it is made commercially from 
hardwood by distillation, being thus a by¬ 
product of the manufacture of charcoal (which 
see) and wood alcohol. The crude acid first 
obtained is called pyroligneous acid (from the 
Greek pur, meaning fire, and the Latin lignum, 
meaning wood). This crude acid is used to 
some extent in dyeing. The greater amount, 
however, is converted into pure dilute acetic 
acid. 

Acetic acid is used extensively in the manu¬ 
facture of white lead, acetone and the acetates. 
Among the important acetates are those of 
lead, calcium, sodium, copper, aluminum and 
iron. Lead acetate is sugar of lead. Verdigris 
is a copper acetate used in the manufacture of 
Paris green. The acetates of sodium, alumi¬ 
num and iron are used in dyeing. j.f.s. 

ACETYLENE, a set' ileen, a clear, color¬ 
less gas, of great commercial importance for 
lighting purposes. It ignites easily, and burns 
with a bright but smoky flame. Ordinarily the 


TWO TYPES OF ACETYLENE BURNER 

gas has a peculiar odor, somewhat like that of 
garlic, but when it is burning has no odor. 
It was once largely used for automobile and 
bicycle lamps, and is now much employed in 
illuminating country houses. Acetylene gas was 
formerly regarded as dangerous, but as a mat¬ 
ter of fact it is less poisonous than ordinary 
illuminating gas, and, if handled with reason¬ 
able care, is not more likely to explode. The 
smoke of the acetylene flame is eliminated by 
using a special burner, constructed on the prin¬ 
ciple shown in the accompanying illustration. 
There are two small openings, from which the 
gas issues and mingles with the air. The acety¬ 
lene burners used in house-lighting consume 
about seven-tenths of a cubic foot per hour, 
and give a light of about twenty candle power. 
The cost of this light is about three-fourths 
that of ordinary illuminating gas. 

Manufacture of Acetylene Gas. The cheap¬ 
ness of this gas is due chiefly to the simplicity 
of its manufacture. Chemically it is composed 









































ACETYLENE 


23 


ACHAEANS 


of carbon and hydrogen, and it is produced by 
the action of water on calcium carbide. When 
calcium carbide is placed in contact with water, 
the hydrogen of the water unites with the car¬ 
bon of the calcium carbide to form acetylene 
gas. A pound of commercial calcium carbide 
yields about 4.5 cubic feet of acetylene gas. 
Calcium carbide can now be purchased by con¬ 
sumers, who are enabled to make illuminating 
gas on their own premises. A reservoir to con¬ 
tain the calcium carbide, another for water, and 
an arrangement for mixing the two are the only 
requirements. 

Manufacture of Calcium Carbide. Calcium 
carbide, as now used for commercial purposes, 
is the product of the electrical fusion of coal 
dust and lime in the proportion of one pound 
of coal dust to 1.5486 pounds of lime. The 
result of the fusion of this quantity is 1.77 
pounds of a dark gray, cinder-like substance. 
The lumps of this substance, which is called 
carbide of calcium or calcium carbide, are brit¬ 
tle and crystalline. At first they have a lus¬ 
trous surface, but after a short exposure to air 



ACETYLENE GENERATOR 
A plant of small size is sufficient for the ordi¬ 
nary residence. 

they become tarnished. The present method 
of manufacture was perfected about 1892 by 
Thomas L. Willson, a Canadian scientist. 

Acetylene Welders and Cutters. The flame 
of acetylene gas, when burning in pure oxy¬ 
gen, is even hotter than that of hydrogen 


burning in oxygen (see Hydrogen). The oxy- 
acetylene flame, that is, acetylene burning in 



Cross-section of underground tank for supply¬ 
ing acetylene gas to a residence requiring a large 
number of lights. Besides the house, such a 
tank will generate sufficient gas to supply the 
barn and other outbuildings. Plants of this 
nature are becoming popular in rural communi¬ 
ties, where electric light or illuminating gas is 
not available. 

oxygen, has been found well adapted to the 
purpose of welding metals. It is also exten¬ 
sively used, in a torch which concentrates the 
flame, for cutting or burning through metal. 
A thin thread-like flame is directed at the point 
where the cut is wanted, and burns its way 
through the hardest metals as though they 
were cut by a saw. j.f.s. 

Consult Leeds’ Acetylene—the Principles of 
Its Generation and Use; Lewes’s Acetylene—a 
Handbook for the Student and Manufacturer. 

ACHAENS, akee'anz , the early inhabit¬ 
ants of Southeastern Thessaly and a part of 


















































































































































































































































































































































































































































ACHATES 


24 


ACID 


Peloponnesus, who formed one of the four 
groups of ancient Greeks. After the Dorian 
invasion they pushed into Northwestern 
Greece, where they formed the Achaean 
League, a confederation of the twelve towns of 
that region. The power of the League waned 
after the death of Alexander the Great. It 
was revived in 280 b. c. and later spread over 
the whole of Greece, lasting until 146 b. c., 
when it was destroyed by the Romans. The 
term Achaia, or Achaea, was used by Horace 
to designate the whole of Greece. The Achae- 
ans received their name from their mytho¬ 
logical ancestor, Achaeus, the grandson of 
Hellen. See Greece. 

ACHATES, aka'teez, one of the Trojans 
who followed Aeneas and remained with him 
through all his wanderings and his struggles 
after the hurried flight from Troy (see Troy). 
He was so devoted to Aeneas and so constant 
that he was always called fidus (faithful), and 
the expression fidus Achates has come to be a 
common one for a very faithful friend. Scott 
used the term in the sentence, “He has chosen 
this fellow for his fidus Achates ” 

ACHERON, ak' e ron, the name applied in 
ancient times to a number of rivers in Greece 
and Italy. In Homer’s epics there is mention 
of a river in the underworld by the name of 
Acheron; the poet is said to have taken the 
name from that of a river in Epirus which flows 
into the Ionian Sea. In later mythology 
Acheron is the name of a river or lake in 
Pluto’s realm, across which Charon ferried the 
souls of the departed. See Charon ; Pluto. 

ACHILLES, akil'eez. The Iliad opens 
with an account of the wrath of this great 
Greek hero—“ruinous wrath, which laid un¬ 
numbered woes on the Grecians.” He was the 
son of Peleus and the sea-goddess Thetis. 
Having been well trained in 
the arts of war, when the 
Trojan War broke out he 
joined the Greek army, and 
during the early years of 
that struggle he w r as of great 
help to the Greeks. How¬ 
ever, when Agamemnon, 
leader of 
took from 
Briseis, a cap 
tive maiden, 
refused to 

anything fur- TENDON OF ACHILLES 
ther to do with Shown at a 

the war, and the Greeks soon were in des¬ 


perate straits. Only the death of his beloved 
friend and kinsman Patroclus made Achilles 
forget his personal grievances. Filled with 
the desire for revenge, he rejoined his war¬ 
ring countrymen and turned the tide of their 
fortunes by slaying Hector, the bravest of 
the Trojans. According to the early myth- 
writers Achilles had been dipped by his mother 
in the Styx, which made invulnerable every 
part of his body except his heel, by which she 
held him. His death-wound, made by an 
arrow, he received in this heel. See Hector; 
Troy; Iliad. 

Tendon of Achilles. Because it was by the 
heel that this great Greek hero was held, the 
strong tendon which connects the muscles of 
the calf with the heel is known as the tendon 
oj Achilles. It may be easily felt just above 
the heel. f.j.c. 

ACID, as' id, a name applied to a number of 
chemical compounds, having more or less the 
qualities of vinegar. The general properties 
assigned to them are a tart, sour taste, the 
power of changing a vegetable blue called lit¬ 
mus into red, of acting upon and dissolving 
metals and of being rendered neutral by alka¬ 
lies (see Alkali). 

Blue litmus is made from a kind of lichen 
which grows on the seacoasts of Europe. It 
is supposed that the change from blue to red 
which the litmus undergoes when treated with 
an acid is due to a change in the relative posi¬ 
tion of the atoms in one of the chemical com¬ 
pounds contained in the litmus. An acid 
always contains hydrogen, and it is always 
possible to take the hydrogen from an acid 
and replace it with a metal, with the result 
that what is known chemically as a salt is 
produced. An instance of a hydrogen com¬ 
pound that is not an acid is water, which is 
composed of li 3 r drogen and oxygen. However, 
when hydrogen and chlorine combine, the 
product is an acid, hydrochloric acid; for the 
hydrogen can be replaced by such a metal as 
sodium, and sodium chloride is produced. The 
latter happens to be what every child knows as 
common salt. 

Many acids are harmless if taken internally, 
while others, themselves compounds of ele¬ 
ments that cannot do harm, are deadly poisons. 
When we eat oranges or lemons we swallow 
citric acid. Grapes contain tartaric acid; 
apples, malic acid; and vinegar, acetic acid. 
All of these are harmless, but oxalic acid and 
carbolic acid, although made up of the same 
elements as the others—namely, carbon, hydro- 






ACLINIC LINE 


25 


ACRE 


gen and oxygen—are deadly poisons. Sul¬ 
phuric acid, nitric acid and hydrochloric acid 
are manufactured on a large scale, and are very 
useful products in manufactures and elsewhere; 
some of their uses are related in detail in this 
work in articles bearing those titles. See 
Chemistry; Hydrogen; Litmus; Acetic Acid; 
Citric Acid; Carbolic Acid; Nitric Acid; Sul¬ 
phuric Acid. j.f.s. 

ACLINIC, aklin'ic, LINE, or the magnetic 
equator, an imaginary irregular curved line 
circling the earth in the neighborhood of the 



geographical equator. This line marks the 
zero point, or perfect balance, in magnetic at¬ 
traction between the north and south magnetic 
poles. At all points along this line the mag¬ 
netic needle always will balance itself horizon¬ 
tally, having no dip. See Dipping Needle; 
Magnetism. 

ACONCAGUA, ah kon'kah gua, an extinct, 
craterless volcano in Argentina, in the south¬ 
ern part of the Andes Mountains. It is the 
highest mountain in America, its height being 
between 23,000 and 24,000 feet. A river of the 
same name, 200 miles in length, rises on the 
southern slope of the mountain and enters the 
Pacific Ocean twelve miles north of Valparaiso, 
Chile. 

ACONITE , ack' onite, a group of hardy 
plants of the buttercup family, consisting of 
about sixty species, all of which are poisonous. 
Powerful medicines are made from their roots 
and leaves. Applied to the skin, these cause 
a feeling of numbness, and are used to deaden 
pain in some forms of rheumatism and neural¬ 
gia. If taken internally they cause the heart 
to beat more slowly, and too large a dose kills 
by stopping the heart action. 

Well-known examples of aconite plants are 
wolf’s-vane and monk’s-hood. The blue or yel¬ 
low flowers of these plants bear sepals of un¬ 
equal size and shape, the upper one having 
the form of a helmet or hood. j.f.s. 

ACORN, a' korn or a' kern, the fruit of the 
oak tree, consisting of a rounded nut covered 


by a woody cup. The inhabitants of some 
countries use acorns for food. Squirrels and 
many birds, especially the jay, store them away 



VARIETIES OF ACORNS 

a —Bur oak c —Chestnut oak 

&—Live oak d — Red oak 


as food for the winter, and many oaks have 
grown from the acorns dropped by these little 
harvesters. Such expressions as “Mighty oaks 
from little acorns grow” are often used as fig¬ 
ures of speech to show what may result from 
small beginnings. The tree is described under 
the title Oak. 

ACOUSTICS, akow' stiks or akoo'stiks, 
from a Greek word meaning to hear, is a term 
applied to that quality of a room or hall which 
determines how easily sounds produced in it 
may be heard. A room containing large, smooth 
surfaces on the walls, floor or ceiling is said to 
have bad acoustic quality, because these sur¬ 
faces reflect successive sound waves sent out 
by a speaker’s voice, so that the words over¬ 
lap and confusion results (see Echo). The most 
remarkable example of the acoustic properties 
of a large room is to be found in the Mormon 
Tabernacle at Salt Lake City, Utah, where a 
whisper can be heard distinctly in all parts of 
the room. See Sound. 

ACRE, ah' kur or a' kur, or AKKA, a city 
and seaport of Syria, at the foot of Mount 
Carmel. In medieval times it was a place of 
great importance, being the key to the Holy 
Land, and in consequence it is famous for 
many sieges. In 1104 it was taken by the Cru¬ 
saders (see Crusades). In 1187 the Saracens 
recaptured it, but it was recovered by Richard 
Coeur de Leon, who gave it to the Knights of 
Saint John of Jerusalem. In 1291 it was again 
taken by the Saracens. Napoleon attempted 
unsuccessfully to take Acre in 1799, when he 
was approaching the years of his wonderful 
career. 

ACRE, a' ker, a measure of land consisting of 
160 square rods, or 4,840 square yards. In the 
English system a square of land 208.7 feet in 
each direction is equivalent to an acre; in 
the metric system (which see) one hectare is 
equal to 2.471 acres. The acre is used as a 








ACTIUM 


ACROPOLIS 26 


measure in the United States, Canada and 
England. 



In terms that a city child will grasp quickly, 
an acre of land is contained in nearly fourteen 
city lots each 25x125 feet. 


ACROP' OLIS, in ancient Greece, the fortified 
or religious center of a city. The word is a 
compound of akros, meaning highest, and polls, 
meaning city. Originally the acropolis was the 
highest point in a district. Some hill or other 
easily fortified height was selected as a place of 
refuge and fortifications were usually added; 
here the chief of a tribe lived. In time it 
reached the importance of small settlements, 
and finally cities appeared at the foot of the 
acropolis. When people began to fortify the 
city, it was no longer necessary to preserve the 
acropolis as a fortress, and it became cus¬ 
tomary to erect there the temples of the most 
sacred cults. The acropolis at Athens, which 
is the best example of this change, contained 
some of the most beautiful buildings in the 
world. Among them were the Parthenon, 
Erechtheum, Temple of Nike Apteros, Prop- 
ylaea and Theseum, all described in these vol¬ 
umes. For further details, see Athens. 

ACROS'TIC, as generally used, means a 
poem of which the first letters of the lines, 
taken in order, spell some name or other com¬ 
mon word, or even a motto or a sentence. 
Strictly speaking, the content of the verse 
should deal with the subject given in these 
initial letters; if it does not the acrostic is 
faulty and loses its chief charm. The follow¬ 
ing is a simple example: 

Vying with the arbutus for modesty and grace, 
Innocent as gleeful smiles on happy childhood’s 
face— 

Other flowers demand our love and entrance to 
our thought— 

IiOve seeks her in her hiding place and spends it¬ 
self unsought. 

Early springtime blossom in your modest garb of 
blue, 

Think not that summer’s gorgeous bloom can 
steal our love from you. 


U 


Many acrostics are far more elaborate than 
this, for some form words with their last as 
well as their first letters, or have some name 
running down like a seam through the mid¬ 
dle.” Formerly the making of these was a 
popular pastime, and poets of note did not 
hesitate to try their hand at it, but acrostics^ 
have never stood high in the poetic scale and 
to-day no real poet wastes his time upon them. 
For the most part they have been banished 
to the puzzle department of magazines. In 
Hebrew poetry the name acrostic was given to 
a poem of which the initial letters of the lines 
or stanza gave the names of letters of the 
alphabet in their order. The most noted of 
such poems is Psalm CXIX, of which the 
verses of the first division all begin with the 
first letter of the alphabet, those of the second 
with the second letter, and so on until all the 
letters have been used. 

ACTAEON, ah'tee on, according to Greek 
mythology a great hunter and a worshiper of 
the goddess Di¬ 
ana. Having by 
chance come 
upon the virgin 
goddess while 
she was bathing, 
for his boldness 
he was changed 
by her into a 
stag, despite his 
protests of in¬ 
nocence. His 
dogs, not recog¬ 
nizing him, set 
upon him and 
tore him to 
pieces. 

ACTIUM, 

ak' shium, (now 
AKRI), a prom¬ 
ontory on the 
coast of Greece, 



ACTAEON AND HIS DOGS 

From a statue standing in 
the British Museum, London. 


dividing the Gulf of Arta from the Ionian Sea. 
It is famed in history as the scene of a great 
naval battle, in 31 b.c., in which Octavian, later 
known as Augustus Caesar, gained a vic¬ 
tory over Antony and Cleopatra. Cleo¬ 
patra’s fleet was being held in reserve and 
had not been engaged in battle, when an unex¬ 
pected manceuver of Octavian made his vic¬ 
tory probable. The queen, instead of coming 
to Antony’s aid, ordered her ships to flee. 
Thereupon Antony himself deserted his fleet 
and followed her. The leaderless fleet fought 




















































ACTON 


27 


ADAMS 


bravely, but was finally overcome. See An¬ 
tony; Cleopatra. 

ACTON, John Emerich Edward Dalberg, 
first Baron Acton (1834-1902), the most prom¬ 
inent Roman Catholic layman in England dur¬ 
ing the nineteenth century, and a distinguished 
historian. He was born in Naples, was educated 
under Cardinal Newman and at the University 
of Munich, for, being a Roman Catholic, he 
could not then obtain a degree at Cambridge. 
He traveled extensively, but at the age of 
twenty-five settled in England and became a 
follower of Gladstone. As a liberal Roman 
Catholic and as editor of The Rambler, one 
of the most brilliant publications of the time, 
he offended many of the more conservative 
among the Catholic party. Entering Parlia¬ 
ment, he served until 1865 and was raised to 
the peerage in 1869. In 1892 he was appointed 
Regius Professor of Modern History at Cam¬ 
bridge University, where he planned, and partly 
edited, the Cambridge Modern History, in ten 
large volumes. His library of 80,000 volumes 
was purchased by Andrew Carnegie and after¬ 
wards was given to Viscount Morley, who pre¬ 
sented it to Cambridge University. 

ACTS OF THE APOSTLES, the fifth book 
of the New Testament, written by Luke to 
form a sequel to his Gospel. In it he gives a 
history of the foundation and growth of the 
Christian Church from its small beginning in 
Judea on the Day of Pentecost up to the time 
when Paul introduced it into Asia Minor, 
Greece and Rome. He describes the persecu¬ 
tion of the Jews as the Church grew in size, 
until they fled from Judea into Samaria and 
Syria, taking their new religion with them and 
spreading it. Later the church at Antioch grew 
to be the headquarters from which Paul worked 
into the wider field. 

ADAM AND EVE. In the Biblical story of 
the Creation, recounted in the book of Genesis, 
it is told that God created as the first parents 
of the human race two beings who were called 
Adam and Eve. In this narrative Eve was 
created as a helpmate for Adam, out of one 
of his ribs, and the two lived in the beautiful 
Garden of Eden to keep guard over it. 
Tempted by the Evil One, in the form of a 
serpent, to eat of the forbidden ‘‘tree of 
knowledge of good and evil,” they fell from 
grace and were driven by the Lord from the 
Garden. Adam is recorded as dying at the 
age of 930, leaving numerous descendants; 
there is not the slightest evidence as to the 
age of Eve at her death. Among the sons of 


Adam and Eve, Cain, Abel and Seth are specifi¬ 
cally mentioned. See Cain; Abel. 

ADAMS, Charles Francis (1807-1886), an 
American diplomat and political leader, who, 
as minister to Great Britain from 1861 to 1868, 
earned for himself a place in American diplo¬ 
macy second only to that of Benjamin Frank¬ 
lin. Largely through his efforts Great Britain 
and France refrained from giving active recog¬ 
nition and aid to the Confederate states. He 
was born in Boston, but his boyhood was spent 
in Russia and England, where his father, John 
Quincy Adams, was United States minister. 
Only a few years after his graduation from 
Harvard College in 1825, he was the recognized 
leader of the New England Whigs and in 1848 
was nominated by the Free Silver party for 
Vice-President on the ticket with Martin Van 
Buren, but defeated for election. In 1871 he 
represented the United States in the settle¬ 
ment of the Alabama Claims (see Alabama, 
The), and in the next year he took a leading 
part in organizing the Liberal Republicans. 

ADAMS, Charles Kendall (1835-1902), an 
American educator and historian, who intro¬ 
duced into the United States from Germany a 
new method of studying history, known as the 
seminar, or seminary, by which the students do 
original research work along special lines. He 
was born at Derby, Vt., and was educated at 
the University of Michigan and in Germany, 
France and Italy. In 1869-1870 he established 
at the University of Michigan the first Amer¬ 
ican historical seminar. Between 1885 and 
1902 he was at the head of two great universi¬ 
ties, serving as president of Cornell from 1885 
to 1892, and as president of the University of 
Wisconsin from 1893 until shortly before his 
death. He was the chief editor of Johnsons 
Universal Cyclopedia, and the author of sev¬ 
eral books, most important of which is A 
Manual of Historical Literature. 

ADAMS, Frank Dawson (1859- ), a 

Canadian geologist and educator, known espe¬ 
cially for his researches on metamorphism and 
the older crystalline rocks of the earth. He 
was born at Montreal, where he attended the 
high school and McGill University; later he 
studied at Yale University and at Heidelberg, 
Germany, where in 1892 he received the degree 
of Doctor of Philosophy. He was appointed 
professor of geology at McGill University in 
1893, and became dean of the faculty of applied 
science in 1908. Dean Adams has published 
numerous special reports on the geology of 
Canada. 





ADAMS 


28 


ADAMS 



DAMS, John (1735-1826), second 
President of the United States and one of the 
foremost of that group of American statesmen 
who gave themselves in full devotion to the 
cause of independence and the upbuilding of 
the new nation. The impress which he left 
on his country is the more remarkable because 
he was personally not popular. He was notice¬ 
ably lacking in the magnetic qualities which 
made his second cousin, Samuel Adams, an 
admired leader. John Adams was a brilliant 
constitutional lawyer, he possessed great moral 
courage, he was devoted with all his soul to 
the cause of the colonies. On the other hand, 
he was nervous, impetuous, generally tactless, 
vain of his ability, and he was inclined to think 
overwell of his own opinions. 

His friends, his enemies and the people at 
large did not allow these faults to outweigh 
his real merits. A weaker man than he would 
have been ruined by his stand in 1770, when 
he felt it his duty to defend the British soldiers 
who were being tried for murder (see Boston 
Massacre), but in the very same year he was 
elected to the colonial legislature. Many years 
later, as President, he gave another example 
of courage when he determined, at all costs, 
to preserve peace with France. His policy 
made him probably the most disliked man in 
the United States; yet he himself felt that 
this was the greatest service he had ever ren¬ 
dered to his country and he desired “no other 
inscription over my grave than this: ‘Here lies 
John Adams, who took upon himself the re¬ 
sponsibility of the peace with France in 1800.’ ” 

His Public Career. John Adams was born at 
Quincy, Mass., on October 31, 1735. His Puri¬ 
tan great-grandfather had left Devonshire, 
England, in 1636 and had settled on a forty- 
acre tract on the site of the town of Quincy. 
The Adams family prospered, although its 
members never pretended to be anything but 
hard-working farmers. It was the family cus¬ 
tom to send the sons to Harvard College, from 
which the future President was graduated in 
1755. He stood fourteenth in a class of twenty- 
four; in those days the ranking indicated not 


scholarship but social position. The Adams 
family seemed to think that he should study 
for the ministry, but John was too liberal for 
the pulpit of his day and preferred the law. 
In 1758, being then twenty-three years old, he 
began to practice in Braintree, but ten years 
later moved to Boston. In the meantime he 
had married Abigail Smith, a woman of great 
charm and ability, who gave him courage and 
advice at every critical point in his life (see 
subhead below, Abigail Smith Adams). 

Shortly after his marriage he began to appear 
in public affairs. When the Stamp Act of 1765 
was passed he presented resolutions against it 
at the Braintree town meeting. These resolu¬ 
tions, without the change of a word, were later 
adopted by more than forty Massachusetts 
towns; moreover, a little later they led to his 
selection as one of the lawyers to present a 
memorial against the act to Governor Bernard. 
Adams made the bold argument that the 
Stamp Act was necessarily null and void, 
because the colonists had taken no part in 
passing it. The repeal of the act ended 
Adams’ public activity for a brief time, but 
his reputation was established. He was soon 
offered the position of advocate-general in the 
Massachusetts admiralty court, but he inter¬ 
preted the offer as an attempt to put him in 
such a position that he could not freely oppose 
the policy of the British government, and he 
refused the position. 

In spite of his defense of the British soldiers 
who took part in the Boston Massacre he was 
trusted by the patriot leaders and on all legal 
matters he was constantly consulted by John 
Hancock, Joseph Warren and Samuel Adams. 
For a year or two there was quiet in Boston 
and the vicinity, but in 1774 the passage of 
the five Intolerable Acts (which see) rekindled 
the flames of opposition to Britain. John 
Adams, with four others from Massachusetts, 
was chosen as a delegate to the First Conti¬ 
nental Congress. Here his influence was great, 
and its resolutions concerning the rights of the 
colonies were the work of his pen. In the 
Second Congress he was one of the most 


























ADAMS 


29 


ADAMS 


ardent advocates of independence. John Fiske, 
one of the great authorities on this period, 
said that of all the delegates, John Adams, 
with the exception of his cousin Samuel, was 
probably the only one who was convinced 
that matters had gone too far for any reconcili¬ 
ation with the mother country.” Almost en¬ 
tirely through his efforts, Congress adopted the 
16,000 minutemen of New England as the 
“continental army,” and chose George Wash¬ 
ington of Virginia as commander-in-chief. 
Congress and Virginia were thus committed to 
a plan which must end in independence or in 
tremendous disaster. 

On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee pre¬ 
sented to Congress the resolution that “these 
colonies are, and of a right ought to be, free 
and independent states.” Adams seconded the 
motion, and on July 1, when it was discussed 
by Congress, defended it in what was prob¬ 
ably the greatest speech of his life. Jefferson 
called him “the colossus of that debate.” 
Adams was one of the committee appointed to 
draft a declaration of independence; the docu¬ 
ment was written by Jefferson, but no man 
did more to secure its adoption than Adams. 
For two years more Adams sat in Congress. 
He was a member of several important com¬ 
mittees, and until after the surrender of Bur- 
goyne in 1777 he was chairman of the Board 
of War and Ordnance, a position corresponding 
to that of the present Secretary of War. 

Adams as Diplomat. Previously Adams had 
served his country at home, but for the ten 
years after 1778 his work was in Europe. He 
was sent to France early in that year to take 
the place of one of the three commissioners 
who were negotiating for an alliance, but the 
treaty was already signed before he arrived 
in Paris. On arriving there he found endless 
confusion in the commission’s affairs which 
shocked his methodical soul. As the result of 
his recommendations to Congress the commis¬ 
sion was abolished. Franklin, however, was 
left in Paris as minister, and Arthur Lee, the 
third commissioner, was ordered to Madrid. 

Adams, left without instructions, sailed for 
home, where he was immediately elected to 
the convention which framed the Massachu¬ 
setts constitution of 1780. This constitution, 
which is still the fundamental law of that state, 
was almost wholly the work of James Bowdoin 
and Samuel and John Adams. Before the con¬ 
stitution was adopted Adams was ordered back 
to France to treat for peace, but Great Britain 
was as yet unwilling to end the struggle, 


Adams was then asked by Congress to secure 
a loan from Holland. He was successful not 
merely in this respect, but also in obtaining 
from the Dutch government recognition of 
American independence and a “treaty of amity 
and commerce.” 

Adams’ presence was next demanded in 
Paris, where negotiations for peace were under 
way. Adams and Jay, two of the commis¬ 
sioners, believed that the French government 
was prepared to sacrifice the United States to 
Spain’s interests in the Mississippi Valley, and 



Diplomat, first Vice-President and second 
President of the United States; father of the 
sixth President. 


they secretly carried on private negotiations 
with Great Britain, although they hereby vio¬ 
lated their instructions. Thanks to their efforts, 
the treaty as finally signed was particularly 
favorable to the new nation. Adams was next 
appointed one of the commissioners for the 
purpose of negotiating commercial treaties with 
foreign powers, and in 1785 became the first 
United States minister to Great Britain. Here 
his independent manner, added to the fact 
that relations between the former colonies and 
the mother country were none too cordial, 
made his position burdensome, and finally, in 
1788, he asked to be recalled. 

As Vice-President. Adams had been at 
home only a few months when he was elected 
the first Vice-President of the United States. 


















ADAMS 


30 


ADAMS 


Washington received sixty-nine electoral votes 
and Adams thirty-four. The latter was notice¬ 
ably chagrined at the decided preference shown 
for Washington, and to the end of his days 
he could never understand why Washington’s 
services to his country were counted greater 
than his own. Throughout the eight years of 
his Vice-Presidency, however, he put aside per¬ 
sonal jealousies whenever questions of prin¬ 
ciple arose, and on more than one occasion 



BRONZE TABLET IN WORCESTER, MASS. 

The inscription bears these words : “In front 
of this tablet stood the first schoolhouse in 
Worcester, where John Adams, second President 
of the United States, taught 1755-1758.” 


his casting vote in the Senate saved the plans 
of Washington and his Cabinet from defeat. 
When Washington refused to serve a third 
term, Adams was his logical successor and was 
elected. Jefferson, his political opponent, re¬ 
ceived sixty-eight votes, only three fewer than 
Adams, and, under the Constitution as it then 
existed, became Vice-President. 

The Administration of John Adams (1797- 
1801). The four years during which Adams 
was President were among the stormiest in the 
history of the United States. During the en¬ 
tire period the Federalist party was split into 
two sections, one owing allegiance to Adams, 
one to Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, though 
probably the ablest member of the party, was 
not so generally and favorably known as 


Adams. The latter therefore was given the 
Presidency, but Hamilton tried by various 
schemes to prevent his election and reelection. 
The feud between the two men became increas¬ 
ingly bitter as time went on. The members of 
Adams’ Cabinet, it is said, even made reports 
to Hamilton and took orders from him rather 
than from Adams. 

Besides the quarrels in his own party, Adams 
faced the violent opposition of Jefferson and 
the Republicans, who were French sympathiz¬ 
ers. Adams saw no good in the French Revo¬ 
lution; his aristocratic temperament placed 
no trust in the mass of the people, and he saw 
only anarchy in the thrilling events in France. 
The Jeffersonians not only sympathized with 
the Revolutionary movement, but they were 
willing to fight for France against England. 
The Federalists, on the other hand, regarded 
every insult from France as a just reason for 
helping England. 

Adams determined to keep the United States 
strictly neutral, and one of his first acts was 
to call Congress in special session to consider 
means of keeping peace. Congress sent three 
commissioners, C. C. Pinckney, John Marshall 
and Elbridge Gerry, to Paris to negotiate with 
the Directory, which was then the government 
of France. Talleyrand refused to receive them 
openly, but secretly sent three envoys, called 
in the despatches X. Y. and Z., to treat with 
them. The envoys proposed that the United 
States should pay Talleyrand and two or three 
others large sums for the privilege of revising 
the treaties with France. The commissioners, 
in • utter disgust, broke off the negotiations. 
When the reasons for their failure became 
known, the United States was ablaze with 
wrath, and the cry, “Millions for defense, but 
not one cent for tribute,” rang through the 
land (see X Y Z Correspondence). Prepara¬ 
tions for war were made, an army was quickly 
raised, Washington was recalled from Mount 
Vernon to take command, and a few naval 
battles were actually fought, the most notable 
being the sinking of the French frigate La 
Vengeance by the Constellation. See Talley- 
rand-Perigord, Charles Maurice. 

Though Adams hated the French Revolution 
and all its works, he was equally opposed to 
war with France. The popular clamor only 
strengthened his resolve to keep peace and to 
meet France at least half-way. When Talley¬ 
rand found that his policy was threatening to 
drive the United States into alliance with 
Great Britain, he intimated his willingness to 










































































































































































































































ADAMS 


31 


ADAMS 


come to terms and to deal with three new 
commissioners appointed by Adams. Before 
these three reached Paris the Directory had 
been overthrown, but they adjusted all diffi¬ 
culties with Napoleon, who had become First 
Consul. The appointment of this commission, 
which Adams had chosen without informing 
his Cabinet, completed the breach in the Fed¬ 
eralist party and endangered the reelection of 
Adams. 

Now that war had been averted, another 
affair contributed to the end of the Federalist 
party. In 1798, while the war excitement was 
at its height, Congress had passed the Alien 
and Sedition Laws (which see). These acts, 
promoted by the Federalists, were really in 
violation of the constitutional rights of free¬ 
dom of speech and freedom of the press. They 
called forth the famous Kentucky and Virginia 
Resolutions (which see), in which the doctrine 
of nullification was first stated. Here was the 
first sign of the struggle over states’ rights which 
later nearly split the Union into two sections. 

In the election of 1800 the Federalists voted 
for Adams and C. C. Pinckney; the former 
received sixty-five votes, the latter sixty-four. 
Burr and Jefferson, the Republican candidates, 
each received seventy-three votes. Since there 
was a tie between these two in accordance with 
the Constitution the election fell into the 
House of Representatives, which chose Jeffer¬ 
son as President and Burr as Vice-President. 
Adams refrained from any participation in the 
bargaining which led to this result. One of 
his last official acts as President was the 
appointment of John Marshall as Chief Jus¬ 
tice of the Supreme Court. 

Old Age. Adams was nearly sixty-six at the 
end of his term. He retired to private life 
feeling that his failure to secure reelection was 
a disgrace. He was so bitter and enraged 
that he refused to remain in Washington for 
the inauguration of his successor, but hurried 
off in his coach on the morning of March 4, 
1801. For twenty-five years he lived quietl}' 
at his old home in Quincy, emerging from his 
retirement in 1820, when he was chosen a dele¬ 
gate to the convention for revising the Massa¬ 
chusetts constitution. For many years the bit¬ 
terness of his defeat in 1800 remained, but its 
sting was partly removed when he saw his son 
John Quincy Adams elected as the sixth Presi¬ 
dent. John Adams died on July 4, 1826, the 
fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Decla¬ 
ration of Independence. On the same day, 
and only a few hours earlier; Thomas Jefferson 



ADMINISTRATION OF 
1797-JOHN ADAMS-1801 


Congress Hall, Philadelphia 
Capitol, 1790-1800 




ALIEN L.AW 

The president 
could expel from 

1 the country any <( _ 

foreigner whom \ ‘‘Millions for defense 
he deemed in- \ but not one cent 
jurious to the \ for tribute.” 
United States. 

SEDITION LA\N 

Anyone libeling 
Congress, the 
President or the 
Government could 
be fined or im¬ 
prisoned. 

KENTUCKY 
AND VIRGINIA 
RESOLUTIONS 

Declared the Alien' 
and Sedition Laws 
unconstitutional. 
Asserted the 
doctrine of 
States Rights. 


John Marshall 
Appointed Chief Justice 



Washington Died in 1799 






















































ADAMS 


32 


ADAMS 



Outline 


I. Preparatory Years 

(1) Birth and family 

(2) Education 

(3) Marriage 

II. Early Public Life 

(1) In fight against Stamp Act 

(2) Defends British soldiers 

(3) Delegate to First Continental Con¬ 

gress. 

(a) Suggests choice of Washington as 

commander-in-chief 

(b) Seconds resolutions declaring col¬ 

onies free and independent 

(4) As diplomat 

(a) In Finance 

(b) In Holland 

(c) In Great Britain 

(5) As Vice-President 

(a) Frequently saved Washington’s 
plans by casting vote 

III. His Administration 

(1) Troubled conditions 

(a) Split in Federalist party 

(b) Opposition of Republicans 

(2) Difficulties with France 

(a) X. Y. Z. Correspondence 

(b) State of war 

(c) Second mission 

(d) Peace 


(3) 


(4) 


(b) 


(c) 


(5) 

( 6 ) 


( 7 ) 


Alien and Sedition Laws 

(a) Naturalization 

(b) Alien acts 

(c) Sedition act 

Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions 
(a) Alien and Sedition acts violate 
Constitution 

Constitution merely an agreement 
between states as partners 
Decision as to whether a law is 
in accord with Constitution 
rests with each state 
Midnight Judiciary 
Election of 1800 
(a) Formation of parties 
Candidates 

Election by House of Representa¬ 
tives 

Downfall of Federalists 
Other events 

(a) Eleventh amendment to the Con¬ 
stitution 

Death of Washington 
John Marshall appointed Chief 
Justice 

Capital removed to Washington 
Department of the Navy created 
Hail Columbia written 


(b) 

(c) 

(d) 


(b) 

(c) 

(d) 

(e) 

(f) 


IV. Character 

(1) As a man 

(2) As political leader 


Questions 

What epitaph did Adams say would please him? 

What was the X. Y. Z. Correspondence? 

What was the cause of the “Quasi-War” with France? 

Did any actual hostilities occur as a result of this tension? 

Why were the Alien and Sedition Laws passed? 

What was their most conspicuous effect? 

What great jurist was appointed to the Supreme Court by Adams? 

Why did Adams fail of reelection? 

How did he show his sense of shame at this failure? 

What patriotic song was published in the time of the difficulties with France? 

What was Adams’ opinion of his own services to the country as compared with those 
of Washington? 

How do critics regard the work which Adams did in securing the treaty with Eng¬ 
land in 1783? 

How did Adams prove during his term as Vice-President that he was superior to 
petty jealousies? 


















ADAMS 


33 


ADAMS 


breathed his last. Once bitter enemies, in old 
age the two men had become good friends, and 
Adams’ last words were, “Thomas Jefferson 
still survives.” Adams died in his ninety-first 
year, the highest age attained by any President. 

Abigail Smith Adams (1744-1818), was the 
wife of John Adams and one of the most 
famous women of Revolutionary times and the 
early days of the American republic. Dur¬ 
ing her childhood she was always delicate, and 
her education, so far as book-learning went, 
was slight. But she read extensively and in 
later life was known for her knowledge of the 
best in literature. From childhood she always 
associated with people of learning and intelli¬ 
gence. She was keen, sunny and witty, and 
during many trying years she was a comfort 
and support to her husband. She was no less 
zealous than he in trying to secure American 
independence. During the war she was fre¬ 
quently separated from him, even for several 
years at a time, while he was first in Congress 
and later in Europe. She joined him in Paris 
in 1784 and was also with him in England, 
where she seems to have been rudely treated. 
Mrs. Adams was the first mistress of the 
White House, into which the Adams family 
moved in 1800. Her description of the barn¬ 
like structure, as it seemed to her, with its 
great East Room, in which she used to hang 
the family wash to dry, is one of the gems 
from her pen. Her letters are extremely 
valuable for their vivid pictures of social life 
and for their clever comments on public men 
of that day. a.b.h. 

Other Items of Interest. Adams was the only 
President whose son attained the same high 
honor. 

The popular nickname of Adams is “The 
Firm Federalist.” 

The treaty of 1783, with the negotiation of 
which Adams had much to do, is called by 


a competent authority “one of the most bril¬ 
liant triumphs of modern diplomacy.” 

During his term as President, his portrait 
was painted by the famous Gilbert Stuart, who 
painted so many of the great men of the Revo¬ 
lutionary period. 

It was during his administration that the 
seat of government was moved from New 
York to Washington. 

The death of Washington occurred while 
Adams was in the Presidential chair. 

The Department of the Navy was created 
during his term of office. 

The French called him the “Washington of 
negotiations.” 

Adams continued his judiciary appointments 
up to midnight of the last day of his term of 
office and even left some commissions unde¬ 
livered on the executive table. These Jeffer¬ 
son, his successor, set aside. 

It was during the period of tension with 
France—the “Quasi-War” as it was called— 
that Hail Columbia was written. 

Hearing the bells and cannon on the day 
of his death, Adams asked the cause of the 
celebration, and when told that it was Inde¬ 
pendence Day he exclaimed, “Independence 
forever!” 

The famous words “Sink or swim, live or 
die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my 
heart to this vote” are usually quoted as a part 
of a speech of Adams. In reality they repre¬ 
sent merely what Adams might have said in 
the Declaration of Independence debate, and 
are taken from Webster’s eulogy on Adams and 
Jefferson. 

In appearance he was much like the pictures 
of “John Bull”—short, stout, florid and dog¬ 
matic. 

Consult Chamberlin’s John Adams; Morse’s 
Letters of Abigail and John Adams; Parker’s 
Historic Americans, also the article United 
States, subtitle History, in these volumes. 



DAMS, John Quincy (1767-1848), 
sixth President of the United States and eldest 
son of John Adams, the second President. 
Both father and son were distinguished diplo¬ 


mats, and both represented their country in 
Holland, in Russia and in Great Britain. John 
Adams was minister to Great Britain in the 
trying days at the close of the Revolutionary 






























ADAMS 


34 


ADAMS 


War; John Quincy Adams had the same posi¬ 
tion after the War of 1812. It is remarkable 
that Charles Francis Adams, the latter’s son, 
served his country in London during and after 
the War of Secession. Both John Adams and 
his son returned from years of diplomacy to 
high positions at home, the one to become 
Vice-President, the other to become Secretary 
of State. Both then served a single term as 
President; but here the parallel ends, for the 
father retired to private life, whereas the son 
entered a new field of political activity. 

Nothing in his life is more characteristic of 
John Quincy Adams than his services for the 
last seventeen years of his life in the House 
of Representatives. He had held the Presi¬ 
dency, the highest office in the gift of the 
people, but instead of retiring to a premature 
old age—he was only fifty-two at the end of 
his term—he sought election to Congress. In 
the House of Representatives he never allowed 
any consideration of personal or party welfare 
to swerve him from the course he thought 
right. He opposed Jackson’s high-handed pol¬ 
icy toward the Bank of the United States, but 
supported his stand against nullification (which 
see). For several years his chief work w r as the 
presentation to Congress of petitions for the 
abolition of slavery, and after the House 
adopted the “Gag Rules” in 1836 to keep such 
petitions out, he fought for ten years until the 
restricting measures were repealed. 

These years from 1836 to his death were per¬ 
haps the most interesting period of his life. 
As a parliamentarian and as a debater he was 
more than a match for any member of the 
House, and he earned the title of “Old Man 
Eloquent.” Nothing pleased him more than a 
word-fight with every slaveholder in the House. 
On the other hand, the English language 
seemed powerless to express the hatred of his 
opponents for him. He was even threatened 
with assassination, yet his ability and his 
courage won the respct of his enemies. 

His Youth. John Quincy Adams was born 
on July 11, 1767, in Quincy, Mass. Until his 
eleventh year he lived here, but in 1778 accom¬ 
panied his father to France. He attended 
school in Paris, Amsterdam and Leyden, and 
at the age of sixteen went to Petrograd as 
secretary of the American legation. After a 
year in Russia, where the American representa¬ 
tives tried in vain to secure official recognition, 
young Adams traveled alone for several months 
through Sweden, Denmark and Northern Ger¬ 
many before rejoining his father in Paris. 


There he was at once set to work as secretary, 
and helped to draft the treaty of peace between 
the United States and Great Britain. 

In 1785, when John Adams was appointed 
minister to Great Britain, his son returned to 
the United States, because he felt that an 
American education was the best equipment 
for an American career. He entered Harvard 
College, was graduated in 1788, then studied 
law, and in 1791 was admitted to the bar. The 
law, however, bored him so that he took his 
relaxation in writing a series of articles on 
questions of the day. He criticized some of 
the doctrines of Thomas Paine, defended Wash¬ 
ington’s policy of neutrality, and discussed the 
Citizen Genet incident (see Genet, Edmon). 
So able were these papers that they were at 
first attributed to his father. 

Diplomat and Legislator. Though the young 
man was only twenty-seven years old, Presi¬ 
dent Washington, in 1794, sent him to Holland 
as United States minister, and two years later 
transferred him to Portugal. He was about to 
start for Lisbon when he received word that 
his father, who had meanwhile become Presi¬ 
dent, had promoted him to be United States 
minister at Berlin. George Washington ad¬ 
vised the appointment in the strongest terms, 
and predicted that “the young man would 
prove to be the ablest diplomat in the American 
service.” He took up his new duties in the 
autumn of 1797, and remained in Berlin until 
1801, when his father recalled him. Soon after 
his return he was elected to the Massachusetts 
Senate, but in 1803 he exchanged this place for 
a seat in the United States Senate. 

In the Senate he was a free lance. He was 
nominally a Federalist, but he frequently 
voted with the Republicans. The Hamiltonian 
Federalists, who were strong in the Senate, 
first hated him because he was the son of his 
father, and later they insulted him on his own 
account. Threats and insults were never of 
much avail against Adams; he went his own 
way. He defended the Louisiana Purchase, and 
was an ardent supporter of the Embargo and 
Non-Importation Acts of 1807, although New 
England stood strongly against them. The 
abuse heaped on him by his own constituents 
has scarcely been equalled in the history of 
the United States. To add insult to injury, the 
legislature elected his successor several months 
before the usual time. Adams accepted the 
insult as it was intended, and immediately 
resigned. From 1806 to 1809 he was a profes¬ 
sor of rhetoric at Harvard College, and in the 


ADAMS 35 ADAMS 

intervals of his public duties found time to 
deliver lectures. 

For the moment Adams was in private life, 
but he was too great a figure to be brushed 
aside by petty politics. One of Madison’s first 
acts as President was to nominate him minister 
to Russia, where he remained until 1814. 

Adams next acted as one of the commissioners 
to make peace between Great Britain and the 
United States, at the close of the war of 1812. 

After the Treaty of Ghent was signed, Adams, 
with Henry Clay and Albert Gallatin, went 
to London to negotiate a new commercial 
treaty, but before the treaty w T as prepared he 
received the news of his appointment as min¬ 
ister to Great Britain. After two years, 1815- 
1817, in London, he was recalled by President 
Monroe to become Secretary of State. 

Secretary of State. In his new post Adams 
conducted the negotiations which resulted in 
the fisheries’ convention of 1818 with Great 
Britain. By this convention the United States 
renounced the right to fish in British waters 
in North America, a right established by John 
Adams in 1783. Adams earnestly supported 
Jackson in his vigorous methods in Florida, 
and also conducted the negotiations which led 
to the cession of Florida to the United States 
in 1819. By far his most important work, 
however, was in opposing the plans of the Holy 
Alliance (which see), and most of the credit 
for formulating and announcing the Monroe 
Doctrine belongs to him. 

As Secretary of State, Adams was regarded 
by many as Monroe’s logical successor to the 
Presidency. Adams, however, made no efforts 
to secure his own election. He was not indif¬ 
ferent to the honor, but it was not in his 
nature to make any attempts to secure it. The 
other candidates for the Presidency were An¬ 
drew Jackson, Henry Clay, William H. Craw¬ 
ford and John C. Calhoun. Calhoun withdrew 
before the election, and with almost no oppo¬ 
sition was elected Vice-President. The elec¬ 
toral vote for President stood 99 for Jackson, 

84 for Adams, 41 for Crawford and 37 for 
Clay. As no candidate had a majority, the 
House of Representatives, under the Consti¬ 
tution, was required to choose between the 
three who had received the highest number. 

This left out Clay, whose great influence in the 
House was thrown to Adams. Adams was 
elected. 

The Administration of John Quincy Adams, 

(1825-1829). Adams chose Clay as his Secretary 
of State. This action was not unnatural, for 


ADMINISTRATION OF 
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 


1825 


1829 


JEFFERSON 
July 4,1826 


ADAMS 
July 4,1826 



Bunker hill Monument 


Corner Stone Laid, 1825 


Webster^ 

Unabridged 

Dictiona/^/ 


A 

Library 

in 

Itself 

1828 


Erie Canal,’ 1825 



\-/j> /. 



First Railroad Chartered, 1829 


□( 










































































ADAMS 


36 


ADAMS 


Clay had always taken an active part in every 
discussion of foreign affairs. Clay and Jack- 



JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 


Sixth President of the United States and son of 
the second President. 

son, however, were not on good terms, and the 
friends of Jackson preferred to see a corrupt 
bargain, by which Adams gave Clay this office 
in return for his influence in the election. 
Though this charge has long since been dis¬ 
proved, it pursued Clay to the end of his days. 
The resulting quarrel between Adams and 
Jackson had far-reaching results. At first the 
followers of the two rivals called themselves 
“Adams men” or “Jackson men,” but as time 
went on, the division into new political parties 
became clear. The Jackson men became 
Democrats, the Adams men were first Na¬ 
tional Republicans, then Whigs (see Demo¬ 
cratic Party; Whig; Political Parties in the 
United States). 

In many respects the four years during which 
Adams was President are the least interesting 
of his life. Practically the entire term was 
taken up with partisan quarrels, and the plans 
of the administration were always bitterly op¬ 
posed, regardless of their merit. The Jackson 
men were strong enough to kill most of the 
important legislation proposed. One law, how¬ 
ever, must be noticed, the Tariff of Abomina¬ 
tions (see Tariff). This was passed in response 
to the demand from the North, especially 
New England, for protection for the manufac¬ 
turing industries which had arisen during the 
War of 1812. The South, predominatingly an 
agricultural region, wanted free trade, and at¬ 
tacked the law as intended to benefit New 
England and the Middle States at the expense 


of the South. The doctrine of nullification, 
as stated in the Kentucky and Virginia Reso¬ 
lutions of 1798, was again asserted, and a few 
years later nearly caused bloodshed. 

During the administration of Adams the 
United States was involved in negotiations 
with Mexico and Great Britain over boun¬ 
daries. Neither of these questions was defi¬ 
nitely settled, but the Oregon dispute was 
temporarily laid aside by “joint occupation” 
(see Oregon). The United States also had a 
dispute in 1826 with the state of Georgia, which 
successfully defied the national authority (see 
Georgia, subhead History). 

Panama Congress. An important interna¬ 
tional conference was the Panama Congress, 
held at Panama in 1826 for the purpose of dis¬ 
cussing the slave trade and other questions of 
interest to the countries of North and South 
America. Adams, probably prompted by Clay, 
accepted an invitation to send delegates, but 
his announcement that “ministers will be com¬ 
missioned to attend” caused one of the most 
violent debates ever held in Congress. The 
opposition was specially aroused by fear of 
entangling alliances, and by the proposals to 
end the slave trade and to recognize Haiti, a 
negro republic. Congress finally agreed to send 
two ministers, but one died on the way and 
the other reached Panama too late. 

Other Events. In his inaugural address and 
his first message to Congress, Adams recom¬ 
mended many “internal improvements,” includ¬ 
ing public roads and canals, a national uni¬ 
versity and national observatories. Congress 
did appropriate about $14,000,000 for such 
work, but this was much less than Adams 
wanted. One of the most notable improve¬ 
ments built by state aid was the Erie Canal, 
completed in 1825. The first railway in the 
United States was opened in 1826, to haul 
stone from Quincy, Mass., Adams’ old home, to 
Charlestown, for the construction of the 
Bunker Hill Monument. The corner stone of 
the monument was laid on June 17, 1825, 
exactly fifty years after the battle. Another 
striking coincidence occurring on July 4, 1826, 
exactly fifty years after the signing of the 
Declaration of Independence, was the death 
of John Adams, his father, and Thomas Jef¬ 
ferson. The two men died within a few hours 
of each other. 

Election of 1828. Adams had never been 
popular with the people at large, and he had, 
moreover, made no attempt to build up a po¬ 
litical machine. There was also a feeling that 





























ADAMS 


37 


ADAMS 



Outline 



I. Early Years 


(1) 

Ancestry and birth 


(2) 

Travels 

(2) 

(3) 

Education 


II. Early Political Career 

(3) 

(1) 

As diplomat 


(a) In Holland 

(b) In Portugal 

(c) In Berlin 

(d) In Russia 

(2) In the Senate 

(3) As Secretary of State under Monroe 

(a) Fisheries’ convention 

(b) Florida purchase 

(c) Monroe Doctrine 

(d) Elected to Presidency by House 

of Representatives 

III. His Administration 

(1) Governmental affairs 

(a) Clay and the “corrupt bargain” 

(b) Tariff of Abominations 

(c) Oregon dispute 


(4) 


(d) Defiance of national authority by 

Georgia . 

(e) Panama Congress 
Internal improvements 

(a) Erie Canal 

(b) First railroad 
Other events 

(a) Death of John Adams and Jeffer¬ 

son 

(b) Webster’s Dictionary published 

(c) Bunker Hill Monument erected 
Election of 1828 

(a) Issues and parties 

(b) Candidates 

(c) What the result meant 


IV. Later Life 

(1) In the House of Representatives 

(a) “Old Man Eloquent” 

(b) Fight against extension of slavery 

V. Character 

(1) As a man 

(a) Reasons for unpopularity 

(2) As political leader 


Questions 

1. How was John Quincy Adams elected? Why was this necessary? 

2. What two famous men died during Adams’ administration? 

3. Who laid the corner stone of Bunker Hill Monument? Who delivered the 
speech of dedication? 

4. What was Adams’ first public service? 

5. How did Adams prove his sincere desire to serve his country and not merely 
to attain political ambitions? 

6. Why was Adams not popular in his own day? 

7. In how many countries did Adams serve his government as diplomat? 

8. How was Adams’ appointment of Clay as Secretary of State misconstrued? 

9. What lasting result did the quarrel between Adams and Jackson have? 

10. Sum up your impressions of the character of Adams. 

11. Name one very important internal improvement that was made during this 
administration. 

12. What new method of transportation was introduced? 

13. What was meant by the “joint occupation” of Oregon? 

14. Why was not Adams reelected? 

15. What two popular nicknames did Adams win in the latter part of his life? 

16. What speech of Adams showed that he understood clearly just how the slave 
question would finally become a matter to be dealt with by Federal authority? 






















ADAMS 


38 


ADAMS 


Jackson should have been chosen in 1824, 
and he was still the popular hero. Opposition 
in the South and in New England to the plans 
for internal improvements, disapproval of the 
high tariff of 1828, and the demand of the 
West for a hearing all combined to make 
Adams’ reelection impossible. Jackson was 
the people’s choice (see Jackson, Andrew). 

The “Old Man Eloquent.” At the close of 
his term, Adams returned to his home in 
Quincy, Mass. Two years later he entered the 
House of Representatives, with the aid of the 
votes cast by the Anti-Masons (which see), 
and for seventeen years he served without a 
break. He was once asked if he did not think 
that membership in the House was degrading 
to a man who had once been President, but 
he proudly replied that no person could be 
degraded by serving the people as a Repre¬ 
sentative in Congress, or even, he added, as a 
selectman of his town. For »these seventeen 
years he was the leader in Congress in the 
fight against the extension of slavery, although 
he was not himself an abolitionist. It is note¬ 
worthy that he seems to have been the first 
to proclaim the doctrine on which Lincoln 
based the emancipation of negro slaves, for in 
as early as 1836 he said in a speech in Con¬ 
gress: “From the instant that your slave¬ 
holding states become the theater of war— 
civil, servile, or foreign—from that instant the 
war powers of the Constitution extend to the 
institution of slavery in every way in which it 
can be interfered with.” After 1845, when he 
secured the repeal of the “Gag Rules” which 
prevented the presentation of petitions about 
slavery, Adams spoke less often. Late in 1846 
he had a stroke of paralysis, which confined 
him to his home for several months. On 
February 21, 1848, when at his desk on the 
floor of the House, he suffered a second stroke. 
He was carried to the Speaker’s room, and he 
died two days later. a.b.ii. 

Additional Points of Interest. A favorite 
name for Adams in his own days was “The 
Walking Vocabulary.” 

The deaths of John Adams and of Jefferson 
occurred during his administration. 

When the Erie Canal was opened the news 
was “telegraphed” to New York by cannon fire. 
The cannons were placed at intervals of thir¬ 
teen miles between Buffalo and New York. 

As the last cannon was fired, a keg of water 
from Lake Erie was poured into the Atlantic 
to symbolize the union of the ocean and the 
Great Lakes. 


John Q. Adams left what has been called by 
far the most valuable diary in existence. It 
is in twelve large volumes, and contains his 
comments on events from 1795 to 1848. It 
gives of himself “a portrait more full, correct, 
vivid and picturesque than has ever been be¬ 
queathed to posterity by any other personage 
of the past ages.” 

The first edition of Webster’s Dictionary 
appeared during Adams’ administration. 

Months before the Monroe Doctrine was 
ever announced or even formulated Adams 
told the Russian minister “that the American 
Continents are no longer subjects for any new 
European colonial establishments.” This is 
the first hint of the famous doctrine. 

Affectionate with his family, Adams had 
toward most people a cold, repellant manner, 
and it is not strange that “no man of pure 
life and just purposes ever had fewer friends 
or more enemies.” 

Short, stout and bald, with a high shrill 
voice, liable at any time to break, Adams owed 
none of his power as an orator to personal 
attractiveness. 

Adams’ last words were, “This is the last of 
earth! I am content.” 

For further study consult Memoirs, written by 
himself and edited by Charles Francis Adams; 
Morse’s John Quincy Adams. 

t 

ADAMS, Maud Kiskadden (1872- ), an 

American actress, very popular because of her 
presentation of such roles as Babbie in The 
Little Minister and Peter Pan in the play of 
the same name. She was born in Salt Lake 
City, Utah, appeared on the stage while a 
child, and at sixteen years of age joined E. H. 
Sothern’s company. As a member of Froh- 
man’s stock company her reputation grew 
steadily and she gained great popularity as 
Juliet, and as the Due de Reichstadt in 
UAiglon. Later she appeared in the title role 
of Rostand’s Chantecler, and in Barrie’s Legend 
of Leonora. 

ADAMS, Samuel (1722-1803), an American 
statesman of the famous Adams family, second 
cousin of John Adams, and one of the signers 
of the Declaration of Independence. He early 
devoted himself to politics, and in the dispute 
between America and the mother country he 
showed himself one of the most efficient and 
unselfish laborers for American freedom and 
independence. Several influential political 
papers for the cause of independence were writ¬ 
ten by him. Adams sat in Congress eight 
years, but during that period showed a lack 


ADAMS 


39 


ADDAX 


of depth of view and legislative wisdom. From 
1789 to 1794 he was lieutenant-governor of 
Massachusetts, from 1794 to 1797 was gov¬ 
ernor, and then retired from public life. 

ADAMS, Mass., an industrial city, in the 
extreme northwestern part of the state, in 
Berkshire County, about five miles south of 
North Adams and fifteen miles north of Pitts¬ 
field. The town is beautifully situated on both 
banks of the Hoosac River, in the midst of 
the famous Berkshire Hills; Greylock Moun¬ 
tain, the loftiest peak in the state, is within the 
town’s limits. Railway accommodations are 
afforded by a branch of the Boston and Albany 
Railroad. Its population comprises a large 
number of Poles, and increased from 13,026 in 
1910 to 13,218 in 1915. 

Adams was founded in 1749 as East Hoosick 
and was renamed for Samuel Adams, the Amer¬ 
ican Revolutionary leader, when it was incor¬ 
porated in 1778. Its area is over eighteen 
square miles and includes the villages of Ren¬ 
frew, Maple Grove and Zylonite. The most 
important industries are the Berkshire Cotton 
Manufacturing Company, the Renfrew Manu¬ 
facturing Company and the L. L. Brown Paper 
Company. The town excels in the grade of its 
cotton manufacture, has many churches and 
schools, a public library and four banks. In 
the vicinity is a natural bridge of local note, 
across Hudson’s Brook. A fine statue of For¬ 
mer President McKinley is a conspicuous orna¬ 
ment of the city. e.k.mop. 

ADAM’S APPLE, the projecting cartilage 
of the larynx, noticeable under the skin on 
the throat of all people, in some appearing 
very prominently. It received its name from 
the belief of the ancients that a piece of the 
apple given to Adam by Eve {Gen. Ill, 6) 
stuck in his throat. See Larynx; Cartilage. 

ADDAMS, Jane (1860- ), an American 

social settlement worker, esteemed for years 
as “the first woman of Illinois,” and famous 
the world over for her work at Hull House. 
Born at Cedarville, Ill., she studied at Rock¬ 
ford Seminary, in Europe, and at the Women’s 
Medical College in Philadelphia; then, con¬ 
vinced by her study of social conditions that 
she should devote her life to work among the 
poor, she went to Chicago and there founded 
Hull House (which see), a social settlement in 
the city’s slums. In all her early work she had 
the assistance of Ellen Gates Starr. 

Energetic and capable, sympathetic but not 
sentimental, and gifted with the ability to 
grasp at once the problems of the poor, Miss 


Addams soon won a place for herself and her 
institution in the life of the neighborhood, and 
it was not long before Hull House was recog¬ 
nized as the lead¬ 
ing social settle- 
ment of the 
United States. 

Miss Addams, 
too, came to be 
looked upon as 
an authority on 
many social 
questions. On 
such questions as 
the evils and the 
possibilities of 
tenements, the 
problem of child 
labor and the 
like, she thought 
deeply and wrote and spoke well. Nor did she 
confine herself to her work at Hull House. For 
three years she did most efficient service as an 
inspector of streets and alleys, and in 1909 she 
acted as president of the National Conference 
of Charities and Correction. She became ac¬ 
tive in the movement for woman’s suffrage, and 
took a prominent part in the formation of the 
Progressive party in 1912. 

In April, 1915, when there was convened at 
The Hague an International Women’s Peace 
Congress, with delegates from fourteen coun¬ 
tries, she was made its chairman, and was fur¬ 
ther intrusted with the duty of visiting the war¬ 
ring nations and presenting to their govern¬ 
ments the women’s peace petition. On that er¬ 
rand she was received by the leading states¬ 
men of the Continent and by the Pope. It was 
expected that she would be an influential mem¬ 
ber of the Ford peace party, but a serious ill¬ 
ness compelled her to remain at home (see 
Ford, Henry). She was unable because of a 
long-continued illness to join the party later 
in Europe. 

The most popular and widely-read of Miss 
Addams’ books is Twenty Years at Hull House, 
a fascinating account of her great work; but no 
less authoritative in their way are her other 
publications, The Spirit of Youth and the City 
Streets, Democracy and Social Ethics and A 
New Conscience and an Ancient Evil, a.mc c. 

ADDAX, ad' ax, or ADDAS, a species of an¬ 
telope of Northeastern Africa, about three feet 
in height at the shoulders, and reddish white in 
color. It has large, rounded hoofs, which enable 
it to run with great speed across the desert 



JANE ADDAMS 

Of world-wide fame as an 
authority on social problems. 




ADDER 


40 


ADDISON 


sands. The horns are about four feet long, 
beautifully twisted into wide sweeping spirals 
with the points directed outward. It has tufts 
of hair on the forehead and throat, and a white 



ADDAX 

blaze or stripe on the nose. It is hunted by 
Arabs with greyhounds, both for its flesh, which 
is used for food, and for its skin, which is val¬ 
uable commercially. 

ADDER, a name applied to several varieties 
of poisonous snakes, but especially to the cop¬ 
perhead and the water moccasin. When angry, 
the adder has the habit of puffing out or swell¬ 
ing the upper part of its neck. The puff adder 
is a South African snake whose bite is nearly 
always fatal. The natives, in some parts, poison 
their arrows with its venom. The only poison¬ 
ous snake of Great Britain is the adder, belong¬ 
ing to the snake family of vipers. It is easily 
recognized by a distinct V-shaped mark on its 
head. See Copperhead; Moccasin; Snake. 

The poison of the adder is comparatively 
slow in action, and one bitten may linger for 
days before death or recovery. The use of 
strong doses of whisky or brandy in case of 
snake bite, though once believed in, is strongly 
condemned by medical authorities. Stimula¬ 
tion can be more satisfactorily produced by 
means of ammonia or strychnine, and without 
the harmful reaction caused by alcohol. A liga¬ 
ture must be applied above the wound, which 
should be bled freely by cutting with a clean 
knife. To suck out the poison is dangerous. 
The wound should be well washed with a solu¬ 
tion of permanganate of potash. Burning with 


nitrate of silver is also beneficial. The most re¬ 
liable treatment, however, is not always avail¬ 
able; this consists of injections of serum from 
animals which have been rendered immune 
by inoculation of snake venom. 

ADDER’S TONGUE. See Dog’s-tooth Vio¬ 
let. 

ADDING MACHINE, a name generally but 
not always accurately applied to computing 
machines. Not only do these devices add 
sums of figures mechanically, but many of 
them can be manipulated so they will sub¬ 
tract, multiply and divide, the latter opera¬ 
tions being as simple as those of addition. 
See Calculating Machines, for description of 
the various types. 

ADDIS ABEBA, ah'dis ah bay' bah, the 
capital of Abyssinia, situated at an altitude of 
over 8,000 feet, is one of the world’s strangest 
cities. It is 300 miles from the ocean, and as 
yet only a trail leads from the capital to the 
nearest port; a railroad, however, is projected. 
Its buildings are low, rude and particularly un¬ 
inviting; it has no streets, for its houses are 
set down wherever convenience suggests. The 
only native school in the entire country is in 
this city. Addis Abeba was the scene of the 
signing of the treaty of peace between Italy 
and Abyssinia in 1896, in which Italy resigned 
her claim to a protectorate. Population, esti¬ 
mated at 50,000. See Abyssinia. 

ADDISON, Joseph (1672-1719), an English 
poet and essayist, of whom Samuel Johnson 
said he who would attain the perfection of Eng¬ 
lish style “must give his days and nights to 
the volumes of Addison.” He was born at 
Milston, in Wiltshire, studied at Oxford, and 
won a name for himself by his easy, graceful 
Latin verse. 

After his gradu¬ 
ation he was 
given a pension 
by the govern¬ 
ment, which en¬ 
abled him to 
travel on the 
Continent for 
several years. In 
1704 he w T rote 
The Campaign, a 
poem addressed 
to the Duke of 
Marlborough, cel¬ 
ebrating his vic¬ 
tory at the Battle of Blenheim, and this se¬ 
cured him several government appointments. 



JOSEPH ADDISON 





















ADDITION 


41 


ADDITION 


He began to write for the Tatler in 1709, 
and for its successor, the Spectator, in 1711, 
and in 1713 produced the tragedy of Cato, 
which met with great success. His marriage to 
the dowager Countess of Warwick occurred in 
1716, but he gained little happiness from the 
union. 

Of Addison’s poetry one or two sacred pieces 
will endure as long as the language; but it is 
by his essays in the Spectator that he is best 
known. For humor and poetic grace, for ele¬ 
gance of style and for good-humored satire, 
these essays remain unsurpassed. Addison had 
a serious purpose in writing these papers, light 
as many of them are; for in them he attacked 
certain abuses and absurdities in the manners 
and morals of his day, and in many instances 
succeeded in correcting them. The best- 
known of the Spectator papers is the delightful 
series on Sir Roger de Coverley, with its ex¬ 
cellent character-drawing, regarded by critics 
as a step in the development of the novel. In 
his own day Addison was no more admired for 
his genius than beloved and respected for the 
kindness, gentleness and uprightness of his 
character. l.h. 

ADDITION. Addition follows close upon 
counting, is related to it; indeed, it is a short 
method of counting. Arithmetic begins with 
counting and measuring. Counting in a broad 
sense is really measuring. 

The lowest tribes perform the operation of 
counting, and children will be delighted with 
stories from naturalists tending to show that 
animals count (see Arithmetic). They will 
be more interested to know that observers 
among the tribes of South America, Australia 
and various islands report many tribes who 
have names for numbers only to two or three 
or five, their highest number being the word 
for plenty or many or heap. This seems to 
indicate that they become mentally confused 
when the number of objects exceeds 2 or 3 or 
4. The Tasmanians count “parmery, prica, 
cardia,” or “1, 2, more than 2”; or “1, 2, 
plenty The New Hollanders have no name 
for numbers beyond 2. The Watchandie count 
“1, 2, many, very many,” and if pressed hard 
will add the counts “2+1, 2+2,” thus reaching 
4. In Queensland a traveler finds the tribes 
counting “ganar, burla, burla-ganar, burla- 
burla, korumbo,” that is, “1, 2, 2+1, 2+2, 
much,” or “great.” Another tribe improves 
upon this by having a 3, and so count “1, 2, 3, 
3+1, 3+2, 3+3,” reaching 6. In this sim¬ 
ple count is seen the beginning of addition. 


The child counts first after the manner of the 
savage. He says, “1, 2, 3, 6”; “1, 2, 3, 4, 10”; 
or “1, 2, 3, a lot,” showing that his mind grasps 
the 1, 2, 3 or 1, 2, 3, 4, and then is indefinite. 
Later he makes the combinations, seeing 2 + 1 , 
3-j-2, 3—{-3 and so on. 

When the child first counts objects he may 
think of “one” as the name of the first ob¬ 
ject, “two,” the name of the second, and so on. 
Being asked for two, he gives the one object 
which he called “2” in counting. Asked to 
show 3, or 4, he points to the one object which 
he called “three” or “four” in counting. This 
state of mind in early counting is very com¬ 
mon. It often escapes the attention of the 
teacher or the parent who is teaching the 
child; it escapes her because of the simplicity 
of the counting process to the adult. The 
error often persists through the early months 
of school life and confuses the child in his 
first steps in counting, and, indeed, in his 
early number thought in general. The teacher 
at school must meet this difficulty and over¬ 
come it, and the mother in her play-counting 
at home with the child can do much to clear 
the little one’s path of such misconception. 

Exercises such as the following are exceed¬ 
ingly helpful at this stage: 



COUNTING PENNIES 


(1) The child is counting pennies; the 
teacher or mother says, “Give me one penny; 
give me another penny. Now I have two pen¬ 
nies; give me another one. Now I have two 
pennies and 1 penny; that is 3 pennies,” and 
so on. The teacher and child may alternate 
in counting, or two children may count in this 
way while the teacher and other children ob¬ 
serve. 

(2) Place a group of pennies on the table to 






















ADDITION 


42 


ADDITION 


be counted; count them with the child, be¬ 
ginning at the left, then at the right, in the 
middle, and so on, so that a different penny 
gets a new count name each time. 





a - Five pennies 

t) © vi 

6-Five pennies 

©00 

c - Five pennies 






VARIATIONS IN COUNTING 


(3) Then count in this way: take one penny 
in hand on count “one”; take two pennies in 
hand on count “two;” three pennies in hand 
on count “three,” and so on, exhibiting the 


(1) The teacher or mother can create oppor¬ 
tunity for measuring with definite measures, 
as a foot, an inch, a yard, an hour, a day, a 
minute, a penny, a dollar, a dime, a pound, a 
quart, and others. Much of the early number 
work should grow out of concrete conditions 
and be dealt with through definite units of 
measure, both at home and at school. 

(2) The child may measure the table, the 
floor, the height of members of the family, his 
blocks, his playhouse, the length of his and his 
friends’ jumps or throws, the top of his desk 
and of his teacher’s desk, the blackboard, the 
cardboard he uses in construction work, his 
school garden, his own space in it, etc., using 
the yard, foot or inch, as his distances are long 
or short. 

(3) He counts, as he measures, the number 
of yards, or feet, or inches, in the lines meas¬ 
ured. 

(4) He may add to find the perimeter of 



PUPIL MEASURING TEACHER’S DESK 


group on each count, thus emphasizing the 
group, and not th$ last one counted. This 
counting may be varied by using nickels, 
dimes, inch-cubes, and the like, and by making 
the groups to be counted irregular in shape, 
by counting in order and counting by skipping 
about; that is, by having count “two” fall on 
an object not adjacent to count “one.” 



Suggestions for further help to the child in 
counting and adding: 


table (distance around), room, rug, cardboard, 
desk, garden, etc. For example, he finds a 
rug 2 yds. long and 1 yd. wide, and adds: 2 
yds.+2 yds.+l yd.+l yd.=6 yds., or measur¬ 
ing it in feet, he adds: 6 ft.+6 ft+3 ft.+3 ft.= 
18 ft. The floor gives larger numbers; the 
length may be 19 ft. and the width 15 ft.; his 
problem then is 18 ft.+15 ft.+ 18 ft.+ 15 ft.= 
66 ft., or 6 yds.+6 yds.+5 yds.+5 yds.=22 yds. 

(5) For this the child should have a foot 
rule and a yard rule, both marked off clearly 
in inches, and the yard marked clearly in 
feet. In this repeated measuring and count¬ 
ing with definite units of measure, the child 
comes to see that a sum is made up of two or 
more quantities which have the same measur¬ 
ing unit. This is said commonly in the fa¬ 
miliar phrase, “Only like things can be added.” 





















































































































































ADDITION 


43 


ADDITION 


(6) With these and a good measuring tape, 
the measuring may extend into the yard, the 
farm, the playground, the school ground, the 
city block, and so on to any region of interest 
to the child. 



MEASURING THE GARDEN 


Such work gives excellent opportunity for 
the child to master the simple number in the 
life about him. At this stage, the home offers 
opportunities for work and material which the 
child cannot have in school for lack of indi¬ 
vidual help, chance for freedom of movement, 
for expression of results and for discussion of 
his own interesting methods. The data se¬ 
cured gives the child his own material for 
counting and adding. Indeed, it keeps him at 
work helping himself, with now and then a 
suggestion from teacher or mother, which is 
the most desirable condition for school or 
home work. The large classes in school are 
somewhat prohibitive of this desirable method 
of individual effort. Here the home has a 
great advantage and should furnish much raw 
material for the school. 

Another set of suggestions: The play or 
work with real money is most enjoyable and 
most generous in its results at this state; chil¬ 
dren like it greatly. Many teachers use money 
made by themselves or by the children, or 
manufactured in bulk for the purpose, but 
there is a joy of response to the real money 
which is lacking in the effect of the imitation. 
The child knows the one has value while the 
other has not, and even allowing for the gener¬ 


ous imagination of the child, the real money 
adds zest to his problem. 

(1) If the teacher can have on hand pen¬ 
nies, nickels, dimes and dollars, that the child 
may handle, count and add, his joy and prog¬ 
ress will give return in full measure. 

(2) Let child and teacher buy and sell to 
each other. 

(3) Let the teacher or mother tell him what 
she has spent or must spend for bread, meat, 
butter, berries, etc., while he sets aside the 
amount of real money for each article; then 
sets down the column to be added, not writing 
the name of the article bought, which is too 
laborious at this time, nor the dollar sign nor 

decimal point, but in this form: 

15 This he sees is 107 cents, and from the 

40 money he has set aside, he sees it is 

37 $1.07. 

15 (4) Then the question is asked, “How 

107 much have I spent at the store?” “Show 
it to me in pennies.” “In dimes and 
pennies.” “In any other way you can.” Out 
of this kind of work can grow innumerable 
problems, not only for the young child, but for 
older children, at home and at school. The 
home has much material at hand which the 
school should call for, asking the child to fur¬ 
nish good, live material for class work. 

(5) If there are a garden, cows, chickens, 
etc., the small child may count the radishes, 
the heads of lettuce, tomato plants, eggs, pints 
or quarts of milk and so on; count by ones and 
in groups. Compute the value of this produce 
for home use, or what it brings when sold, for 
the week or month or season, somewhat as fol¬ 
lows: In one week mother sold eggs for $3.25; 
lettuce $0.45; butter $4.00; cream $0.80; rad¬ 
ishes $0.42. Use another series to represent an¬ 
other week. Let the child find the sum for 
first week, second week, and so on, keeping ac¬ 
count for many weeks. Even a small child 
can do this if the account is not complicated, 
and his interest is renewed each week or each 
day so that he remains awake to his growing 
problem. Each problem must be simple, and 
the old problem should be recalled by having 
his old paper kept and brought out each stated 
time, day or week, or whatever the period may 
be, until he has accomplished his big problem. 
The mother must not force it too far. But 
such a big, far-reaching problem in the 
economy of the home will give him an inspira¬ 
tion and a respect for his study of arithmetic, 
especially if the teacher makes this home 
problem an integral part of the child’s class 
























































ADDITION 


44 


ADDITION 


work. Here he sees tl^e relation of arithmetic 
to real home conditions. Getting data at 
home for class work in school should be a 
large part of the “home work” in arithmetic. 



THE GROCERY BILL 


Some explicit suggestions for the work in 
addition: 

(a) Grocery order for the day, week, month; 
find sum. 

(b) Bills for dry goods at each buying, for 
week, for month. 

(c) Sum of school purchases for all the chil¬ 
dren of family for day, week, and so on. 

(d) Money earned by father and other mem¬ 
bers of family in a day, a week, a month. 

(e) Expense of keeping pets. 

(f) Cost of milk and cream for week, 
period for which bill runs. 

(g) Cost of a meal. 

(h) Length of block from length of lots. 

(i) Finding number of plants in a bed 
adding' the numbers in the various rows. 

(j) Find value of products sold by father 
city office or on farm, father giving sales data. 

(k) Adding distances traveled each hour or 
day in automobile. 

(l) Keep account of sales by mother, of chick¬ 
ens, eggs, butter, vegetables, turkeys, and so on, 
mother giving data. 

(m) Counting shade trees, fruit trees, number 
of elms, oaks, poplars, apples, cherries, peaches, 
and seeing that the groups added make the whole 
number counted. The data for these problems 
is found in the home, and used either in school 
or at home. 

(n) Add 5 to each of the following: 1, 4, 6, 
7, 9, 8, 4, 3, 7, 2, 5, 9, 6, 8, 5. Add 8 to each. 
Add 7 to each. Begin at left, at right, at any 
point. Place in a column thus: 

1 


or 


by 


m 


8 + 


4 

6 

7 

8 


Add both ways 8 + 4, 4 + 8. There is much 
variation possible in this kind of exercise for 
review, slow and rapid. Draw arrow and give 
answer without saying 8 + 1 = 9. The eye sees 
1, 8 as 9 ; 4, 8 as 12. Counts by 2’s, 3’s, etc., 
starting at 0, 1, 3, 20, or elsewhere. 

(o) See how far the child can get in ten sec¬ 
onds, thirty seconds, one minute and so on. Set 
a series of such problems, as, “Begin with 3, 
and add 4’s, stop between 40 and 50. Begin at 
1 and add 9’s, stop between 70 and 80. See 
how many he can get right in one minute, three 
minutes. Do not extend the time too long. 

Further Suggestions. The exercises can be 
varied by use of the following examples, and 
others like them: 


+8 


(a) Give answers only. 

(b) Say 7 and 5 is 12. 

(c) Write 7+5=12. 

(d) Say 7 plus 5 equals 12. 
Vary the way of doing it. 


7+ 


9J 


Place sum below 

6 

7 3 9 

+7 

_7 7 7 

Place sum below 

9 

3 5 6. 9 

+8 

1 00 

loo 

1 00 

1 00 

7+n=9 


n+7=9 

(a) Say 7 and 2 is 

6+n=9 

(b) Write 7+2=9. 

8+n=9 

(c) Say 7 plus 2 ec 

n+6=9 

Vary the way 

n+8=9 


9=n+8 

?i+?i=16 

9=7+n 

n+7=16 

9=4+n 

n+9=16 

8=6+n 

9+n=18 

8=5+n 

9+n=17 

6 

n 

n 

8 

15 

17 


4 

7 


3 

8 


5 
3 

6 
7 
3 
2 
6 
5 


2 

7 


5 

8 


The child must erase n, and put the correct 
digit in its place. 


3 

+5 

8 

hr 

7 

+8 

15 


13 

5 

18 


33 

5 


17 

8 

25 


23 
5 

28 38 

27 

8 


43 

5 

48 


37 

8 


35 


45 


53 

5 

58 

47 

8 

55 











































































































ADDITION 


45 


ADDITION 


47= 40+ 7 158=100+50+ 8 

+69= 60+ 9 +223=200+20+ 3 

116=100+16 381=300+70+11 

Teacher points 
to any number 
and child gives 
sum of it and all 
numbers above it 
or below it in the 
column; for ex¬ 
ample, point to 2 
in the column 
and child gives 
sum 17. The 
numbers may be 
simple at first, and be made more and more 
difficult and square be made larger. Teacher 
may vary her question; for example, ask the 
sum of the number pointed to and the one 
above it, also the two above it. 


6 

9 


4 

8 


3 

5 


G 

4 

7 

4 

3 

5 



Fill each space so that the horizontal row 
will give the sum 20. Add horizontally and 
vertically and see if sums for entire square 
agree. 




In the first circle give sum of center num¬ 
ber and each number on circumference; for 
variation, write the sum on line. In the sec¬ 
ond circle give the number which added to 
center number makes the number on circum¬ 
ference; write it on line. 

Add horizontally and vertically: 

746+9237+4826=- 

647+7239+6482=- 

467+9327+8462=- 

923+4679+7869=- 

+ + =- 

This is good practice and carries a test with it. 


Games That Make for Interest and Quick 
Response. 1. Dominoes painted on paper or 
cardboard. Children “match” ends. Find all 
that are alike. Find groups that make 7, 10, 
8, and so on. 



VISUALIZING ADDITION 


3 + 4=7 


© 


© © 

© 



© 


© © 


2. Children throw ball or bean bag, trying 
to hit inside circle; 10 points are given for 
each successful throw at small circle, and 6 for 
striking inside of large circle. Children take 
sides, keep tally, and see which side wins. 
The credit may vary, as 7 for small and 5 for 
large circle. 

3. Class may take sides for number card 
game. Teacher holds up card such as those 



NUMBER CARDS 


illustrated—each for an instant. The child 
who answers correctly gets the card. The side 
that has the greater number of cards wins. 
This game may be played without taking 


6 

5 

4 

9 

8 

2 

9 

3 

1 

6 

5 

7 

2 

4 

7 

8 

6 

4 - 

fc 

1 

4 

2 

9 

3 

9 

2 

8 

1 

8 

5 

7 

3 

5 

6 

7 

6 
































































































































































































ADDITION 


46 


ADDITION 



BEAN BAG GAME 


sides; then the child having the greater num¬ 
ber of cards wins. 

4. To keep the see-saw balanced what 
must b be? The teacher draws the sea-saw 


18 


9+N 


SEE-SAW 


on the board; changes one or both numbers 
when child has substituted correct digit for n. 

Sources of problems in addition found in 
current literature, connecting arithmetic with 
geography, history, study of social conditions, 
civics and “current events”: 

1. Products of the country given in quantity 
and value ; wheat, corn, oats, potatoes, hay, meat, 
butter, eggs, flour, cotton, coal, lumber, iron, 
steel, and so on. These appear in various ways ; 
for example, they may be given yearly over a 
period of twenty years. Child adds to find for a 
period of 5 years or 10 years, or 15 years, and 
so on. 

2. Exports are given in same way. 

3. Acreage devoted to various products in 
different states. From this the child finds area 
in certain sections or in the whole country, given 
over to wheat, cotton, etc. 

4. Areas of states given. Child finds area of 
a given section ; for example, the Middle West. 

5. Population may be added in the same way. 

6. The same material is given concerning for¬ 
eign countries. 

7. Imports to the country. 

8. Immigration covering a period of years. 

9. Health statistics. 

10. Tax statistics. 

Suggestions for self help. The child may 
set down problems for himself, and he may 
vary his columns. Let him write, “long, nar¬ 


row” columns, “short, wide” columns, “long, 
wide” columns. Let him use tests suggested 
further on in this article. He may time him¬ 
self, seeing how many problems he can do in 
a minute, in three minutes, five minutes. If 
there are two or. more persons working to¬ 
gether, zest is added as to accuracy and time. 



SAND TABLE 


Processes of Addition. The above are sug¬ 
gestions as to conditions that give rise to 
problems in addition, and develop keen interest 
for mathematical values. What immediately 
follows will deal with the process of addition. 
In the early days of the work, the numbers 













































































































































































































































































































































ADDITION 


47 


ADDITION 


are kept small, and the combinations up to ten 
are seen and mastered, but this period must 
not be made too long. Adults incline to 
linger too long here because of their conscious¬ 
ness of the decimal notation (see Notation), 
and the written form due to that notation. 
The child will not hesitate long before 9 and 
10 or 10 and 11. He waits only to get a name 
for his new number. Give him the earliest 
opportunity to play the game the race has 
played in its most serious computations—the 
game on the sand table. The pupil himself 
cannot built the sand table. The adult who 
does it need not produce the most finished 
piece of work. The child will be as well pleased 
and will be fully as well instructed if he has 
access to something which will merely hold the 
sand. He can have his sand pan in the school¬ 
room or in the playroom at home or out in the 
yard. The sand pan prepared, he must gather 
some small stones. Now he is ready for the 
game, and he will play it with as much pleasure 
as profit. 

Teacher or mother counts pennies, dollars, 
eggs, plants, minutes, children, desks. The 
child puts down a small stone as a counter for 
each count the teacher or mother makes. 
When he has 10 stones in his first furrow, the 
teacher tells him to take them all up in his 
hand, and put one in the second furrow, thus: 



She tells him that that one means one ten, 
that it is the same as ten in the first furrow. Then 
start anew taking out this last stone. Teacher 
starts to count; the child puts down a stone 
for each count, and when he reaches 10, he 
makes the change as above, but this time the 
teacher goes on counting and he puts 1, 2 or 
3 stones in the first furrow so his sand table 
looks like this: 



Do it again and have 4, 5 or any number 
up to 9 in the first furrow. After much of 
this, the teacher goes on counting until the 
child has dropped 10 counters in the first fur¬ 


row a second time and the child makes the 
change and his pan looks like this: 



She goes on until he has several counters in 
the first furrow, and his pan looks like this: 



This is great fun to the child, and through 
the very concreteness of it and the joyous 
repetition of it he gets hold of the meaning 
of the decimal system of notation. It must be 
carried into hundreds when he is ready for it, 
with many repetitions, as with the tens. Let 
the child show his teacher and other mem¬ 
bers of the class numbers represented on his 
pan, and see if they can read them; for 
example: 



Then let members of the class give him 
numbers to represent on the pan, and let them 
use the stones to represent numbers which he 
is to read. But adults must be careful not to 
hurry him here. He must have time to see it 
all. Beads may be used instead of stones. 
The sand pan exercise is excellent work at 
home, the mother or father and older members 
of the family playing the “game” with the 
child. Children up through the third and 
fourth grade will be helped greatly by it and 
see and understand the number system, and 
the older members of the family will play the 
game with zest. 

At first he reads a number as one ten and 
two ten and seven, ten and three; later 
twelve, seventeen, thirteen, and so on. He will 
see and hear the three and ten in thirteen, 
seven and ten in seventeen, two tens in the 
word twenty, three tens in the word thirty, up 
through the nineties (see Notation). From 






















ADDITION 


48 


ADDITION 


the sand table the transition is made easily to 
columns on large paper or on blackboard; dots 
or tally marks with pencil, charcoal or chalk 
take place of stones. The paper or board ap¬ 
pears like this: 


1 

1 

1 

1 

1 

I 

I 

1 

1 

1 

1 

4 

7 


Here the digits are used only to show the 
sum. 

Then follows the use of the digits in the 
columns also, thus: 


1 

2 

3 

3 


2 

4 

7 


This is the natural course of progress, as we 
trace it through the centuries, the mind of 
the race using counters to perform simple or 
difficult operations, and the symbols to ex¬ 
press and hold the results. We find the Eu¬ 
ropean far down into modern history doing 
this, and to-day we may watch the Chinese 
and the Japanese using the counter (the 
abacus) and setting down results with symbols. 
(See Abacus.) Finally comes the column idea, 
without marks of separation, and with this the 
need of some sign to show that a column is 
empty. When he writes 6 tens and 4 ones he 
has 64, but when he writes 6 tens and has no 
ones, he must have some sign to hold the first 
column. The zero may be given him immedi¬ 
ately or he may invent something for himself. 
The dot, the triangle and sometimes the poly¬ 
gon were the devices used where zero (0) is 
now used. Now the child has “place value” 
clear. For further discussion of this, see No¬ 
tation. He now writes as follows and com¬ 
bines, using the dot: 

46 

24 

12 


He sees 4+6 as 10; he puts a dot or a small 
1 in tens column for each 10 he finds in 
units column, and puts 2 in units place in the 
sum. He has 8 tens and 2 ones, or 82. Here 
follow several similar problems: 


23 

17 

16 

12 

23 

4 

55 

38 

23 

• 

12 

18 


90 




90 

61 

They should 

also 

appear 

in this form: 

23 


17 

16 

12 


23 

4 

55 


38 

23 

10 


12 

18 

80 


20 

21 

90 


70 

40 



90 

61 

And also in 

this 

form: 


23 


17 

16 

12 


23 

4 

55 


38 

23 

80 


12 

18 

10 


70 

40 

90 


20 

21 


% 

90 

61 


In the above the child adds either column 
first and writes its sum, and then adds the 
other column and writes the sum, and adds 
these sums. Through this comes a thorough 
understanding of the meaning of each num¬ 
ber, and of the meaning of a sum. There are 
just so many tens and so many one$, and he 
reduces and reads as ones; for example, prob¬ 
lem 3 is 4 tens and 2 tens and 1, or 6 tens and 
1, or 61. 

With older children this method of adding 
the columns in any order and putting down 
the partial sums and then getting the total is 
an excellent help to good understanding of 
number and a good method of testing one’s 
own work in addition. To illustrate: 


65 

65 

65 

349 

349 

349 

785 

785 

785 

99 

99 

99 

478 

478 

478 

1400 

36 

1776 


340 

340 

36 

1400 

1776 

1776 


82 
































ADDITION 


49 


ADDITION 


For drill in addition let the child make up 
columns to be added. Instead of depending 
upon mother or father or teacher to “mark 
them,” let him learn to depend upon his own 
testing. 

Tests. Let him add from the bottom, from 
the top, separate about at the middle and add 
both parts. Add as above, adding any column 
first, as hundreds, and put down the sum in 
full, as 1400; then tens and put down 340, and 
so on. Then get the total by adding these 
partial sums. Children enjoy this test better 
than those in common use. Use the test “cast¬ 
ing out nines” (see Casting Out 9’s, under Num¬ 
ber). The tasting habit is an excellent one, 
but the habit of adding correctly is more excel¬ 
lent. Below are suggestions concerning the 
latter: 

Rapid adding is desirable, and much stress 
is laid upon it at school and at home. But 
remember, adding loses as one adds too rapidly 
or too slowly, because— 

In adding too rapidly the mind fails to get 
sufficient hold upon the last sum and the /new 
addend—or “fails to motorize” these two points. 
This causes a feeling of insecurity, and failure 
results. 

In adding too slowly the mind wanders be¬ 
tween the parts of the process and failure en¬ 
sues. So the element of speed must be consid¬ 
ered from the standpoint of the mind of the 
learner, or the teacher defeats her purpose. 

Some experiments made recently seem to indi¬ 
cate that combination of any kind in the col¬ 
umn, as finding 10’s (which is common), seeing 
a number of 8’s, or 7’s, etc., is not a help, that 
those who add straight on without this have 
advantage as to speed and accuracy. So one 
must not “impose his combination upon another 
mind.” 

Of course this latter does not apply to the 
young child learning the notation ; he must find 
the 10’s and continue such finding until he has 
a clear understanding of the notation. 

Helps in Getting Control of Addition. 1. 

Each child should have a large box of inch- 
cube blocks for number work at home and at 
school. Make the various combinations of 
addition with inch-cube blocks; put them in 
“table” form sometimes, make all combinations 
many times. Use paper counters for this also, 
but children like best to handle blocks. Later 
use squared paper (which can be purchased at 
school supply stores). On this the child draws 
the combinations and has a somewhat perma¬ 
nent picture of his work. It is this permanency 
which makes squared paper desirable. He 
cannot keep his “tables” in blocks or counters, 
for they occupy too much space. The paper 
can be kept and referred to for review at any 
time. To review addition, combinations from 


squared paper have the advantage over the 
written tables—namely, the child sees each 
combination as he looks at the paper. For 
example, in this written table he reads 
S+7=15. On the squared paper he sees 8 
squares-f-7 squares is 15 squares, and sees 7 
squares+8 squares is 15 squares. A glance 
at the tables of 8’s shows how clear this com¬ 
putation, (8-}-7=15), (7-f-8=15), is made by 
the squared paper. 




r 




9 















( 





3 


\ 












7 




m t 


I 











5 







L 








J 











































































































ADDITION 


50 


ADDITION 









15 


























7 







i 
























9 




H 




G 






















1 

3 







5 






















7 






























7 



- 

3 

























7 






























7 



- 

h 

A 













i 

i 









This repeated seeing of sums is most valuable 
at all stages; it is vital in the early stages of 
addition. 

The following groups are types of excellent 
exercises: 

36=30+6 28+8=20+16=36 

48=40+8 46+9=40+15=55 

75=70+5 87+7=80+14=94 

19=10+9 

Then follow with this, which is excellent 
preparation for subtraction: 

36=20+16 75=60+15 

55-40+15 92=80+12 

94=80+14 


Add without pencil in this way: 

24+32=50+6 68+45=100+13 

35+14=40+9 94+31=120+11 

36+23=50+9 78+84=150+12 

This is productive of the wide-awake effort 
and excellent control and accomplishment. 

Some Methods of Addition. Civil Service 
Method. 

3245 32=sum of units 

837 14 =sum of tens 

6248 18 =sum of hundreds 

27 9 =sum of thousands 

615 10972 


This is like the method used above for chil¬ 
dren, but the zeros are not used. According 
to that method, the sums would appear— 


32 

140 

1800 

9000 



3245 

32 

837 

17 

6248 

19 

27 

10 

615 

10972 


Here the number to be carried is added to 
the next column but still appears in the first 
partial sum; for example, 3 is added to 14, 
giving 17, but still appears above 7. The 
answer is read at sight; it is the last addition 


10972 























































































































ADDITION 


51 


ADDRESS 


and the last figure in each partial sum. This 
addition usually appears in the Banker’s 
Method, thus: 

32 

17 and the sum is read as the last sum set 
19 down and the units digit in each of the 
10 other sums. 

10972 

The Group Method varies with individuals. 
Many group in 10’s: 

68 

23 In first column (3, 4, 3=10) (8, 2=10), 
74 2 is added at top of ten’s column and 
92 taken from 7 and added to 9, and the' 
63 addition continues 20, 26, 32. 

320~ 

Others group in groups of two or three or 
more numbers in a column as— 

68 

23 

74 Others look for a number of 9’s or 8’s 

92 or 7’s, and so on, and cast about to 
63 make them. Here they see 9, 7+2, 
59 8+1 in units column and 9, 5+4, 2 in 

93 tens column. 

47 

28 

They might look for 8, 7+1, 6 or 6+1, 
^ 7, 7, 1; and 4+4, and 5+3. 

36 

Group adding varies almost with the indi¬ 
vidual. Adding two or more columns at the 
same time is accomplished by cross addition, 
varying with the individual, as in the follow- 

73+5+30+6+40=154 
or 

70+30+8+6+40=154 

174+6+50+300+400+60+2 
174, 180, 230, 530, 930, 992 

A.H. 

Outline on Addition 

1. Definition 

Short method of counting 

2. Early steps 

3. Errors to be guarded against 

(a) Thinking of numbers as names 

4. Measuring with definite measures 

5. Concrete conditions necessary 

6. Use of home material 

7. Use of real money 

8. Addition taught by means of games 


mg: 

46 

35 

73 

462 

356 

174 


9. Addition correlated with geography 

(a) Problems relating to products of country 

(b) To exports 

(c) To area 

(d) To population 

(e) To imports 

(f) To immigration 

(g) To other statistics 

10. Processes 

(a) Decimal notation 

(b) Addition of tens 

(c) Addition of hundreds 

11. Tests 

(a) Partial sums 

(b) Casting out nines 

ADDRESS', Forms of. The forms used in 
addressing persons who hold titles of nobility 
or offices of dignity are more rigidly observed 
in monarchies than in countries under a re¬ 
public form of government. The Constitution 
of the United States forbids the government to 
grant titles of nobility, or officials of the gov¬ 
ernment to accept them from foreign States, 
but custom has sanctioned certain forms of 
address for the President, Vice-President and 
other officers of dignified position. The fol¬ 
lowing list includes the more important forms: 

Ambassador: His Excellency, the [French] 
Ambassador. A United States ambassador to a 
foreign country is addressed as “Hon.” 

Archbishop: His Grace, the Lord Arch¬ 
bishop of -. Letters begin “My Lord 

Archbishop.” 

Cabinet Officer: The Honorable the Sec¬ 
retary of -; The Honorable the Post¬ 

master-General, etc. 

Countess: The Right Honorable the Count¬ 
ess of-. Letters begin “Madam,” and 

address her as “Your Ladyship.” 

Duke: His Grace the Duke of -; ad¬ 

dressed personally as “Your Grace.” 

Earl: The Right Honorable the Earl of 

-; addressed personally as “Your Lord- 

ship.” 

Governor: In Massachusetts by law and in 
other states by courtesy this official is ad¬ 
dressed as “His Excellency the Governor 

of -“The Governor of -or 

“Hon.--, Governor of.” He is 

formally spoken to as “Your Excellency.” 

King: The King’s Most Excellent Majesty. 
Letters begin “Sire” and address him as “Your 
Majesty.” 

Pope: Letters are addressed “His Holiness, 
the Pope,” or “Our Most Holy Father. 

Pope-.” Letters begin “Most Holy 

Father.” 

President: Letters are addressed: “The 

President, White House”; or “The President of 















ADE 


52 


ADEN 


the United States, White House,” or “His 
Excellency the President of the United 
States.” Letters begin “Mr. President.” 

Prince: “His Royal Highness, Prince 

of-”; or “His Royal Highness, the Duke 

of-.” Letters begin “Sir”; he is referred 

to personally as “Your Royal Highness.” 

Queen: The Queen’s Most Excellent Majes¬ 
ty. Letters begin “Madam” and address her as 
“Your Majesty.” 

Supreme Court, Chief Justice: Letters are 
addressed “The Chief Justice of the United 

States”; or “The Honorable--, 

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the 
United States.” Letters begin “Mr. Chief Jus¬ 
tice,” or “May it please your Honor.” 

Supreme Court, Associate Justice: Letters 
are addressed “Honorable-, Asso¬ 

ciate Justice of the Supreme Court.” This 
jurist is always referred to as “Mr. Jus¬ 
tice -.” 

Vice-President: Letters are addressed “The 
Vice-President”; or “The Honorable the Vice- 
President of the United States”; or “The Hon¬ 
orable --, Vice-President of the 

United States.” Letters begin “Mr. Vice- 
President” or “Sir.” B.w. 

ADE, ayd, George (1866- ), an American 

humorist and playwright, known principally as 
the author of a series of fables written in 
present-day slang, in which he combines racy 
wit with a keen insight into the failings of hu¬ 
man nature. Ade was born in Kentland, Ind., 
and was educated at Purdue University. He 
began his literary work as a writer for news¬ 
papers in Lafayette, Ind., and in Chicago, 
where his clever sketches in the Record, en¬ 
titled Stories of the Streets and the Town, 
won him a favorable reputation as a humorous 
observer of the every-day life of every-day 
people. His comic operas, The Sultan of Sulu 
and Peggy from Paris, and his comedies, The 
County Chairman, The College Widow, The 
Slim Princess and The Fair Co-ed, in some of 
which Elsie Janis starred, were popular suc¬ 
cesses. 

ADELAIDE, the third largest city in Aus¬ 
tralia, capital of the original state of South 
Australia, founded in 1836 and named after the 
queen of William IV of England. It is situ¬ 
ated seven miles from the ocean, on the banks 
of the Torrens River and is 508 miles north¬ 
west of Melbourne. The river, on the banks 
of which are beautiful parks, divides the city 
into North and South Adelaide, connected by 
five handsome bridges. The city is one of the 


most beautiful in Australia, with broad, well- 
kept streets, and many imposing buildings, 
among which the houses of Parliament, the 
town hall and the general post office are con¬ 
spicuous. The city is governed by a mayor 
and six aldermen, and is the only Australian 
city in which the mayor is elected by the votes 
of all the tax payers. 

The principal industries are the manufacture 
of woolen, iron and earthenware goods, and an 
extensive trade is carried on with the interior 
and with foreign countries. Most of its ex¬ 
ports are sent to British ports, but the com¬ 
merce with the United States is rapidly grow¬ 
ing. Adelaide is the terminus of an extensive 
railroad system connecting it with Melbourne, 
Sydney and Brisbane. The climate is healthy, 
though excessively hot in the summer. The 
real commercial center is at Port Adelaide on 
the coast, the port of call for all European 
steamers, and a flourishing town with about 
21,000 inhabitants. The population of Ade¬ 
laide in 1913, within a radius of ten miles 
from the general post office, was 196,567. 

ADELER, Max. See Clark, Charles Heber. 

ADEN, ah' den or a' den, a city and fortress 
in Southern Arabia, a British possession often 
called the Gibraltar of the East. It lies on the 
shore of the Gulf of Aden, near the southern 
end of the Red Sea. Ownership of Aden, to¬ 
gether with the control of the Suez Canal, 
therefore gives Great Britain command of the 
short maritime route from Europe to India 
and the Far East. Only the ships of friendly 
nations may pass the frowning guns of the 
fortress. 

Not only is Aden’s position of strategic im- 
poitance in a military sense, but also in a 
commercial sense. Its harbor is large and 
deep, and it is 
the most import¬ 
ant of the coal¬ 
ing stations on 
the Suez Canal 
route. It has an 
extensive com¬ 
merce, chiefly in 
coffee, hides and 
tobacco brought 
from the interior. 

The local control This section, at the south- 

of the town and ern extremity of the Arabian 

. desert, is almost rainless, 

ot an area oi hence all necessities of life 

seventy - five mus ^ * m P° r ted. 

square miles surrounding it is in the hands of 

a political resident, who is also the commander 














ADENOIDS 


53 


ADIRONDACK 


of the British garrison. The territory of Aden 
is regarded for purposes of government as a 
part of the Indian province of Bombay. Popu¬ 
lation of the city in 1911, 46,165. 

The Gulf of Aden, on whose shore the city 
is located, is that part of the Indian Ocean 
extending westward to the strait of Bab-el- 
Mandeb, at the south end of the Red Sea. It 
is about 550 miles long, and has a maximum 
breadth of 250 miles. 

ADENOIDS, ad' enoyds, an excessive growth 
of a spongy tissue in the space between 
the back of the nose and the throat. This 
growth obstructs the passage through which 
the air reaches the lungs, and breathing 
through the nose becomes difficult or im- 



The position of adenoid growth is shown at a. 
Figure b is the soft palate. The figure shows 
how the former crowds upon the latter. 


possible. But breathing through the nose is 
very important, for only in this way is the air 
purified of dust and germs before it reaches 
the lungs. On the other hand, the obstruction 
of the air passages prevents the proper expan¬ 
sion of the lungs and the development of the 
chest. Children suffering from adenoids have 
usually a characteristic facial expression, with 
open mouth and a staring, half-stupid look. 
They “catch cold” very easily, are hard of 
hearing and very often suffer from running 
ears. Such children sleep with the mouth 
wide open; they snore and are restless in their 
sleep. Mentally the child remains backward, 
is unable to concentrate his attention for any 
length of time, and is generally slow and dull. 
The presence of adenoids retards both the 
physical and mental development of the child. 
Children suffering from adenoids usually have 
enlarged tonsils. 

Treatment consists in the cutting out of the 


adenoids. This operation when performed by 
a skilful surgeon is practically without danger. 
But it is not advisable to operate upon chil¬ 
dren who bleed freely from the nose or 
mouth. In the great majority of cases the re¬ 
moval of adenoids brings about in the child a 
very pronounced physical and mental improve¬ 
ment. The child starts to grow quickly, his 
chest develops, and he soon gains in weight 
and strength. w.a.e. 

ADHESION, adhe'zhun, the physical at¬ 
traction which causes one substance or body to 
remain attached to the surface of some other 
body with which it has been placed in close 
contact. Adhesion is one of the commonest 
properties of matter, and examples of it can 
be seen on every hand. It is b}” adhesion that 
the lead of a pencil sticks to paper, chalk to a 
blackboard, paint to wood and grease to an 
axle. The adhesive power of substances varies 
greatly, and in many substances may be in¬ 
creased by man. The adhesive power of glue 
or of a porus plaster, for example, is chiefly 
the result of special preparation. Whatever 
the degree of adhesion, however, force must be 
used to separate the objects. 

Adhesion may exist between two solids, be¬ 
tween a fluid and a solid, or between two 
fluids. This truth can be tested by a simple 
experiment. Almost any object placed in 
water, if removed carefully, will be found to 
have drops of water adhering to it. The ad¬ 
hesive power of most liquids is also shown by 
their tendency, when they are poured gently 
from a jar, to run down the outside of the 
vessel instead of falling directly, in obedience 
to the laws of gravity. 

ADIGE, ahde' ja (German, Etsch), a river 
of Austria-Hungary and Northern Italy, rising 
in the Rhaetain Alps, and after a south and 
east course of about 180 miles, flowing into the 
Adriatic Sea. Its total length is 230 miles, of 
which 170 are navigable, though with diffi¬ 
culty. The Adige valley was the scene of se¬ 
vere fighting in the early days of 1915 in the 
War of the Nations, between the armies of 
Italy and Austria. 

ADIRONDACK MOUNTAINS, a group of 
mountains occupying a considerable section of 
Northeastern New York, constituting one of 
the most attractive sections east of the Mis¬ 
sissippi River. They lie within what is known 
as the Adirondack Province, a great stretch of 
wild and rocky country, covering about 12,500 
square miles north of the Mohawk River. 
The highest peaks are for the most part in 






ADJECTIVE 


54 


ADJECTIVE 


Essex County. By some authorities the 
Adirondacks are considered to be a part of 
the Appalachian highlands, but others regard 
them as an independent mountain system. 
The highest peak, Mount Marcy, rises to an 
altitude of 5,344 feet; Mount McIntyre is but 
232 feet lower, and Haystack, Dix, Whiteface, 
Giant and Skylight mountains are all over 
4,500 feet high. Famous among the lakes* of 
the range are Champlain and George. 

The rugged beauty of the Adirondacks, with 
their numerous mountain lakes and great 
forest areas, attracts each year large numbers 
of automobile tourists, and in the summer 
season there is much travel on the improved 
highways which have been constructed by the 
state and various counties. Sportsmen, too, 
find this a very attractive region. About half 
of the range has been constituted a state 
park, partly to preserve the natural beauty of 
the mountains, and partly to conserve the rain 
waters and the moisture of melting snows, for 
when the hillsides are denuded of their forest 
coverings, the waters run down to the streams 
and cause destructive floods. The state of 
New York has also set aside a portion of the 
Adirondacks as a forest farm, in connection 
with which is maintained the School of 
Forestry of Cornell University. These moun¬ 
tains contain deposits of iron ore and building 
stone, and their timber is utilized by the man¬ 
ufacturers of paper-pulp. t.e.f. 

ADJECTIVE. Our word adjective is de¬ 
rived from two Latin words, meaning added to. 
An adjective is a part of speech which, added 
to a noun or pronoun, makes its meaning 
clearer and more definite. It is said to 
modify or limit the noun or pronoun, since it 
makes its application more specific, less gen¬ 
eral. Thus, country has a world-wide interpre¬ 
tation, but by prefixing the adjective cold we 
limit its meaning to countries outside tropical 
and sub-tropical latitudes. 

If the adjective answers the question What 
kind? with reference to a person or object, it 
is a descriptive, or qualifying, adjective. If it 
merely points out without describing, it is a 
limiting, or definitive, adjective. 

Descriptive Adjectives. It is the descriptive 
adjectives that are most numerous and that 
give color and variety to language. There 
are three classes, illustrated in the following 
sentence: “This bright, well-mannered lad is a 
typical American product.” Bright and typical 
are common adjectives, modifying respectively 
the nouns lad and product; well-mannered is a 


participial adjective modifying lad; American 
is a proper adjective modifying product. In 
English all proper adjectives, like proper nouns, 
must be capitalized, although this is not the 
custom in many foreign languages. 

Predicate Adjectives. When a qualifying 
adjective is used to complete the meaning of 
the verb to he, or such similar verbs as seem, 
appear, become, look, feel, taste or smell, it is 
called a predicate adjective; as, The poppy is 
crimson; he felt sad; the nut tasted hitter. 

Adjectives as Nouns. A descriptive adjec¬ 
tive may be used as the subject of a sentence 
by prefixing the, thus indicating a class; as, 
the wise are polite all the world over; the 
busiest can always find time for the odd tasks 
that the indolent refuse. 

Limiting Adjectives. The two kinds of lim¬ 
iting adjectives are illustrated in the sentence, 
“The five officers made weekly reports to 
George the Third, confirming him in an absurd 
notion that too much liberty had already been 
granted.” Five, weekly, third and much are 
all limiting adjectives denoting respectively 
number, frequency, numerical order and quan¬ 
tity. They are grouped under the general 
term of adjectives of quantity. The and an 
or a are limiting adjectives belonging to a 
special group called articles, the being the 
definite article and a and an the indefinite. See 
Article. 

Pronominal Adjectives. Some grammarians 
class the pronouns this, that, these, those, 
which, each, such, both, most, many, few, and 
the like as pronominal adjectives, but it is 
generally considered simpler to treat them as 
adjective pronouns. See Pronoun. 

Position and Order of Adjectives. When it 
modifies a noun the adjective, unless used to 
complete the predicate verb, generally pre¬ 
cedes the noun and is preceded by the article; 
as, an agreeable man. After how, so and too, 
however, the adjective follows the article; as, 
How agreeable a man; so agreeable a man; 
too agreeable a man. 

Where there is a series of adjectives the one 
that is most closely connected with the object 
is placed next to the noun, while the others are 
arranged according to importance. Thus we 
say, The little old lady, not the old little lady; 
an expensive new gold watch, not a new gold 
expensive watch. If they are of equal rank, 
they are arranged according to harmonious 
sound, usually the shortest first. 

There are some constructions in which, for 
purposes of emphasis, clearness, euphony or 


ADJECTIVE 


55 


ADJECTIVE 


rhythm, the adjective follows the noun; as, 
splendor unsurpassed; a pupil ambitious to 
excel; the child asleep; the victim afraid; 
everything good; nothing useless; Alexander 
the Great; notary public, and the like. 

Used to modify a pronoun, the adjective fol¬ 
lows; as, We came upon them, weary and 
anxious. 

Comparison of Adjectives. In most languages 
the adjective changes in form to agree with the 
gender, person, number and sometimes case of 
the noun or pronoun to which it belongs. In 
English it has an invariability of form, the 
only inflection being for the purpose of indi¬ 
cating variation in amount or degree. This is 
called comparison. 

Comparison by Endings. Words of one syl¬ 
lable and some of two which do not sound 
awkward in the inflected form, add the suffix 
er to the positive to form the comparative, 
and est to form the superlative: 


POSITIVE 


COMPARATIVE SUPERLATIVE 


neat 

dry 

feeble 

lovely 


neater 

drier 

feebler 

lovelier 


neatest 

driest 

feeblest 

loveliest 


Comparison by Adverbs. Most adjectives of 
more than one syllable, and all adjectives of 
participial form, are c'ompared by prefixing 
more or less to the positive to indicate the 
comparative degree, and most and least to 
indicate the superlative: 


POSITIVE 

active 

enthusiastic 

delighted 

tired 

willing 


COMPARATIVE 

more active 
more enthusi¬ 
astic 

more delighted 
less tired 
less willing 


SUPERLATIVE 

most active 
most enthusi¬ 
astic 

most delighted 
least tired 
least willing 


Irregular Comparison. About twenty com¬ 
mon adjectives are irregularly compared; as, 
good (well), belter, best; many (much), more, 
most; jar, farther (further), farthest; fore, for¬ 
mer, foremost (first), and others. For complete 
list and full discussion, see Comparison, where 
there will also be found a list of the adjectives 
that are absolute in meaning, not admitting of 
comparison. 

Parsing the Adjective. To parse an adjec¬ 
tive these three points must be stated: 

1. Its classification —whether descriptive or 
limiting, and if the latter, whether an adjective 
of quantity or an article. 

2. Its degree of comparison —whether positive, 
comparative or superlative. 

3. Its syntax, or use in the sentence, which 
involves connecting it with the noun or pronoun 
whose meaning it modifies. 


Type Sentences: The most important part of 
education is right training in the nursery. 

The is a definite article, limiting in the one 
case the noun part and in the other the noun 
nursery. Most important is a descriptive adjec¬ 
tive ; superlative degree, comparison regular by 
adverb ( important, more important, most im¬ 
portant) ; modifies the noun part. Right is a 
descriptive adjective ; positive degree, not admit¬ 
ting of comparison ; modifies the noun training. 

The two friends are devoted and inseparable. 

The is a definite article, modifying the noun 
friends. Two is a limiting adjective, denoting 
number ; modifies the noun friends. Devoted is 
a descriptive adjective, participial form; positive 
degree, comparison regular by adverb ( devoted, 
more devoted, most devoted ) ; used with the in¬ 
complete verb are to modify the subject noun, 
friends. Inseparable is a descriptive adjective; 
positive degree, not admitting of comparison; 
predicate adjective modifying the subject, which 
is friends. 

Common Errors. Among the most frequent 
errors in the use of adjectives are the employ¬ 
ment of the adjective for the adverb, the ad¬ 
verb for the adjective, and the placing of the 
adjective with the word denoting the quantity 
instead of the noun described. These and 
many other every-day mistakes are covered in 
the following examples, and in the list given 
in the article Adverb. 

Robert sings good, for Robert sings well. The 
reference is to the action of singing, and a verb 
always demands an adverbial modifier. 

Robert looks badly, for Robert looks bad. 
Looks in this construction is an inactive verb 
expressing Robert’s condition without reference 
to any action. This calls for an adjective in¬ 
stead of an adverb. 

Robert looked close at the specimen, for Rob¬ 
ert looked closely at the specimen. Here the ac¬ 
tion of looking is implied, which necessitates the 
use of the adverb. 

Lavender smells sweetly, for Lavender smells 
sweet. What is meant is that lavender is sweet. 
It does not do any smelling; there is no action, 
therefore the adverb is incorrect. Sweet is used 
as a predicate adjective. 

He was real sick, for He was very sick. Real, 
being an adjective, cannot modify another ad¬ 
jective. Besides, real does not indicate degree. 

A strong cup of coffee, for A cup of strong cof¬ 
fee. The adjective should be placed next to the 
word it modifies. It is the coffee that is strong, 
not the cup. 

The four first volumes, for The first four vol¬ 
umes. Only one can be “first,” therefore there 
cannot be “four firfet.” The expression first four 
considers the volumes as a group or unit. 

You have grown considerable, for You have 
grown considerably. The adjective considerable 
cannot be used to modify the verb have grown; 
the adverb must be used. 

I am afraid I can’t locate the passage, for I 
fear I can’t locate the passage. It is correct to 
say I am afraid, meaning I am frightened; but 
it is not correct to use the adjective with a fol- 


ADMINISTRATOR 


ADJECTIVE 56 


lowing objective phrase. This construction de¬ 
mands a transitive verb. 

Apples are healthy, for Apples are healthful. 
There is such a thing as a healthy apple, mean¬ 
ing an apple that is sound and good to the core, 
but the idea here intended is that a diet of 
apples will impart health, a meaning that is con¬ 
veyed by the adjective healthful. 

Of two evils choose the least, for Of two evils 
choose the less. This old proverb is generally in¬ 
correctly quoted. Where only two things are 
compared the superlative form of the adjective is 
illogical. 

Most all the members were present, for Almost 
all the members were present. Most, being an 
adjective, cannot be employed as an adverb. 
Whenever nearly can be substituted, almost is 
the correct word to use. 

I have received your last picture, for I have 
received your latest picture. It is not the last 
picture unless the subject is dying or has regis¬ 
tered a solemn vow never again to sit for a 
photograph. 

He is a new beginner, for He is a beginner. 
The adjective new is superfluous because the idea 
is bound up in the very meaning of beginner. 

He is bound to go abroad, for He is determined 
to go abroad. The first form is only correct in 
the event that he is really bound by oath or con¬ 
tract to make the trip. 

There were no less than thirty present, for 
There were no fewer than thirty present. Less 
is used for quantity, fewer for number, and 
where individuals rather than masses are implied, 
the latter is the proper adjective. 

She is a nice girl, for She is a charming or 
pleasant girl. Nice conveys the idea of pre¬ 
cision, as, nice distinctions, nice choice of lan¬ 
guage, and the like. 

It is a universal, world-wide custom, for It is 
a universal custom, or It is a world-wide custom. 
Since the two adjectives convey the same mean¬ 
ing, one is redundant. This tendency to use 
superfluous adjectives is illustrated in such com¬ 
mon phrases as rich millionaire, two twins, 
habitual habit, verdant green, and others of the 
same brand of wordiness. 

Awful, horrible, frightful, mad, grand, gor¬ 
geous, elegant, splendid and others, carelessly 
used in everyday speech for less significant 
words. Care should be taken to avoid extrava¬ 
gant and inaccurate adjectives, since aptness is 
an essential of forceful language. l.m.b. 

Outline on the Adjective 

1. Definition 

(a) Used with noun or pronoun 

(b) Limits or modifies meaning 

2. Classes of adjectives 

(a) Descriptive 

(b) Limiting 

3. Positions and order 

(a) Modifying a noun 

(b) Modifying a pronoun 

4. Comparison of adjectives 

(a) By endings 

(b) By adverbs 

(c) Irregular comparison 

(d) Adjectives not admitting of comparison 

5. Parsing the adjective 

6 . Common errors 


AD'JUTANT, a military officer, usually with 
rank of captain, appointed to assist the com¬ 
manding officer in the discipline and training 
of his troops, and in the general administration 
of regimental affairs. In the United States 
army, regimental adjutants are appointed for 
four years. 


Adjutant, the bird, is a species of stork, and 
derives its name from its dignified poses, which 
are supposed to resemble the strutting and 
pompous airs of a self-important young army 
officer. The adjutant bird is not found in 
Europe or Amer¬ 
ica, but is com¬ 
mon in India, the 
East Indies and 
other parts of 
Southeastern 
Asia. It stands 
about five feet 
high, and its out¬ 
spread wings 
measure about 
five feet from tip 
to tip. The body 
is white, but the 
neck is flesh-col¬ 
ored, marked 
with black, and 
the wings and 
back are slate- 
gray in color. The 
bill and the neck are both long and seem 
almost too large for the body. The adjutant 
bird feeds on small insects, and is particularly 
fond of fresh meat, but also eats offal and the 
flesh of animals which have been dead a long 
time. It is an efficient scavanger, a character¬ 
istic which has led the government of India 
to protect it from hunters who seek it for its 
feathers. These are called marabou feathers 
in commerce, and resemble those of the true 
marabou (which see). 

ADME'TUS, in mythology, the husband of 
Alcestis (which see). 



THE ADJUTANT 


ADMIN 'ISTRATOR, a person chosen by a 
probate court to take charge of the property 
of a person who has died without leaving a 
will, or who has not named anyone as his 
executor. The closest blood relatives are given 
preference in the appointment of administra¬ 
tors, and creditors have the next right to con¬ 
sideration. In all his acts the administrator 
is responsible to the court for faithful per¬ 
formance of his duties. When a foreigner dies 
without leaving a will, the consul from his 














ADMIRAL 


57 


ADMIRALTY 


country usually acts as administrator. The 
duties of an administrator are stated in a bond, 
for which he must offer security. 

AD'MIRAL, the office of highest rank in 
the naval establishment of a country, except 
in England and Germany, where the admiral 
of the fleet has higher dignity. In the navies 
of all countries there are three grades in this 
office, admiral, vice-admiral, and rear-admiral. 
In the United States navy, however, the rank 
of rear-admiral is now the highest permanent 
rank an officer can ordinarily attain. The rank 
of admiral is given temporarily to the officers 
in command of the Atlantic, the Pacific and 
the Asiatic fleets; when they retire from the 
chief commands they resume their personal 
rank as rear-admirals. The rank of vice- 
admiral is given temporarily to the officers 
second in command of these fleets, but here 
again it belongs to them not personally but 
only by virtue of office. The admirals and 
vice-admirals are chosen by the President from 
the number of rear-admirals, varying from 
fifteen to twenty-five, on the active list. At 
the age of sixty-two years all officers are re¬ 
leased from active service and are placed on 
the retired list. Rear-admirals are chosen from 
the list of captains, for the intervening rank 
of commodore has been abolished. 

Until 1915, when the present system was 
adopted, only two men, David Glasgow Far- 
ragut and David D. Porter, had ever held the 
rank of admiral in the United States navy. 
The special rank of admiral of the navy , a 
unique distinction among the navies of the 
world, was created in 1898 for George Dewey, 
but this is not likely to be a permanent 
feature in the United States naval establish¬ 
ment. Until 1915 no man had held the rank 
of vice-admiral since the death of Stephen 
Rowan in 1900. 

The admiral of the navy receives $13,500 
per year; an admiral receives $10,000 and his 
rank compares with a general in the army; 
a vice-admiral ($9,000) ranks with a lieu¬ 
tenant-general, and the rear-admirals ($8,000) 
rank with major-generals. In addition to their 
salaries these officers receive small allowances, 
according to their rank, to provide for ex¬ 
penses. The officers of the United States navy 
receive higher salaries than the corresponding 
ranks in any other nation in the world. The 
British admiral receives $8,881; the French, 
$7,850; the German, $7,611; the Russian, 
$9,660; the Japanese, $2,988; the Italian, $3,474. 
See Rank in Army and Navy. e.d.f. 


AD'MIRALTY, in Great Britain, the depart¬ 
ment of government which is responsible for 
the management of the British navy. The 
powers of the admiralty correspond roughly 
to those of the Department of the Navy at 
Washington for the United States, or of the 
Naval Service at Ottawa, for the Dominion of 
Canada. These powers are exercised by a 
board, comprising five lords commissioners of 
the admiralty. Two of the commissioners are 
civil or political lords, while the other three 
are naval, or sea, lords. 

In theory these five men as a body decide 
all important questions, but in fact the re¬ 
sponsibility, and usually the decision, rests on 
the first lord, who is always a Cabinet minister. 
Winston Spencer Churchill and Arthur James 
Balfour are the best known of the men who 
have recently held this office. The first lord, 
like the other Cabinet members, is responsible 
to Parliament; and all the lords resign if the 
Prime Minister resigns. The first lord has gen¬ 
eral supervisory control, including also the 
management of finance, appointments and pro¬ 
motions. Fie is assisted by the junior civil 
lord, who attends to the accounts, the naval 
schools and hospitals and other details. 

The actual control of the fleet is in the 
hands of the three naval lords, the first of whom 
is the active commander-in-chief on the sea. 
He manages the arrangement and distribution 
of the fleet, issues general orders, and is gen¬ 
erally responsible for discipline and manage¬ 
ment. The second naval lord is responsible 
for the armament, marine artillery and allied 
branches, while the third lord is charged with 
the duty of securing stores and supplies. 

Admiralty Law. This term is applied to 
the special body of law relating to ships and 
shipping. It takes its name from the fact 
that all disputes relating to maritime transac¬ 
tions were originally settled by the lord high 
admiral of the navy. It relates chiefly to such 
matters as actions to recover possession of a 
ship, actions for damages to shipping, salvage 
cases and assaults on the high seas. 

The laws and procedure generally follow the 
practice of the common law, but are adminis¬ 
tered by special courts. In England the ad¬ 
miralty division is a part of the supreme court 
of judicature. In Canada the functions of an 
admiralty court were first exercised by the 
Supreme Court, but are now held by the 
Dominion Exchequer Court and a number of 
local or district judges in admiralty (for fur¬ 
ther details see Canada, subtitle Government ). 


ADMIRALTY ISLAND 


58 


ADOLESCENCE 


In the United States all admiralty cases are 
heard first in the Federal district courts, and 
appeal may be taken to the Circuit Court of 
Appeals and to the Supreme Court. w.f.z. 

AD'MIRALTY ISLAND, an Alaskan island, 
80 miles long, located south of the capital city 
of Juneau. It runs nearly parallel with the 
mainland, from which it is separated by a nar¬ 
row channel. It is covered with excellent tim¬ 
ber, and is well watered. The few inhabitants 
are Indians and Eskimos. 

ADOBE, ado' bee, a word of Spanish origin, 
applied to unburnt, sun-dried bricks used in 
the arid regions of Mexico and the Southwest 
United States, and also to the peculiar clayey 
soil from which they are made. When moist, 
the soil is very plastic and can be moulded into 
any shape, but when dry, adobe is almost 
unbreakable. This characteristic was recog¬ 
nized by the aborigines at an early date, and 
they not only made bowls, pitchers and other 
vessels from it, but shaped the muddy clay into 
bricks, which they laid out to dry in the sun. 
Adobe houses are common in Mexico and 
Arizona, even to-day. As they are cheap and 
easy to construct, they are used chiefly by 
the Mexicans and Indians, but many white 
people, who could afford other building ma¬ 
terial, prefer them because they are always 
cool, even in the hottest weather. 

The process of making adobe bricks is sim¬ 
ple. The wet adobe is shaped into bricks of 
various sizes, which are then baked by expos¬ 
ing them to the sun for ten days or two weeks. 
During this time they are turned every day. 
Bricks made in the same way were used by 
the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians, and 
were made by the children of Israel during 
their enslavement in Egypt. 

ADOLESCENCE, adoles' ents, the state or 
process of growing from childhood to manhood 
and womanhood. The term comes from a 
Latin word meaning to grow up. In law ado¬ 
lescence covers the period between the ages 
of fourteen and twenty-one years for boys, 
and between twelve and twenty-one for girls. 
During these years body and mind undergo 
important changes which may be classified as 
physical, intellectual, social and moral. In 
considering these changes one must remember 
that there is no distinct dividing line between 
childhood and adolescence—one period grad¬ 
ually and, so far as the child is concerned, 
unconsciously merges into the other. 

Physical Changes. Bones and Muscles. In 
most children early adolescence is character¬ 


ized by rapid growth of the bones and muscles, 
and the youth seems to grow tall .over night. 
Because of this rapid growth, the muscles are 
soft and pliable, and can readily acquire any 
new movement. On the other hand, because 
of this immaturity they become fatigued with 
comparatively little exercise. The nerves do 
not develop as rapidly as the muscles and the 
youth finds it difficult, if not impossible, to 
gain complete command over his movements. 
For this reason the period of early adolescence 
is often called the “awkward age.” The youth 
is “all arms and legs,” and he does not know 
what to do with them. This awkwardness 
makes the youth extremely self-conscious, and 
any reference to his condition or movements 
is keenly felt and resented. Many a man and 
woman has incurred the lasting ill-will of a 
boy or girl by this sort of criticism. 

Internal Development. The development of 
the internal organs is more marked than that 
of the bones and muscles and its influence ex¬ 
tends to the intellectual and moral life. These 
changes are accompanied by extraordinar 3 r 
nervous excitement and pressure, and the sys¬ 
tem, like a pent-up volcano, is surcharged with 
energy that must find an outlet. Unless such 
an outlet is found along right channels, it may 
find an escape through avenues that lead to 
viciousness. 

Mental Conditions. From twelve to fourteen 
in girls and from thirteen to fifteen in boys the 
powers of observation develop rapidly, memory 
achieves its highest activity and imagination 
reaches its normal stage, becoming very active 
in the fifteenth and sixteenth years. Judgment 
rapidly gains strength and reason begins to 
assume its sway. 

In the stress and strain incident upon the 
development of the reproductive organs are 
born passions which the youth is often scarcely 
able to control. The selfish or self-centering 
feelings usually reach their height and begin 
to decline in the sixteenth year. Love of 
excitement is strong, and the individual will 
put forth the utmost energy in following those 
lines of activity which appeal most strongly 
to him. This is the age of “crazes” and we 
find the “reading craze,” the “collecting craze” 
and numerous others particularly prominent. 
These are perilous years because passions are 
strong and the moral will is weak. 

Moral Conditions. The moral judgment is 
influenced more largely by the custom of the 
group, by the standards established by pre¬ 
vious training, and by the feelings than it is 


ADOLESCENCE 


59 


ADRIAN 


by reason. This is the impulsive age, and the 
youth is prone to make moral decisions, which, 
after more careful consideration, he may regret. 
Self-hood is strongly assertive, and the youth 
keenly resents being treated as a child. It is 
difficult for parents to realize that their chil¬ 
dren have grown up, but failure to accept this 
fact and treat the youth accordingly is the 
source of many a heartache to fathers and 
mothers in after years. 

During early adolescence the moral judg¬ 
ment of others is severe. From lack of expe¬ 
rience the youth has little sympathy and he 
sees nothing lying between the breaking of 
a law and the punishment that should follow. 
He is equally severe in his judgment upon him¬ 
self and often sees an impassable gulf yawning 
between himself and his ideals. Fortunately, 
however, his courage is good and his ambition 
unfaltering and he gradually overcomes the 
seeming obstacles that beset his pathway. A 
word of encouragement from his parents and 
teachers now and then is a great incentive* to 
the youth of tender age. 

Social Instincts. The youth has a strong 
desire for the companionship of those of his 
own age, and this desire lies at the foundation 
of the large number of boys’ and girls’ organi¬ 
zations. The best of these organizations when 
directed by a person who is in sympathy with 
their purpose are beneficial. See Audubon So¬ 
ciety; Boy Scouts; Camp Fire Girls. Unless 
organizations of this sort are provided, boys 
especially are liable to form “gangs” whose 
influence over their members may be anything 
but beneficial. 

During early adolescence boys’ and girls’ in¬ 
terests are separate, and they work better in 
separate organizations, but after sixteen they 
usually enjoy working together along lines in 
which their tastes are similar. In games and 
sports boys prefer those that are more strongly 
athletic than girls enjoy. Boys like to play ball, 
wrestle, swim, hunt and fish. Girls prefer 
indoor games and outdoor games not requiring 
severe exertion. 

The Awakening. Youth is the time of high 
ideals, lofty aspirations, and boundless ambi¬ 
tion. During this period most of the habits of 
life become fixed and vocations are chosen. 
It is a time of day-dreaming and castle-build¬ 
ing, but, notwithstanding all the difficulties in 
the way, as surely as day follows day and one 
year succeeds another, just so surely will the 
time of awakening come to every boy and girl. 
It may come gradually, like the dawn; it may 


appear suddenly, like a burst of sunshine 
through a rift in the clouds, but come it will. 
It is the time of regeneration when all things 
take on a new significance. The view of life 
broadens; experiences deepen; some great ideal 
is selected, the following of which becomes a 
life purpose. The dauntless youth takes a far 
look into the future and sets forth upon life’s 
journey with a zeal and energy that knows no 
defeat. w.f.r. 

Consult G. Stanley Hall’s Youth: Its Educa¬ 
tional Requirements and Hygiene; Ellis’s Psy¬ 
chology of Sex. 

ADONIS, ado' nis, a genus of plants, so 
named because one species, the pheasant’s eye, 
has bright scarlet petals which legend declares 
to have been stained by the blood of the beau¬ 
tiful youth Adonis (see below). Some of the 
species, which are native to Europe, have been 
naturalized in the United States and Southern 
Canada, where they are cultivated as garden 
plants. They belong to the same botanical 
family as the buttercup. 

Adonis, in Greek mythology, was a beautiful 
youth loved by Venus. This goddess, refusing 
to be consoled after his death, begged Proser¬ 
pina to let him return to the earth from the 
lower world. The goddess of the lower regions 
at length consented that the boy should live 
eight months of each year on earth. This was 
one of the myths of the seasons, Adonis’ 
months on earth representing the spring, sum¬ 
mer and early autumn, his months below the 
ground the gloomy winter. Another myth re¬ 
lating to the seasons is given in the article 
Proserpina. The myth of Adonis is of Phoeni¬ 
cian origin. 

ADOPTION, adop' shun, in law, is the legal 
act of taking into the family a child, upon 
whom are conferred all the privileges belong¬ 
ing to a child born in wedlock. All of the 
American states and Canadian provinces have 
statutes governing the adoption of children, as 
have also most of the countries of Europe. 
An adoption is not legal in the sense of con¬ 
ferring upon the adopted person rights of in¬ 
heritance unless these statutes have been 
strictly complied with. 

ADRIAN, a' drian, a name borne by six 
popes, the most noteworthy of whom were 
Adrian IV and Adrian VI. 

Adrian IV, pope from 1154 to 1159, was an 
Englishman—the only man of that nationality 
who ever occupied the Papal chair. His name 
originally was Nicholas Brakspere, and he was 
born about 1100. When but a boy he entered 


ADRIAN 


60 


ADRIATIC SEA 


a monastery in France as a servant, and 
remained in the same monastery until, in 1137, 
he became its abbot. In 1146 he was made 
cardinal-bishop of Albano, and eight years 
later was made Pope, despite the protests of 
the Italians. It was he who bestowed Ireland 
on the English king, Henry II, and who began 
that long struggle with the Hohenstaufen 
emperors which formed one of the most per¬ 
plexing chapters of medieval history. 

Adrian VI became Pope in 1522, and set him¬ 
self at once to right abuses which had crept 
into the Church. His rule was unpopular, but 
even his enemies could not refuse him their 
respect, and he might have accomplished much 
had he not died before he had been two years 
in his high office. 

ADRIAN, Mich., the county seat of Lenawee 
County, is noted principally for the manu¬ 
facture of woven wire fences. It is situated on 
the Raisin River, in the southeastern part of 
the state. Toledo is thirty-three miles south¬ 
east, Detroit is sixty miles northeast, and Chi¬ 
cago is 210 miles west. Railway transporta¬ 
tion is provided by the Detroit, Toledo & 
Ironton, New York Central and Wabash, rail¬ 
roads and the Toledo & Western electric line. 
Adrian was founded in 1825, was incorporated 
as a village in 1828 and as a city in 1850. It 
was named in honor of the Roman Emperor 
Hadrian. In 1914 the commission form of 
government was adopted. The population in¬ 
creased from 10,763 in 1910 to 11,234 in 1914, 
Germans and Irish forming the greater part 
of the small foreign element. The area exceeds 
four square miles. 

Adrian is the pioneer city in the United 
States in the woven-wire fence industry. Six 
mills are engaged in making this product; the 
largest employs 1,200 men and has its wire 
mills at Monessen, Pa. In addition to these 
it has manufactories of automobiles, pianos, 
organs, furniture and electrical supplies. It is 
also a shipping point for grain, fruit and dairy 
products. The city has a Federal building, a 
Y. M. C. A. building and a city hall. Besides 
its public schools and a public library with 
20,000 volumes, there are Adrian College 
(Methodist Protestant), Saint Joseph’s Acad¬ 
emy and the State Industrial Home for Girls, 
for the correction of female offenders between 
the ages of ten and seventeen. To its beauti¬ 
fully shaded streets the city owes the name 
The Maple City , by which it is locally known. 

ADRIANO 'PLE, a fortified city and im¬ 
portant military post in the northeastern part 


of European Turkey. It is 137 miles by rail 
west and north of Constantinople, at the junc¬ 
tion of three navigable rivers, the Maritza, 
Arda and Tunja. Adrianople was founded on 
the ruins of an ancient Thracian city by the 
emperor Hadrian (A. D. 76-138), and was the 
capital of the Ottoman Empire from 1361 to 
1453. In 1829 a treaty was signed here by 
Russia and Turkey in which the former agreed 
to acknowledge the independence of Greece. 
During the Balkan War the city was besieged 
by the Bulgarians and Serbians for six months 
and surrendered on March 27, 1913, but on 
July 21 of the same year it was recaptured. 
The chief buildings are a great mosque, a 
palace now in ruins, inns, churches, schools 
and two splendid bazaars. The manufactures 
are silk, woolen and cotton stuffs, attar of roses 
and leathers. Population, about 80,000. 

ADRIAT'IC SEA, an arm of the Mediter¬ 
ranean, stretching in a northwesterly direction 
from the Straits of Otranto, along the eastern 
coast of Italy. Its length is about 480 miles, 
its average breadth about 100 miles, and its 



’Tis sweet to hear, 

At midnight on the blue and moonlit deep, 

The song and oar of Adria’s gondolier, 

By distance mellowed, o’er the waters sweep. 

—Byron. 

area about 60,000 square miles. In the north 
it forms the Gulf of Venice, on which is 
Venice, the city on the sea. In the northeast 
is the Gulf of Triest. Formerly the Adriatic 
was the highway of an extensive commerce of 
the medieval cities and those of the early mod¬ 
ern period. To-day it is of little importance 
commercially, and since the War of the Na¬ 
tions began in 1914 has been largely under 
the political control of Italy. 





ADULTERATION 


61 


ADULTERATION 


ADULTERATION OF FOODSTUFFS AND 
CLOTHING. Foods serve two main functions 
in the human body. In the first place, the 
body structure, such as bone, muscle, skin, 
blood, etc., must be built up from the food 
which is consumed. The food must therefore 
not only contain all the elements found in the 
body, but these elements must be present in 
the food in sufficient quantity to supply the 
needs of the body. 

Among the peoples subsisting largely on rice 
a disease known as beri beri has been shown to 
be due to the consumption of polished rather 
than unpolished rice. When the thin outer 
coating of rice is removed, a considerable per¬ 
centage of the nitrogen and especially of the 
phosphorus present in the grain is removed. 
The absence of a sufficient quantity of these 
elements in the diet produces the disease. 
When unpolished rice or other food, such as 
fish, containing these elements in abundance, 
is consumed, health returns. 

There is a great deal of evidence to show T 
that the poor teeth of many people is due to 
the consumption of refined foods from which 
the coarser portions containing the mineral 
constituents necessary for the growth of the 
teeth have been removed. Aenemic conditions 
are due to the lack of iron compounds which 
are present in large quantities in green vege¬ 
tables. 

These elements must also be combined with 
each other in the food, forming certain definite 
chemical compounds in order to be available 
as food for the human system. 

Foods. Energy Furnished by Food. In the 
second place, the food must furnish the energy 
which is required by the body to carry on its 
varied activities. This includes not only the 
external activities, such as walking or physical 
labor, but also the internal activities, such as 
breathing, the circulation of the blood, diges¬ 
tion, etc. For the average man the internal 
activities consume about twice as much energy 
as the external activities. Energy must also 
be constantly supplied to compensate for that 
given out as heat, because it is necessary to 
maintain the body temperature at the normal 
point of 98 V 2 0 . 

During muscular activity of any kind about 
two-thirds of the total amount of energy ex¬ 
pended is given out as heat and only about 
one-third as mechanical energy. For this 
reason a physicalty-active person becomes too 
warm and the excess of heat must be removed, 
which is accomplished by the evaporation of 


perspiration from the skin. The heat must 
force the blood to the surface of the body in 
order to cool it. The energy for all of these 
activities must be furnished by the food. For 
adults this is the most important function of 
food. The nutritive value of food depends 
therefore upon the amount of energy which it 
contains as well as upon the presence of con¬ 
stituents which serve to build up the tissues 
of the body. If the nutritive value of food has 
been reduced in any way the food has been 
adulterated. Many staple foods are at times 
adulterated in this manner. 

Condimental Foods. The flavor and appear¬ 
ance of foods are also important because these 
qualities add to the digestibility of foods. In¬ 
deed, many foods are used only for the agree¬ 
able odor or taste which they impart to other 
foods. This is especially true of spices. The 
flavor of foods is very largely influenced by 
the climate in which they are grown, as well 
as the method of cultivation and preparation 
for the market. For this reason it is illegal 
to sell a food represented as having been pro¬ 
duced in a given country or locality when it 
has been grown or produced elsewhere. Flavor¬ 
ing or coloring an article of food so as to make 
it appear better is also illegal and fraudulent, 
unless this fact is stated on the label, that all 
may read the truth. 

Preservatives. The addition of a poisonous 
ingredient to foods, no matter in how small 
quantity, is also illegal and is classed as adul¬ 
teration. It is seldom that highly poisonous 
substances are added to foods except in minute 
quantities, but many substances which injure 
the health have been added in small quanti¬ 
ties as preservatives or coloring matter. The 
addition of preservatives is objectionable, even 
though the preservative itself is harmless, be¬ 
cause in many cases the preserved food is 
inferior to fresh food in flavor, digestibility, 
nutritive value or wholesomeness. While most 
preservatives have been found to be poisonous 
substances, benzoate of soda has been found 
to have no bad effect when taken with foods 
in the amounts necessary for their preserva¬ 
tion; but under commercial conditions foods 
prepared with this or other preservatives are 
inferior to foods to which preservatives have 
not been added. 

Artificial Coloring of Foods. Coloring mat¬ 
ter, aniline dyes or vegetable coloring matter 
are frequently added to foods. This is done 
for two distinct purposes—to improve the 
appearance of natural foods or to enable an 


ADULTERATION 


62 


ADULTERATION 


artificial product to be sold as a natural product. 
For instance, pure butter is frequently colored 
because most people prefer yellow to white 
butter; on the other hand, artificial butter, 
such as oleomargarine, is often colored so that 
it may be sold as butter. The latter use of 
coloring matter is fraudulent, while the former 
is considered legitimate if the coloring matter 
is harmless. (See subheading Butter and Its 
Substitutes, below.) 

A considerable number of vegetable dyes 
are known which are entirely harmless. As the 
result of a careful investigation made by the 
United States Department of Agriculture, it 
was found that there are seven aniline dyes 
which are entirely harmless w r hen pure. Any 
desired color may be produced by some one 
of these dyes or a combination of two or 
more of them. However, unless these dyes 
are manufactured with great care, poisonous 
substances, such as other dyes or arsenic, will 
be present. For this reason when these dyes 
are to be used in foods they are tested by the 
government and a certificate is given that the 
lot tested is pure. Such tested dyes are known 
as certified dyes, and may be used in foods 
where there is no intention to deceive. 

It is also illegal to sell the flesh of diseased 
animals, decayed or decomposed fruits or 
vegetables. To guard against such sales, foods 
are inspected by national or local health 
officers. 

Milk. Milk owes its value as a food to the 
presence of butter fat, casein, milk sugar and 
mineral matter. It is adulterated when the 
fat has been removed as cream or when it 
has been diluted by the addition of water. 
Most civilized countries have passed laws speci¬ 
fying the percentage of fat and water which 
must be present in milk which may be sold. 
Usually not less than three or three and one- 
half per cent of fat is required, and not more 
than eighty-seven or eight-seven and one-half 
per cent of water may be present in milk. 
Generally thin milk is produced by skimming 
or watering, but occasionally cows are found 
which naturally produce milk with less fat 
than required by law. The sale of such milk 
is illegal. The addition of a chemical pre¬ 
servative such as formaldehyde or borax is also 
illegal. The greatest danger from the con¬ 
sumption of milk arises from the presence of 
disease germs such as the tuberculosis, typhoid 
or diphtheria germs. Milk produced with the 
best known precautions against the entrance 
of these germs is known as certified milk. 


Butter and Its Substitutes. Pure butter must 
not contain an excessive amount of water due 
to the addition of a large amount of salt. It 
may be colored with a harmless dye. An 
inferior grade of butter known as renovated or 
process butter is prepared from rancid or 
inferior butter. Renovated butter is whole¬ 
some, but it is inferior to good creamery but¬ 
ter and should be sold as such. 

Oleomargarine is an artificial substitute for 
butter which is manufactured from various 
animal and vegetable fats, to which some 
milk has been added. There is therefore always 
present in oleomargarine some true butter fat. 
While wholesome and nutritious, oleomargarine 
is inferior in flavor and probably in digesti¬ 
bility to butter, and it is therefore illegal to 
sell it as such. If it is colored yellow it is 
difficult to distinguish it by appearance, taste 
or odor from butter. See Oleomargarine. 

A number of other substitutes for butter 
have been developed; most of these are com¬ 
pounded from vegetable oils. This has been 
rendered possible by the development of a 
process known as hydrogenation of oils, by 
which oils are converted into solid fats. The 
vegetable oils are quite as wholesome and 
nutritious as the animal fats and are consid- 
erabty cheaper, but are not suitable for culinary 
use because they are not solid. The hydro¬ 
genated oils are excellent substitutes for lard 
and butter for cooking purposes. These fats 
are excellent foods, and their sale is entirely 
legitimate if sold for what they are. 

Oils. Olive oil is the choicest of the vege¬ 
table oils and has been used as food for cen¬ 
turies. • Many other vegetable oils are quite 
as nutritious and wholesome, but are not 
equal to olive oil in flavor. Olive oil is the 
most expensive of these vegetable oils, and for 
this reason other oils are at times mixed with 
it or substituted for it. In the United States 
cotton seed oil (which see) is the most largely- 
produced vegetable oil. The most common 
adulterant of the olive oil sold in the United 
States and Canada is cotton seed oil. See 
Olive Oil. 

Meats. Meats and meat products are at 
times subjected to adulteration by the addition 
of preservatives, borax and sulphite of soda 
being commonly used for this purpose. Sul¬ 
phite of soda gives a bright red color to meat 
which is decomposed and unfit for consump¬ 
tion. If the preservative were not added the 
odor and appearance of the meat would give 
evidence of its condition. 


ADULTERATION 


63 


ADULTERATION 


Fruit Preserves. Jellies, jams and preserved 
fruits have been subjected to a great deal of 
adulteration. Glucose or corn syrup has been 
used instead of sugar. This reduces the sweet¬ 
ness of the food, but does not affect its nutri¬ 
tive value or wholesomeness and prevents 
crystallization of the sugar. The fruit or fruit 
juice being the most expensive ingredient, it 
is replaced by artificial flavoring and coloring 
matter. In some cases the fruit pulp from 
which the juice has been extracted is used for 
the manufacture of jams, artificial flavoring 
and coloring matter being added. Preserva¬ 
tives are added to avoid the prolonged and 
expensive heating necessary for sterilization. 

Flavoring Extracts and Spices. Imitation 
flavoring extracts are very largely sold. This 
is especially true of vanilla, as the vanilla bean 
is very expensive. Ground spices have been 
adulterated by the admixture of a great variety 
of ground material, such as nut shells, sawdust, 


The linen fibre is longer, has a somewhat more 
silky appearance than the cotton fibre and is 
therefore considered more valuable, although 
in some European countries where linen is 
the cheaper, the substitution of linen for cot¬ 
ton is considered adulteration. See Cotton; 
Flax. 

Wool. Wool is produced from a great many 
species of sheep and goats, and its fibre differs 
very largely in length and texture, depending 
upon the locality and the animal from which 
it is produced. Cloth may be “all wool” and 
yet be of very inferior grade as compared with 
cloth made from a better quality of wool; so 
one piece of cloth may be worth several times 
as much as another, both of which are “all 
wool.” 

The amount of wool produced is sufficient 
to supply only about one-tenth of the demand 
for clothing. For this reason the wool in cast¬ 
off garments is used over again. Processes have 



TYPICAL FIBRES, MUCH ENLARGED 
Linen Silk Cotton Wool 


etc. In some cases, such as cloves and ginger 
root, the exhausted spice is sold from which 
the flavoring matter has been extracted. 

Candies. A great variety of ingredients may 
be legitimately used in candies. Glucose is a 
perfectly wholesome and nutritious substitute 
for sugar. At times poisonous coloring matter 
has been used, but in recent years only the 
pure certified dyes have been commonly em¬ 
ployed. The excessive consumption of candy 
is probably more injurious than any ingredient 
present in it. 

Clothing. Cotton and Linen. The fibres 
used in the manufacture of clothing are cotton, 
linen, silk and wool. The cheapest of these is 
cotton, and for this reason cotton is used as 
the adulterant of the other fibres. Cotton and 
linen are vegetable fibres, and are very similar 
to each other. The cotton fibre is obtained 
from the seed pods of the cotton plant, while 
the linen fibre is obtained from the stems of the 
flax plant. The latter is cultivated both for the 
fibre and the seed, which is known as linseed. 


been developed by which the wool in an old 
garment is separated from the, cotton or other 
fibres present, cleaned, carded and again spun 
into yarn. This second-hand woolen fibre is 
called shoddy. It is but little inferior to the 
particular grade of wool which it originally 
constituted. Shoddy produced from cloth made 
of a high grade of wool of long fibre is far 
superior to a low grade wool of short fibre. 
The excellence of woolen cloth does not depend 
so much on whether shoddy or new wool has 
been used in its manufacture as upon the 
length and texture of the fibres of the wool 
or shoddy employed. See Wool. 

Silk. Silk is the fibre of which the silkworm 
forms his cocoon. This worm spins a contin¬ 
uous thread composed of two strands which 
is wound into a cocoon by the movements of 
the worm. The fibre is solid and therefore has 
a gloss which is far superior to that of the 
vegetable fibres or wool, which are hollow and 
flat. By a chemical process the cotton fibres 
may be so changed as to give a gloss somewhat 





















ADVENTISTS 


64 


ADVERB 


similar to that of silk. This is known as 
mercerized cotton. Artificial fibres have also 
been produced by chemical means which have 
a gloss equal or even superior to silk in wear¬ 
ing qualities. This quality of material is being 
very largely manufactured and will no doubt 
largely replace the use of natural silk, but it 
should not be sold as natural silk. 

Aside from this substitution of artificial for 
natural silk, the latter is subjected to a process 
of loading which if carried to excess is objec¬ 
tionable. Natural silk in its raw state is 
covered with a gummy substance which gives 
it a harsh feeling and a yellow, unsightly ap¬ 
pearance. When this material is removed by 
washing the skeins of silk, about four ounces is 
lost per pound of silk. The fibre is then 
brought back to its original weight by the 
deposition of tin phosphate. The tin used for 
this purpose is obtained by detinning tin cans 
and other waste tin scrap. Silk fibre may be 
so “loaded” with this tin that the original 
pound of fibre may become almost double that 
weight. Such silk feels heavy but does not wear 
well. This excessive loading must be con¬ 
sidered adulteration. See Silk. j.c.o. 

See, also, the article Pure Food Laws. Consult 
Olson’s Foods and Their Adulteration; Wiley, 
Richardson, Crampton & Spencer’s Foods; and 
Food Adulterants by the same authors. 

AD' VENTISTS, several religious sects 
which, accepting the general doctrines of Chris¬ 
tianity, expect that Christ will soon reappear 
in person and bring the world to an end. Be¬ 
lief in such a second coming existed before the 
nineteenth century, for there was a general 
expectation throughout Europe that the world 
would be brought to an end in the year 1000, 
and preachers have arisen at intervals ever 
since, declaring that the coming of Christ was 
at hand. However, the sects known as Ad¬ 
ventists all arose from the preaching of Wil¬ 
liam Miller, who began in 1831 to prophesy the 
end of the world and the establishment of 


tians, who number about 26,800, have over 600 
churches and sustain foreign missions in Eng¬ 
land and in Asiatic countries. The World’s 
Crisis is their leading publication. The largest 
sect of Adventists dates from a meeting held 
at Washington, New Hampshire, in 1845. See 
Seventh-Day Adventists. 

ADVERB. The part of speech known as the 
adverb performs for the verb the same office 
that the adjective performs for the noun; it 
limits and modifies its meaning. The verb 
walk, for example, calls up only a general 
image of the action; but add to it the word 
painfully, and immediately the mental picture 
assumes definiteness. The word adverb comes 


from the Latin and signifies joined to a verb, 
but an adverb may also be used to modif}' an 
adjective or another adverb. 

Classes of Adverbs. Adverbs are classified 
(1) as to their use in the sentence, and (2) as 
to their inherent meaning, without regard to 
the special work they perform. From the 
standpoint of use there are three classes: 


1. Simple adverbs, used merely to modify ; as, 
He left abruptly; She spoke lovingly. These are 
derived chiefly from adjectives and participles by 

i the addition of the sufflx ly. 

2. Conjunctive or relative adverbs, which not 
only modify but also connect the adverbial 
clause with the body of the sentence ; as, I do not 
know when he left. The principal conjunctive 

< adverbs are the following: 


when 

after 

where 

whence 

as 

before 

while 

till 

there 

until 


out 

why 

wherever 

whereby 

wherefore 


3. Interrogative adverbs, which introduce a 
question; as, When did he leave? The most im¬ 
portant of these are: 


when where why how 

From the standpoint of meaning, there are 
six principal classes of adverbs, and two of 
lesser importance: 

1. Adverbs of time, answering the question 
when; as— 


Christ’s kingdom in 1843. He based his belief 
on the Biblical prophecies, having calculated 
that all the signs and wonders which the book 
of Daniel and other books prophesied had 
come to pass. Since the middle of the nine¬ 
teenth century Adventists have simply waited 
for the early appearance of Christ and have 
not tried to fix the date. 

The Adventists are now separated into a 
number of different sects, of which the Church 
of God, the Evangelical Adventists, the Age-to- 
Come Adventists and the Life and Advent 
Union are small and local. The Advent Chris - 


now 

yesterday 
instantly 
now and then 
then 


by and by 
ever and anon 
again 
to-morrow 
still 


before 
afterward 
often 
to-day 
heretofore 

The last three phrases, and others of simi¬ 
lar construction, are sometimes termed phrase 
adverbs. 

2. Adverbs of place, answering the questions 
where, to what place, from what place ; as— 


where 

out 

yonder 

here 

down 

whither 

there 

up 

hither 

anywhere 

away 

everywhere 

back 

whence 

within 

backward 

without 

elsewhere 


ADVERB 


65 


ADVERB 


3. Adverbs of degree, answering the question 
to what extent; as— 


very 

little 

sufficiently 

quite 

much 

last 

too 

more 

least 

exceedingly 

most 

scarcely 

almost 

no 

hardly 

The word the 

is also an 

adverb of degree 


constructions like “The earlier the better,” where 
it precedes the comparative form of the adjective. 


4. Adverbs of manner, answering the question 
how or in what way; as— 


how 

ill 

so 

badly 

thus 

aloud 

well 

quick 

5. Adverbs 

of cause. 

why; as— 



fast 

helpfully 
one by one 
little by little 

answering the question 


why therefore hence 

thus wherefore whence 


6. Adverbs of number, answering the question 
how many; as— 


once twice secondly 

thrice first thirdly 

7. Adverbs of assertion, including the affirma¬ 
tive adverbs yes, yea and aye, and the negative 
adverbs no, nay, not, never. When yes or no 
stands alone it is equivalent to a full sentence 
and is called a sentence adverb. 

8. Modal adverbs, which modify not a single 
word but an entire clause, as in the sentence, 
“Perhaps he cannot find the way.” The follow¬ 
ing are the principal adverbs so used: 

certainly probably nevertheless 

surely possibly consequently 

Comparison of Adverbs. Only the adverbs 
of degree and manner, with a few adverbs of 
time, like soon, often and early, are subject to 
comparison. Like adjectives, these are com¬ 
pared by three different methods: 

Comparison by Adverbs. The most frequent 
method of comparing adverbs is to prefix more 
or less for the comparative and most or least 
for the superlative ; as— , 


POSITIVE COMPARATIVE SUPERLATIVE 

cheerfully more cheerfully most cheerfully 

clearly less clearly least clearly 

Comparison by Endings. A small number of 
adverbs which have the same form as the corre¬ 
sponding adjectives are compared by adding the 
suffix er or est; as— 


POSITIVE 

COMPARATIVE 

SUPERLATIVE 

deep 

deeper 

deepest 

early 

earlier 

earliest 

fast 

faster 

fastest 

hard 

harder 

hardest 

high 

higher 

highest 

long 

longer 

longest 

loud 

louder 

loudest 

often 

oftener 

oftenest 

quick 

quicker 

quickest 

soon 

sooner 

soonest 


Thus, it is correct to say, “He dug deeper ” in¬ 
stead of “He dug more deeply “He sang loud¬ 
est;’ instead of “He sang most loudly ” 


Irregular Comparison. Just as there are some 
adjectives that are compared irregularly, so 
there is a similar list of adverbs ; as— 


POSITIVE 

COMPARATIVE 

SUPERLATIVE 

badly 

worse 

worst 

far 

farther 

farthest 

forth 

further 

furthest 

ill 

worse 

worst 

late 

later _ 

last (latest) 

little 

less 

least 

much 

more 

most 

nigh (near) 

nearer 

next 

well 

better 

best 


Incapable of Comparison. It is evident that 
there can be no comparison in the case of such 
adverbs as here, then, thus, once, yesterday, and 
others of similarly absolute meaning. See Com¬ 
parison. 

Parsing the Adverb. In parsing an adverb 
the three essentials are (1) its classification— 
whether an adverb of time, place, manner, or 
belonging to one of the other groups; (2) its 
degree of comparison, if it can be compared; 
(3) its syntax, defining its function in the 
sentence. 

Type Sentence: We were now slowly approach¬ 
ing a far more pretentious city. 

Now is an adverb of time, modifying the predi¬ 
cate, were approaching; it cannot be compared. 
Slowly is an adverb of manner ; positive degree 
( slowly, more slowly, most slowly) ; used to mod¬ 
ify the predicate, were approaching. Far is an 
adverb of degree; positive degree, irregularly 
compared {far, farther, farthest) ; used to mod¬ 
ify the adverb more. More is an adverb of de¬ 
gree ; comparative degree, irregularly compared 
{much, more, most); used to modify the ad¬ 
jective pretentious. 

Position of the Adverb. The general rule is 
to keep the adverb as close as possible to the 
word it modifies. If we say, “Look at the 
flower you are holding closely,” we convey an 
idea probably not intended. The adverb 
should be placed next to its verb, making the 
sentence read: “Look closely at the flower you 
are holding.” This is particularly important 
in the case of such words as only, almost, 
already, ever, never, and the like. 

Usually the adverb follows the verb; as, “He 
spoke cheerfully.” Certain adverbs of time, 
however, like often, frequently, seldom and 
others, are generally placed before the verb; 
as, “We seldom speak of the matter and never 
refer to it in her presence.” The adverb pre¬ 
cedes a transitive verb in order to avoid sepa¬ 
rating it from its object, unless the sentence is 
very short; as, “He rapidly reviewed the facts 
that had been brought out.” 

Where adverbs of different classes are em¬ 
ployed in the same sentence they should be 
used in the following order: time, place, man- 


ADVERB 


66 


ADVERTISING 


ner; as, “The boat generally gets us here very 
quickly” not, “The boat gets us here generally 
very quickly” The principal adverb is the one 
that denotes time. 

Common Errors. Most of the errors in the 
use of adverbs arise from incorrect placing and 
from the use of adjectives for adverbs or 
adverbs in place of adjectives. The following 
paragraphs embody some of the more frequent 
mistakes; reference should also be made to the 
errors listed under Adjective: 

The class only read one page, for The class 
read only one page. The first construction gives 
the idea that the page was only read —not copied 
or recited upon; whereas the thought intended 
is that the class stopped with the reading of 
that single page. 

I don’t ever remember to have met him before, 
for I don’t remember ever to have met him be¬ 
fore. The ever belongs to the verb to have met, 
not to remember. 

He promised to faithfully stick to his work, 
for He promised to stick faithfully to his work. 
Unless there is a definite advantage to be gained 
from “splitting the infinitive,” there is no object 
in violating the ancient rule that the verb must 
not be separated from its sign, to. 

Is he here already? for Is he already here? 
The adverb of time should precede that of place. 
This impropriety is especially common in the 
speech of Germans just learning the English 
language. 

He felt badly because he had played so poor, 
for He felt bad because he had played so poorly. 
The verbs of the senses—feel, see, hear, smell, 
and the others—are followed by adjectives, not 
by adverbs,, because they describe conditions 
rather than actions. See other examples under 
Adjective. 

You look good, for You look well. Good and 
well are both adjectives, but the latter expresses 
a condition of health, whereas good refers to 
moral character. He looks good is equivalent 
to saying that he looks like a good man. He 
looks well implies that he is in good health. 

They were very excited, for They were very 
much excited; He is a very educated person, for 
He is a very well educated person. It is a rule 
of grammar that the adverb very must never be 
used directly to modify the perfect participle; 
there must be an intervening adverb such as 
much, well or greatly. It can, however, modify 
the present participle ; as, It was very exciting. 

He returned back. He advanced forward. He 
fell down, for He returned. He advanced. He fell. 
The adverbs are superfluous because the idea in 
each case is fully expressed in the verb. 

The orator spoke contemptibly of the policies 
of the administration, for The orator spoke con¬ 
temptuously of the policies of the administration. 
The policies may have been contemptible, but the 
orator treated them with scorn, hence con¬ 
temptuously. 

He pointed out, firstly, that the measure was 
uncalled for, and, secondly, that it was actually 
harmful, for He pointed out, first, that the meas¬ 
ure, etc. Note that first is included in the list 


of adverbs of number and therefore has no need 
of the suffix -ly. 

He didn’t have hardly enough to eat, for He 
didn’t have enough to eat, or He had hardly 
enough to eat. The adverb hardly has the force 
of a negative, and a double negative is equivalent 
to an affirmative. 

This here book has more pictures than that 
there one, for This book has more pictures than 
that one. The adverbs here and there are super¬ 
fluous, since the pointing out is done by the ad¬ 
jective pronouns this and that. 

They go more oftener than I do, for They go 
oftener than I do. More oftener is a double com¬ 
parative and therefore as much to be avoided as 
a double negative. 

I distrust him worse than before, for I distrust 
him more than before. Worse, the comparative 
of badly or ill, should not be used for more. 

L.M.B. 

Outline on the Adverb 

I. Definition 

(a) Used with verb, adjective or adverb 

(b) Limits or modifies 

II. Classes 

(a) As to use 

(b) As to meaning 

III. Comparison of adverbs 

(a) By prefixed adverbs 

(b) By endings 

(c) Irregular comparison 

(d) Incapable of comparison 

IV. Parsing the adverb 

(a) The three essential points 

(b) Type sentence 

V. Position of the adverb 

(a) Following the verb 
1. Exceptions 

(b) Compound tenses and voice 

(c) Precedence in a series 

VI. Common errors 

ADVERTISING, a method for inviting or 
urging the sale or exchange of property or serv¬ 
ice. While any effort to effect a sale or ex¬ 
change is properly called advertising, the word 
is commonly used with a somewhat limited 
meaning. The offer of merchandise for sale, 
such as the advertising of goods by a manu¬ 
facturer or merchant, is the most familiar form. 
The channels for this variety of publicity are 
newspapers, magazines, billboards, electric 
signs, cards in street cars, moving pictures and 
programs. 

By the advertisement of service is not meant 
exclusively the offer of personal service—the 
familiar “help wanted” or “situation wanted”— 
but includes the advertising of railroads, ships, 
political candidates, church services, etc. 

So great has been the investment in adver¬ 
tising that it affords to newspapers and nearly 
all magazines their chief source of income. 
This operates to supply the public with the 
highest form of news service and current litera¬ 
ture at extremely low prices. Were it not for 


ADVERTISING 


67 


ADVERTISING 


advertising revenue to the magazines a publi¬ 
cation now selling at ten cents or fifteen cents 
per copy could not be bought for less than 
twenty-five cents, and in many cases fifty cents. 
Some magazines now reach the reader for a 
less sum than the cost of the blank paper used 
in their manufacture. A great metropolitan 
Sunday newspaper sells for five cents, and 
nearly always the paper on which each copy 
is printed costs more than that sum. 

The growth of advertising as measured by 
expenditure has been rapid in recent years. 
It has made the most notable advance in the 
United States, which leads all other countries 
of the world, with an annual expenditure esti¬ 
mated at $700,000,000. In Canada it is be¬ 
lieved about $50,000,000 is thus invested yearly, 
a sum somewhat lower than in the United 
States in proportion to population. 

Some Heavy Expenditures. In certain lines 
of business advertising is more heavily em¬ 
ployed than in others. Manufacturers of food 
articles and household conveniences contribute 
largely to the total. One particular article of 
prepared food has been advertised for several 
years to the extent of $750,000 annually, and a 
cleaning compound has been advertised to a 
like extent. A chewing gum, where each sale 
is only five cents, has received publicity which 
costs $500,000 annually; a certain brand of 
cigarettes has had a like advertising appropria¬ 
tion; a five-cent cigar has been advertised to 
the extent of $250,000 a year. A set of books, 
a correspondence course of study, a brand of 
hosiery, a watch, one make of table cutlery, a 
talking machine, various brands of soap, each 
has been advertised in excess of $100,000 an¬ 
nually. The advertising of patent medicines 
and curative devices once provided very large 
incomes to papers and magazines, but this has 
in recent years been excluded by all the 
better magazines and many newspapers; this 
is also true of alcoholic beverages, and to a 
lesser extent, of cigarettes. 

The automobile industry has set a new mark 
in advertising volume. A single manufacturer 
of an automobile is said to have spent in 1916 
for this purpose not less than $2,000,000. It 
is a noteworthy fact that as the amount of 
money invested in advertising this particular 
make of automobile was increased each year, 
the selling price of the machine decreased, 
while its attractiveness and service value was 
said to have been improved. Although the 
total amount of money employed in advertis¬ 
ing by the entire automobile industry has in¬ 


creased' each year, the average price of cars 
has decreased. The effect of advertising com¬ 
modities in other notable instances has been to 
improve the quality of the goods and reduce 
the price to the consumer. This seeming in¬ 
consistency is explained by the fact that adver¬ 
tising aids selling so effectively that it performs 
economies in the commercial transaction. 

The above particular cases must not incline 
the reader to believe that all advertising appro¬ 
priations are invested profitably. Many mil¬ 
lions of dollars yearly are vainly spent—the 
response to the public appeal is slight. Some¬ 
times the thing advertised, if not one of the 
necessities of life, does not catch the fancy 
of the public; if a necessity, some other equally 
necessary commodity is presented more at¬ 
tractively or more vigorously and eclipses its 
rival. The choice of advertising mediums 
weighs heavily for or against success, also. To 
cite an extreme case, it would invite failure to 
advertise tobacco products in a woman’s mag¬ 
azine, although for obvious reasons a good 
advertisement of smoking jackets in such a 
publication prior to Christmas has proved a 
good investment. 

The firm that places its announcements before 
the public and then believes its work is done 
invites failure. If it seeks direct sales to pur¬ 
chasers it must have printed matter describing 
its wares and a system of “follow-up” letters, 
variously phrased and convincing, to complete 
the work the public announcement started. All 
this subsidiary material is a very real part of 
advertising. 

Advertising Agencies. Advertising as a busi¬ 
ness with a professional skill in it dates back 
to the latter half of the nineteenth century, 
when facilities were at hand for the spread of 
knowledge and the rapid distribution of goods 
over a wide area. The advertiser then began 
to take into account the greater need for expert 
knowledge. This developed the expert who 
could prepare advertisements with skill 'and 
who could supply information as to the char¬ 
acter and circulation of publications in differ¬ 
ent localities. In handling the space he was a 
broker, making the best terms he could with 
the publisher on one hand and the advertiser 
on the other. Later on, publishers and owners 
of various kinds of advertising space fixed 
prices for their space and made a special rate 
to the advertising experts. These experts be¬ 
came known as advertising agents, and their 
business grew into institutions of large financial 
responsibility with complete equipment for 


ADVERTISING 


68 


ADVERTISING 


handling all the manifold requirements and 
growing details of advertising. Such organiza¬ 
tions are now called general advertising agen¬ 
cies, because they deal in the space of all the 
recognized channels of advertising dissemina¬ 
tion. 

Advertising agencies which represent par¬ 
ticular publications or other forms of advertis¬ 
ing space are called special agencies. Thus the 
advertising representative of a newspaper, 
magazine or any outdoor form of advertising 
is called a special advertising agent. The gen¬ 
eral advertising agent, instead of trying to 
promote the use of a particular publication, 
advises the advertiser as to the purchase of 
space in a variety of mediums with a view to 
the best results from the advertising. 

Advertisers Classified. In the profession 
advertisers are classified as local and general. 
In the latter class are those who advertise in 
more than one city. General advertisers who 
sell and deliver goods direct to the consumer 
are called mail-order houses. Their style and 
method of advertising is called mail-order ad¬ 
vertising. The largest individual merchandising 
concern on the American continent and prob¬ 
ably in the world is that of a mail-order firm 
in Chicago. 

Mail-Order Houses and Advertising. A large 
percentage of general advertising appearing in 
magazines is done by mail-order houses. Some 
magazines are known as mail-order magazines. 
Their circulation is in smaller towns and on the 
farms. Mail-order advertising is not confined 
to these publications, however, but runs in all 
magazines. Newspapers in the smaller cities 
and towns as a rule refuse to publish mail-order 
advertising because it is in competition with 
local merchants. 

M^iil-order advertising is of two kinds; it seeks 
(a) to induce the reader to buy upon read¬ 
ing the advertisement, and (b) to induce the 
reader to write for more information. The 
two kinds are sometimes combined in the same 
advertisement, with a view to obtaining direct 
sales from some readers and inquiries from 
others. 

The answer to the inquiry is called a “follow¬ 
up.” It usually consists of a catalogue, if the 
advertiser has many articles to sell, and a 
letter and an order blank. If the advertiser 
has few articles to sell, a booklet or circular 
takes the place of the catalogue. 

Inquiries to a mail-order firm have a deter¬ 
mined value, depending upon the character of 
the business. When one has inquired by mail 


and makes a purchase, he is listed as a cus¬ 
tomer. The names on the list of customers 
take on a higher value. The value of such 
a list often exceeds a million dollars. One 
mail-order firm puts a value of $30,000,000 on 
its good will and lists of names. 

General Advertising. The general advertising 
of goods to be sold to consumers through 
dealers is called publicity advertising. Adver¬ 
tising in newspapers is classified as local or 
foreign. By foreign is meant advertising of a 
firm using newspapers in several or many 
cities, or that of a firm whose place of business 
is in another city. 

Direct advertising is the sending of the adver¬ 
tisement by mail to a list of persons, or by mes¬ 
senger to homes or places of business in a 
certain area. The advertisement in this case is 
called a mailing piece. The giving of samples 
of goods, usually grocery articles, is a method 
employed to introduce new brands. It is some¬ 
times done extensively with crews of men 
going from house to house. 

Outdoor advertising includes painted bulle¬ 
tins, painted walls, billboards, electric signs, 
also metal signs, cloth banners, and cardboard 
signs to be tacked up, and several lesser forms. 

Outdoor Advertising. Painting and billpost¬ 
ing have become large industries, combining 
plants in the different cities for handling these 
forms of advertising. Electric signs are usually 
handled by the painted sign industry. The 
volume of advertising in paint, posting and 
electric signs in 1916 was about $10,000,000. 

Some of the outdoor signs in favored loca¬ 
tions in the large cities are sold to the adver¬ 
tiser for as much as $700 per month for a single 
painted sign and $2,500 per month for a single 
electric sign. Cards in street cars form another 
branch of considerable advertising. 

Cost of Advertising. The price of advertis¬ 
ing is based on the quantity of circulation of 
the newspaper or magazine in which it appears, 
for its value depends upon the number of per¬ 
sons to whose notice it is brought. In large 
newspapers and all magazines the basis of 
calculation is what is called an agate line, one 
column in length. The word agate is the 
name of a type so small that fourteen lines of 
it in depth occupy one inch of column space. 
In large newspapers the rate is about one-tenth 
of a cent per agate line for each thousand of 
circulation; a circulation of 100,000 copies 
would therefore justify a rate of ten cents per 
line, or $1.40 per inch, each insertion. In 
papers of smaller circulation the rate per line 


ADVERTISING 


69 


ADVERTISING 



OUTLINE AND QUESTIONS ON ADVERTISING 


Outline 


I. What It Is 

(1) Offer of merchandise 

(2) Offer of service 

II. Its Mediums 

(1) Newspapers 

(2) Magazines 

(3) Billboards 

(4) Electric signs 

(5 ) Street-car cards 
(6) Moving pictures 
(7 ) Programs 

III. Present-Hay Extent 

(1) Expenditure in United States 

(2) Expenditure in Canada 

(3) Vast sums spent on specific articles 

IV. Results 

(1) Increased output at decreased cost 

made possible by resulting popular¬ 
ity of goods 

(2) Sale of newspapers and magazines 

at a sum which would not cover 
cost of blank paper 


V. Necessary Conditions 

(1) Display qualities 

(2) Wise choice of medium 

(3) Persistent “follow-up” system 

VI. Classification 

(1) General advertising 
(a) Mail-order houses 

(2) Local advertising 

(a) The country merchant’s problem 

(1) Constant advertising 

(2) Particular appeal 

( 3) Attractive window displays 

VII. Cost of Advertising 

(1) In newspapers and magazines esti¬ 

mated by line 

(2) Cost of outdoor signs in good loca¬ 

tions 

(3) Electric signs 

VIII. Advertising Agencies 

(1) General 

(2) Special 

IX. Future Possibilities 

(1) In economic affairs 

(2) In politics 

(3) In social welfare work 


Questions 

What is a “follow-up” system? 

Why is it possible to secure a magazine with excellent stories and helpful articles 
for five, ten or fifteen cents? 

Why does not all money spent in advertising bring in good returns? 

Why have so many small-town merchants been driven out of business by mail¬ 
order houses? 

How can this problem be met? 

How does the advertiser who is not clever at preparing his own “copy” go about 
it to secure effective advertisements? 

What part has advertising played in politics? 

Toward what two ends is mail-order advertising directed? 

Why can a manufacturer who is spending hundreds of thousands and even 
millions of dollars annually in advertising afford to sell his commodities cheaper 
year by year? 

What is the difference between general and local advertising? 

What two interpretations may be put upon the expression “advertisement of 
service”? 

In what country is the annual expense for advertising heaviest? 

What industry expends most in advertising? 

About what would it cost to run a two-inch advertisement for one month in a 
magazine with a circulation of 1,000,000? 

































ADVERTISING 


70 


AEGEAN SEA 


p6r thousand is higher. Magazines of large 
general circulation charge from one-third to 
two-thirds of a cent per line per thousand. 
Publications of class circulation charge a higher 
rate. There are several magazines with a 
general circulation of 2,000,000 copies each in 
which the rate is four-tenths of a cent per line 
per thousand, $8 a line, or $112 an inch. A 
double page advertisement in one of these 
magazines costs as much as $12,000 for a single 
insertion. Advertisements larger than two 
pages are rare. 

The Future of Advertising. This is a matter 
which is the subject of much speculation. It 
is generally believed that its usefulness will 
continue to increase, and that new employ¬ 
ment of it will be found. 

It has largely taken the place of other pro¬ 
motive methods of political parties, and has 
obviated much of the rancor that marked 
political campaigns. It has been used by gov¬ 
ernments to popularize w r ar, to promote the 
sale of securities and to induce tourist-travel. 
It has not been used by governments to pro¬ 
mote the peaceful relations of nations, as such 
use of advertising would be destructive of the 
influence of secret diplomacy. The exercise 
of the power of advertising makes for democ¬ 
racy by the spread of knowledge and the cre¬ 
ation of understanding. Its educative force 
develops the desire for its greater use. Its 
future holds promise of developing the domi¬ 
nant world power for economic and social bet¬ 
terment and for permanent peace. 

The Country Merchant’s Problem. Expe¬ 
rience has proved the stern necessity of adver¬ 
tising in any line of business, if that business 
is to attain even a fair degree of success. In 
the small community the merchant errs who 
says, “I do not need to advertise, everybody 
knows me.” It is true that the man who was 
Vice-President of the United States in the Taft 
administration—to go no farther back—was 
well-advertised and well-known at the time, 
but to-day few remember his name. The 
merchant should remember that great Chi¬ 
cago mail-order firms (the largest in the world) 
are as well known, by name, as he is, and they 
persistently keep the merits of their wares 
before his neighbors. 

It is not enough for the country merchant, 
in his space in the local paper, simply to tell 
the people he deals in groceries or dry goods. 
He must learn from city advertisers that the 
only profitable investment in advertising is to 
make a particular appeal in every announce¬ 


ment. When he gives his neighbors some¬ 
thing to their interests to think about in con¬ 
nection with local merchandising they will give 
him increased support and will feel less de¬ 
pendent on mail-order houses. 

Higher rent in a building which many people 
pass may well be considered a good advertis¬ 
ing appropriation, but, having secured such a 
location, sometimes fullest advantage is not 
taken of it. Window dressing is a potent adver¬ 
tising factor, and it is an art worthy of cultiva¬ 
tion. What is placed in the window will at¬ 
tract customers or emphasize the unprogressive 
character of the merchant. The window dis¬ 
play should be attractive and distinctive; it 
should make a seasonable appeal. A variety 
of things in a miscellaneous display leaves 
little impression on the beholder; a colony 
of silkworms and a display of silks is not only 
educational and inviting as a spectacle but is 
sure to turn thoughts towards silken raiment. 
Specimens of unpicked cotton will create com¬ 
ment and stimulate interest, and they are not 
difficult to obtain. A pair of new shoes for 
baby at one end of the window, a pair of old, 
worn-out boots at the farthest corner, between 
the two a groundwork of earth and a path 
leading from one to the other—“Between these 
lie life’s pathway”—will long be remembered, 
and advertising does its work when the boot- 
and-shoe merchant announces that he cares 
painstakingly for needs of all ages. j.o’s. 



ADZ, a carpenter’s tool which resembles 
an axe, but differs in having the edge of the 
blade at right angles to the handle. The chisel¬ 
shaped blade, which is from four to five inches 
long, is curved, and the head has a socket into 
which the long straight handle is fitted. The 
ordinary adz is used for smoothing timber, 
but some are curved and are designed for 
shaping eave-troughs and hollow ware. 

AEGEAN, e je' an, SEA, a body of water 
which, because of its almost innumerable 
islands, is also called the Aegean Archipelago. 
It is that part of the Mediterranean which lies 
between Greece and Asia Minor, and is in 
length about 400 miles and in greatest breadth 
175 miles. Of its islands, many of which are 
of volcanic origin, the most important are 






AEGINA 


71 


AEOLIAN HARP 


Delos, Rhodes, Patmos, Samos, Lesbos and 
Lemnos, all of them famous in legend and his¬ 
tory. It was of these islands of the Aegean 
that Byron wrote— 

The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece, 
Where burning Sappho loved and sung! 

* * * 

Eternal summer gilds them yet, 

But all except their sun is set. 



AEGINA, e ji' na, or EGINA, a Greek island 
in the Gulf of Egina, for the most part moun¬ 
tainous and barren, but producing in its level 
western portion the best almonds which are 
grown in Greece. It is about eight miles long 
and the same in breadth, has a steep, deeply- 
indented coast, and affords but one harbor. 
The inhabitants are engaged in trade, seafar¬ 
ing and agriculture. The chief crops in addi¬ 
tion to almonds are olives and grain. Aegina 
was celebrated in ancient times for its beauti¬ 
ful buildings. Population, about 8,200. 

AEGIS, e' jis, the shield fashioned by Vul¬ 
can which Jupiter was thought to shake when 
it thundered, and which Minerva carried as a 
sign of her authority whenever intrusted with 
a mission by her father. It is frequently men¬ 
tioned in the Odyssey and the Iliad and is 
described in legends as having the head of the 
Gorgon for its center. See Mythology, and the 
articles on each of the gods named. 

AENEAS , ene' as, one of the most famous 
heroes of ancient legend, a Trojan warrior who 
was second only to Hector in the part he 
played in the Trojan War (which see). He 
was the son of Venus and of Anchises, and was 
chosen to lead a band of followers to a new 
land in Italy, and there to found a new nation. 
The story of his wanderings after the fall of 
Troy is told in Vergil’s Aeneid. See Aeneid; 
Troy. 

AENEID, ene' id, one of the world’s great 
epics, written by the Roman poet, Vergil. It 


is divided into twelve books, and relates the 
wanderings and adventures of the Trojan hero 
Aeneas. Though Vergil used the Greek epics 
the Odyssey and the Iliad as his models, his 
purpose in composing this, his masterpiece, 
was the glorification of Rome and of the line 
of Julius Caesar. His desire to revive interest 
in the ancient mythology caused him to intro¬ 
duce gods and goddesses, and these he pictured 
as taking an active interest in the affairs of 
mortals. All the misfortune that comes to 
Aeneas is due to the relentless hatred of Juno, 
while Venus, mother of the hero, labors to 
thwart the scheme of the queen of heaven. 

The story, briefly told, is as follows: In the 
sixth year of his wanderings after the fall of 
Troy (see Troy), Aeneas, accompanied by his 
friend Achates, is sailing from Sicily to Italy. 
In the course of a terrible storm, brought about 
by Juno, he is shipwrecked upon the African 
coast. There he receives aid from Dido, queen 
of Carthage, and to her he relates the story 
of the fall of Troy, the destruction of the city 
by fire, his escape to Mount Ida, and his peril¬ 
ous wanderings until he reached Sicily, where 
his father, Anchises, died. Under the influence 
of Venus, Dido falls in love with Aeneas, and 
to him offers her hand in marriage. But the 
gods have other plans for the hero, and Mer¬ 
cury is sent by Jupiter to command him to 
continue his journey. As he sails away from 
Carthage he looks back at the flames from 
the funeral pyre of the heart-broken queen, 
who has committed suicide. When Aeneas 
finally comes to Italy he visits the Sibyl of 
Cumae, who leads him to the lower regions. 
There he sees his father, and learns from him 
that he is to be the founder of a glorious race— 
the race from which Augustus, ruler of Rome 
at the time the poem was written, was said to 
have descended. 

After he arrives in Latium, his destination, 
Aeneas enters into a treaty with Latinus, a 
neighboring king, and is promised the hand of 
the latter’s daughter, Lavinia. Though Juno 
strives to break the treaty, and brings on a 
war with other rulers, the Trojans are finally 
victorious. For a discussion of the literary 
merits of the poem, see Vergil. 

AEOLIAN, e o'Han, HARP, a stringed in¬ 
strument which is played upon by the wind 
(see Aeolus). It generally consists of a box 
of thin, fibrous wood, to which are attached 
from eight to fifteen fine catgut strings or wires, 
stretched on low bridges at each end, and 
tuned in unison. It is placed in a window or 



AEOLIANS 


72 


AESCHYLUS 


other aperture, and when the wind causes the 
strings to vibrate it produces 
monies of sound, which swell 
or die away as the breeze varies 
in strength. 

AEOLIANS, eo'lianz, one 
of the four divisions into which 
the ancient Greeks were di¬ 
vided. They were mostly 
island-dwellers, inhabiting the 
islands of the Aegean Sea, 
though some lived along the 
coast of Asia Minor. A literary 
and imaginative people, they 
seem to have given birth to the 
stories which Homer made im¬ 
mortal in the Iliad; and their 
genius reached its highest point 
in the poet Sappho, about the 
seventh century b. c. 

AEOLUS, e'olus, a Greek 
god, to whom w T as assigned the 
troublesome task of caring for 
the winds. His boisterous 
charges were shut up in a cave 
in the Aeoiion Islands, and a 
noisy, breezy place it was. Ac¬ 
cording to some accounts he 
might release them as he 
wished, but others declared that 
he could do it only at the com¬ 
mand of Neptune. His name 
was given to the Aeolian harp 
(which see). 

AEROPLANE. See Flying Machine. 

AESCHINES, es'kineez (389-314 b. c.) a 
celebrated orator of ancient Athens, the rival 
and opponent of Demosthenes (which see). 
He headed the party in Greece which favored 
an alliance with Philip of Macedon, while 
Demosthenes took the opposite side. Having 
failed in 330 b. c. to convict Ctesiphon of 
treason in having proposed to bestow a crown 
of gold upon Demosthenes for his services to 
the state, he withdrew from Athens. Later he 
established a school of eloquence at Rhodes. 

AESCHYLUS, es'kilus, (525?-456 b. c.), 
one of the world’s great writers of tragedy. 
Ancient Greece produced three whose tragedies 
have never been surpassed—Aeschylus, Sopho¬ 
cles and Euripides; and of these Aeschylus 
was the first. Unfortunately, of the ninety 
plays which he is supposed to have written, 
only seven and a few fragments still exist. 
These are enough, however, to prove that his 
own age did not rate him too highly, for he 


has treated in a masterly manner his exalted, 
somber themes. Most of his tragedies were 
arranged in groups of three, and of those which 
have been preserved Agamemnon, Choephori 
and Eumenides form such a triology. The others 
are The Persians, The Suppliants, Prometheus 
Bound and The Seven Against Thebes. Mrs. 
Browning had an especial admiration for 
Aeschylus; she wrote a poetical version of 
Prometheus Bound, which is therefore prob¬ 
ably better known to English readers than any 
other drama of Aeschylus. 

The details of the life story of Aeschylus 
are shadowy. Born of a noble family, which 
traced its descent to the famous Codrus, king 
of Athens, he entered the army and fought 
against the Persians for the glory of the city 
of which he was so proud. Athenian vic¬ 
tories increased his patriotic fervor, and many 
of his plays had as their central theme the 
exalting of Athens. He won his first prize in 
the great dramatic competitions in 485 b. c., 
and twelve other like successes followed. One 
great disappointment he had in his later years. 
He himself had fought at Marathon and had 
won public honors for his bravery, and he 
entered the contest for a prize offered for the 
finest elegy on those who fell on that field; but 
he was defeated, Simonides winning the prize. 



Tradition declares that the later life of 
Aeschylus was spent largely in Sicily, and re¬ 
lates an incredible legend as to the manner 
of his death. An eagle, it is said, flying far 
above him, dropped from its talons a tortoise, 
which struck Aeschylus on the head and killed 
him. The Greeks seem to have found pleasure 


beautiful har- 



HARP 























































AESCULAPIUS 


73 


AFGHANISTAN 


in assigning this almost unusual death to a 
man who had made his heroes die in the 
fashions of gods. Tragedy owed much to 
Aeschylus, for it was he who first suggested 
appropriate costumes and scenery and intro¬ 
duced more than one actor. a.mc c. 

AESCULAPIUS, as ku la' plus, in Greek and 
Roman mythology, the god of the art of heal¬ 
ing, son of Apollo and the nymph Coronis. 
When a youth he was placed in care of the 
centaur Chiron, who taught him what he knew 
of medicine. Aesculapius, according to the 
legend, became so versed in his art that he 
could restore the dead to life. This angered 
Pluto, the insatiable lord of the underworld, 
and at his request Jupiter slew the god of 
medicine with a thunderbolt. Aesculapius is 
represented in art as bearing a knotted staff; 
around this was entwined a serpent, which the 
ancients regarded as the symbol of health. 

AESOP’S, e f sop’s, FABLES, a collection 
of fables which have been for over two thousand 
years popular with children and adults alike, 
the world over. They are for the most part 
beast fables, wherein the animals are given 
the qualities and the powers of human beings. 
Children love them chiefly for the story, 
though the clearty suggested moral b}^ no 
means detracts from their charm; while older 
people delight in them because they set forth 
in few words and in pleasingly dramatic force 
truths and bits of wisdom. So widespread are 
they that acquaintance with them may safely 
be taken for granted in almost any company, 
and allusions to “sour grapes,” to “belling the 
cat” or to “the lion and the mouse” are con¬ 
stantly heard. 

Aesop, the supposed author of these immor¬ 
tal fables, is a legendary character. Many tales 
are told of Aesop, a Greek slave, who was 
far more wise than his masters, and who 
became a friend of Solon and of Croesus, and 
it may be that certain of the popular beast 
fables did originate with him. But these fables 
were not written down until long after Aesop 
is supposed to have lived, and it seems more 
than likely that they simply grew up, like folk 
tales, and had no single author. 

Consult the articles Fable and Story-telling 
for examples of the fables of Aesop. 

AFFIDA'VIT, a sworn statement containing 
evidence to be laid before a judge. It is 
sometimes employed when it is not possible 
for a witness to appear personally to testify; 
frequently, however, all the testimony in a 
case is in the form of affidavits, these being 


preferred rather than that the court’s time 
shall be consumed by the hearing of oral testi¬ 
mony. The person making an affidavit signs 
his name at the bottom of it, and swears that 
the statements contained in it are true. Penal¬ 
ties for false swearing are severe. See Oath. 

AFFIN'ITY, in chemistry, the force or ten¬ 
dency through which two or more substances 
unite to form a compound in which the proper¬ 
ties of each individual substance are lost; the 
two light colorless gases, oxygen and hydrogen, 
for example, unite to form water, and the 
metal, sodium, and the yellowish-green gas, 
chlorine, unite to form common salt. It fol¬ 
lows that affinity is also the force which holds 
the elements together if they are in combina¬ 
tion. This force, whatever it is, is called affin¬ 
ity because it is evident that some hidden 
relationship between substances makes them 
combine. One ingenious chemist suggested 
that the particles into which matter is ulti¬ 
mately divided all had minute hooks with 
which they grasped each other. Gravity and 
electricity have also been suggested, but none 
of these theories has been proved. 

In some elements, such as oxygen and 
chlorine, this force is strong, and these may 
be combined with many other elements; others, 
like nitrogen, seem to have an affinity for only 
a few elements. Among the metals, sodium, 
potassium, calcium and aluminum have strong 
affinity for such non-metals as oxygen and 
chlorine; while gold and platinum have so 
small a tendency to combine with other ele¬ 
ments that the alchemists called them “noble” 
and even “royal” metals. For the same reason 
the gases helium, argon and neon, which appear 
to be without affinity for any of the other ele¬ 
ments, are called “noble” gases. j.f.s. 

AFGHANISTAN, af gan' istan, a small coun¬ 
try in South Central Asia, one of those defense¬ 
less nations of 
yellow and black 
men which have 
bowed to the 
superior white 
power of Europe 
—in this instance 
Great Britain. Its 
importance to 
Britain lies not at 

picsent in its The ] oca tion G f Afghan- 

wealth, for what- istan in the continent of Asia 
r • , • , is shown in black, 

ever oi riches it 

holds is yet almost unknown, but in its posi¬ 
tion between Russian Turkestan and British 







AFGHANISTAN 


74 


AFGHANISTAN 


102 



202 


202 


iS 


Q 

IV 




Native Type 


AFGHANISTAN 



M 



On the Overland Road to India 


Native School 


h r^Jionr »» WwJ» wjq JtyS** U 

Specimen of Writing 


(Ss 


Afghan Soldier 






IV 


Village Architecture 


AfghanThreshing Machine 


m 


m 


202 


202 


202 


India, which makes it an effective barrier 
against the encroachment of Russia upon 
England’s marvelously rich peninsula of India. 
The country is independent of British authority 
in local matters, but by treaty Britain controls 
its foreign relations and thus is fortified against 
any power that may threaten. Afghanistan’s 
boundaries are not at all points accurately 
defined, but it contains about 245,000 square 
miles, so it is not quite as large as Texas, but 
about the size of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wis¬ 
consin and Michigan, combined. 

The People and Their Surroundings. There 
are about 6,000,000 people in Afghanistan, of 
many races and clans; most of them are of 
the native stock called Afghans, and nearly all 
of these are tribesmen who like to quarrel and 
who are more or less a law unto themselves. 
Authority is intelligently exercised in the cities, 
of which Kabul, with about 75,000 people, is 
the capital, situated in the eastern part of the 
country. Other cities are Kandahar, Herat and 
Ghazni. 

The country is rough, and largely inacces¬ 
sible; travel is difficult over the mountains of 
the Hindu-Kush range, which rise in some 
places to 18,000 feet, and over the smooth 


tablelands, which have an elevation of 4,000 
to 7,000 feet. Only along one trail, from 
Kabul to Herat, can a wagon be hauled with 
ease; transportation elsewhere throughout the 
country is by camels and horses. Commerce 
is therefore carried on with difficulty, but not¬ 
withstanding these natural obstacles, the turbu¬ 
lent attitude of many of the inhabitants and 
the primitive modes of life, there is consider¬ 
able trade. Lying at all elevations, from deep, 
intensely hot valleys to great heights with 
bitter cold, it produces every kind of grain, 
but principally wheat and barley, as well as 
many fruits and much tobacco. The mineral 
wealth is really great, but largely undeveloped; 
yet considerable gold, silver, mercury, copper, 
iron and lead is taken out of the country by 
caravans, and enough coal is mined to meet 
the country’s needs. The manufactures are lim¬ 
ited to the simple needs of the people, and this 
condition will doubtless long continue. 

Not all of Afghanistan is fertile, nor even 
half of it. Over much of the area the moun¬ 
tainous condition makes agriculture impossible, 
and nearly half of the whole country is almost, 
if not entirely, a desert. The valleys afford the 
only extensive cultivable area. 
















































AFGHANISTAN 


75 


AFGHANISTAN 


Government. Afghanistan is a monarchy, 
under a hereditary ruler, called ameer. In 
reality, the ameer’s authority is practically 
absolute, for autocratic power is needed among 
a people given to the idea that might makes 
right and who love a quarrel better than do the 
people of any other country. The monarch 
and his governors exercise authority when and 
where they can, and defend their power when 
they must. 

History. Alexander the Great was probably 
the first invader of Afghanistan. He founded 
the present city of Herat, called then Alex¬ 
andria Arion, and began the building of Kanda¬ 
har. The great Genghis Khan (which see) 
conquered it in the twelfth century and at his 
death it fell to one of his four sons. Britain’s 
entry into the affairs of the nation was in 1839, 
when a force entered the capital and placed 
a native prince of its choice upon the throne. 
The native people conspired against the foreign 
authority, and in 1841 murdered many English¬ 
men in the capital city. The effort to main¬ 
tain British supremacy was temporarily aban¬ 
doned, and in the retreat of the forces to India 
thousands were slain. Through Khyber Pass, 
the only entrance to the country from the 
south, another army was sent the next year, 
and Kabul again fell under British authority. 

At this point Russian influence from the 
north began to be felt, and Russian armies, 
approaching from Turkestan, presented a situa¬ 
tion which nearly led to war between Russia 
and England, but a settlement of boundaries 
of spheres of influence averted a conflict. The 
rulers of Afghanistan have of late years strictly 
observed the treaties which England forced 
from them. The British Empire controls all 
of the country’s foreign relations, and in turn 
gives the ameer an annual subsidy. 

Other Points of Interest. The name Afghan 
is supposed to mean noisy and tumultuous, and 
it is certainly well deserved. 

The Afghans claim to be Jewish, the descend¬ 
ants of Ishmael, and they do indeed have a 
Jewish cast of countenance; but scholars be¬ 
lieve nevertheless that their claims are un¬ 
founded. 

An Afghan feels that it is beneath his dignity 
to keep a shop or engage in any handicraft. 

The women are rigidly secluded. 

The Afghans are, apparently, very hospitable, 
and cry ‘‘May God protect you” after the 
departing guest. But the obligations of hospi¬ 
tality hold only while the guest is within the 
house, and an Afghan will follow his guest and 
rob him of all he possesses. 



Outline and Questions on 
Afghanistan 


I. Location 

(1) Latitude—29° to 38° 30' N. 

(2) Longitude—61° to 75° E. 

(3) Boundaries—See map of Asia 

(4) Gateway to India 

II. Physical Characteristics 

(1) Size 

(a) Comparative 

(b) Absolute 

(2) Surface features 

(a) Mountains 

(b) Tablelands 

(c) Valleys 

(d) Deserts 

III. Climate 

(1) Temperature 

(2) Causes 

IV. People 

(1) Character 

(2) Occupations 

(a) Agriculture 

(b) Mining 

V. Government 

(1) Hereditary ruler 

(2) British control 

(3) Cities 

VI. History 

(1) Early invasions 

(2) British influence 

(3) Russian interference 

Questions 

How does the area compare with that 
of Germany? Of Saskatchewan? Of 
France? 

Why does England value her hold 
on Afghanistan? 

Are the Afghans well named? 

What is the religion of the Afghans? 
Could tourists travel through the 
country in an automobile? 

Does Great Britain really possess 
the country as it does Canada? 

Is the hospitality of the Afghans 
true hospitality? 

Is there any justification for the 
autocratic rule of the ameer? 

What city of Afghanistan can claim 
a very distinguished founder? 

What nation has contended with 
Great Britain for control of the coun¬ 
try? 

Has the country a railroad? 


















AFRICA 


The people have a particularly stalwart ap¬ 
pearance, but despite that fact and despite the 
dry, much-boasted climate, they have little 
endurance, and fall an easy prey to disease. 

There are no fewer than ninety-eight rivers 
in the country. 

In some places, notably in Kabul, deep snow 
lies on the ground for two or three months, 
and the people make little or no attempt to 
leave their homes. 

The carpets woven by the nomads about 


AFRICA 

Herat are beautiful, and are often sold abroad 
as Persian carpets. 

In certain parts of the country the staple 
foodstuff is flour made from dried mulberries. 

The fruits of Afghanistan are specially 
famous, and in the dried form are exported in 
large quantities. 

With the exception of Turkey, Afghanistan 
is the strongest Mohammedan country on the 
globe. e.d.f. 

Consult Hamilton’s Afghanistan. 



FRICA, the second largest land 
mass on the globe, the “Dark Continent” of a 
generation ago, which is still, despite explora¬ 
tion and enterprise, shut off from civilization 
throughout many of its regions. In reality it 
is a great peninsula of Europe-Asia, though 
through all historic times there has been no 
land connection with Europe, and that with 
< Asia is limited to the Isthmus of Suez. Its 
area of 11,500,000 square miles is greater than 
that of any other continent except Asia, sur¬ 
passing that of North America by over 3,000,000 
square miles. In length it is 4,960 miles, its 
greatest breadth is about 4,500; so that a 
rectangle drawn to include it would be almost 
a square. At very near its central north and 
south point the equator crosses it, and thus it 
stretches from about the latitude of Richmond, 
Va., to that of Buenos Aires. The Pacific 
ocean nowhere touches this vast continent, 
which has the Atlantic Ocean on the west and 
south, the Indian Ocean and Red Sea on the 
east, and the Mediterranean on the north. 

Form and Coast Line. In general, Africa 
resembles North and South America in its 
shape—that is, it is roughly triangular, with 
the widest part to the north; but it does not 
taper sharply toward the south, as do the others 
named. In school it is usually the first conti¬ 
nent assigned for drawing, because it is the 
easiest of all. This is due to the fact that 
its coastline is very regular, with none of the 
deep gulfs and bays and sharply projecting 
peninsulas which mark the northern coast of 
North America, for example, or that of Nor¬ 
way. There are two interesting facts con¬ 


nected with this; Africa has the shortest coast 
line in proportion to its area of any continent, 
and it has almost no good harbors. The first 
of these facts is strikingly apparent if we con¬ 
sider that this second greatest of the conti¬ 
nents has a coastline of only 19,000 miles, while 
little Norway, if all its indentations are fol¬ 
lowed, has a coast line of 12,000 miles. Just 
what effect the absence of harbors has had on 
the history of Africa it is impossible to sa3 r , 
but undoubtedly, taken in connection with the 
difficulty of navigating the rivers, it helped 
largely to keep the interior of the continent 
for centuries an unknown land. 

Nor has Africa at any point the fringe of 
islands, large or small, which make picturesque 
the coast of Chili, of Canada or of Norway. 
One island, Madagascar, the fourth largest in 
the world, lies 250 miles to the east, but the 
channel which separates the two is so deep 
that Madagascar seems less closely connected 
with Africa than Africa does with Asia and 
Europe. The other islands, for the most part 
small and of no great importance to Africa, 
include the Madeira, Canary and Cape Verde 
islands, in the Atlantic, and Reunion, Mauritius 
and Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean. To-day the 
products which these islands export are taken 
mostly to Europe, but some day, with the 
greater development of Africa, a closer connec¬ 
tion will doubtless be established with the 
mainland. 

Surface. It is not only in its coastline that 
Africa lacks variety; a sameness is to be 
observed also in its surface structure. This 
does not mean that it is actually monotonous; 

































Under European influence Africans are building better 
homes, dignifying the family and wearing more clothing. 


SOMALILAND FAMILY 














AFRICA 


77 


AFRICA 


but there are no mountain systems like the 
Rockies and Andes in the two Americas, no 
wide fertile valleys like that of the Mississippi, 
no region like that of the Alps, where for 
scores of thousands of square miles mountain 
is piled on mountain. In general, Africa is 
a great tableland or plateau which in some 
places runs abruptly to the very coast, but in 
others leaves a narrow coastal plain. The 
average height of this plateau is 2,130 feet, but 
while in the southern part of the continent land 
less than 2,000 feet above the sea is unusual, 
except in the coastal plains, in the northern 
part land above that elevation is the exception. 
The line dividing the higher plateau regions 
from the lower extends roughly from Suakin 
on the Red Sea to the head of the Gulf of 
Guinea. 

North Africa. It is in the lower northern 
part that there occurs the highest mountain 
range, the Atlas. This runs parallel to the 
Mediterranean coast and attains in its western 
half a considerable height, some of its peaks 
exceeding 14,000 feet. The coastward slope 
of these mountains is gentle, and plains occur 
at their base, but .to the south they drop 
abruptly and at one point are bordered by a 
depression which is below sea level. The other 
outstanding highlands of North Africa are 
three: a north-and-south elevation along the 
shore of the Red Sea; a long ridge which runs 
from northwest to southeast across the center 
of the regions, and a comparatively low range 
at the head of the Gulf of Guinea. The one 
outstanding feature of the continent, more or 
less familiar to every child, is the great Sahara 
Desert, stretching from coast to coast excepting 
a narrow strip along the Nile River. This 
great barrier between the north and south is 
described in its proper place in these volumes. 

South Africa. Though South Africa has not 
the largest mountain range, it has many high 
peaks, for Kenia and Kilimanjaro rise to 
heights over 18,000 and 19,000 feet. These are 
close to the equator and are old volcanic 
craters, but the Ruwenzori, which is a range 
rather than a peak and rises to a height of 
16,800 feet, is of the folded variety of moun¬ 
tains—that is, it is due to a lifting and bending 
of the earth’s crust, and not to a heaping up of 
lava. 

The most important highland of the whole 
continent is the so-called -plateau of Abyssinia, 
which begins in the country from which it takes 
its name and extends far to the south until it 
ends in the Drakenburg Mountains. In this 


great plateau there occur sharp furrows, or 
rift valley cracks left by some disturbance of 
the earth’s surface in past geologic ages; and 
in these basins are found the great lakes. 

Rivers and Lakes. Africa has five large 
rivers—in the order of their length the Nile, 
the Congo, the Niger, the Zambezi and the 
Orange; and of these the Congo is second only 
to the Amazon among the rivers of the world 
in the volume of water it carries to the sea 
(see article on each river named). But these 
rivers, except the first named, have had no 
such effect on the history and commerce of the 
countries they traverse as have the Mississippi 
and the Saint Lawrence; for in common with 
other African rivers they have one great fault 
as waterways. Rising in the high plateaus, 
they drop down the successive terraces toward 
the coast in a series of waterfalls which make 
for picturesqueness and beauty but not for 
navigation. As the development of the conti¬ 
nent goes on, however, under the guidance of 
Europeans, this difficulty is being surmounted 
in many places by the building of railroads 
about the falls. 

The Zambezi is the only one of the great 
river systems which discharges its waters into 
the Indian Ocean, for the drainage of Africa, 
like that of most of the other continents, is 
into the Atlantic. However, about one-third 
of the vast territory sends no waters into the 
sea, and in this proportion of its interior drain¬ 
age Africa surpasses all other continents except 
Asia. Much of this inward-flowing water finds 
its way into Lake Chad, in the Sudan—a large, 
shallow body of water which remains fresh 
despite the fact that, except in times of flood, 
it has no outlet. 

This second largest of the continents, which 
boasts next to the largest river in the world, 
also possesses the largest fresh-water lake but 
one, for Victoria Nyanza is surpassed only by 
Lake Superior. It lies in the eastern part of 
the continent, and its northern boundary 
touches the equator. To the west of this great 
lake stretches a chain of smaller bodies of 
water which occupy one of the rift valleys and 
lie at a greater height above sea level than 
most other lakes of the world. These are 
Tanganyika, the longest lake in the world, and 
one of the deepest; Kivu Albert Edward Ny¬ 
anza and Albert Nyanza. Other noteworthy 
African lakes are Tsana, in Abyssinia, Mweru, 
and Bangweolo, the last-named of which is 
little more than a morass except in the rainy 
season. 


AFRICA 


78 


AFRICA 


Climate. North America stretches from well 
within the tropics to the Arctic Circle, and in 
consequence has a climate which runs through 
all degrees from torrid to frigid. Africa, on the 
other hand, lies almost wholly within the 
tropics, and has therefore a much more even 
temperature. And that temperature is almost 
uniformly high, for cooling sea breezes are shut 
out by the steep edges of the plateaus which 
everywhere border the coast. The variation in 
temperature throughout the year is not more 
than 20°, while North America has in many 
places a range three times that great. The 
extreme southern part of the continent is the 
only region which has not a tropical climate, 
though there are places farther north where 
unusual elevation assures pleasant climatic con¬ 
ditions. 

Africa is deficient in rainfall, except in the 
regions bordering the equator. Here there are 
two seasons of especially heavy rainfall, though 
there is considerable rain every month in the 
year. Northward and southward from this 
belt it diminishes 
rapidly, and over 
portions of the 
Sahara no rain 
ever falls. In the 
south, too, there 
is a stretch of 
desert land, the 
Kalahari, but this 
is not so dry as 
the Sahara, hav¬ 
ing enough mois¬ 
ture to make it a 
profitable grazing 
country. To the north of the Sahara and south 
of the Kalahari there is one rainy season during 
the year, and agriculture may be successfully 
practised. The surface structure of the conti¬ 
nent has as much to do with its lack of rainfall 
as with its temperature, for moisture-bearing 
winds do not reach the interior. Indeed, so 
dry and hot are the winds which blow over 
parts of the continent that they absorb the 
moisture Trom the lands over which they pass 
and make them yet more arid. 

The highest parts of the plateaus of Africa, 
as well as the more temperate northern and 
southern portions, are healthful for Europeans 
as well as for the natives; but the damp equa¬ 
torial regions abound in fevers and are con¬ 
sidered the most unhealthful places in the 
world. Even the natives in these parts are 
short-lived, for the fevers attack them as well 


as the newcomers. In a few places improved 
sanitation has been introduced since the com¬ 
ing of the Europeans, and the result has been 
a markedly lower death rate. 

Vegetable Life. The above account of the 
climate and rainfall tells the story of the 
vegetation as well. North of the Atlas Moun¬ 
tains conditions are much like those of South¬ 
ern Europe, and 
the oak, olive, 
semi - tropical 
fruits, and grains 
flourish. In Al¬ 
geria and Tunis 
wheat is success¬ 
fully raised, and 
Morocco has a 
region which of¬ 
fers like possibili¬ 
ties. In the time 
of the Roman 
occupation, 
before the Chris¬ 
tian era, this northern belt was the granary of 
the world. 

South of the Atlas the slope is abrupt to the 
Sahara Desert, where the sandy, salty soil 
affords life to little except a few thorny shrubs. 
In the oasis, however, where buried springs 
come to the surface, there is a pleasing con¬ 
trast, for grass, date palms and grain clothe 
the surface with green (see Oasis). To the 
south of the Sahara, as well as in the more 
southerly parts of the continent where there is 
one rainy season a year, lie the great savannas, 
or prairies, where grass grows luxuriantly and 
the baobab. tree flourishes. It is on these 
savannas that the farms, whether for cattle and 
sheep or for ostriches, have been established. 
The temperate region of the south has many 
trees and flowers which grow nowhere else, for 
the Sahara Desert, stretching from sea to sea, 
is a barrier that cannot be crossed by plant 
forms. 

Throughout most of the equatorial region, 
where rainfall is plentiful, there is a dense 
tropical forest. No other forests except those 
of the Amazon equal in size, in density, and in 
variety of trees that which extends almost 
across Central Africa. The vines and under¬ 
brush are so luxuriant that throughout much 
of this vast extent the sun seldom if ever 
penetrates to the ground. No one can even 
begin to estimate the wealth in timber, vege¬ 
table oils and other plant products hidden in 
this forest of giant trees. 











































AFRICA 


79 


AFRICA 








































































































AFRICA 


80 


AFRICA 


Animal Life. As the climate and rainfall 
govern the vegetation, so the latter determines 
the distribution of animal life. It may be said 
in general, however, that Africa is the home 
of the largest members of the animal kingdom, 
some of which live there exclusively; and that, 
for the most part, all regions south of the Sa¬ 
hara, whatever their latitude, have about the 
same forms of animal life if their plant life is 
similar. 

Northern Africa has much the same animals 
as Southern Europe, but south of the Sahara 
distinctive characters appear. Over the grassy 
savannas, which with their scattered forest 
areas afford shelter for such animals as feed 
upon the grass of the prairies, range the buf¬ 
falo, the rhinoceros, the gnu, the zebra, almost 
100 kinds of antelope, and the giraffe, which is 
peculiar to Africa. Where these grass-eating 
animals are to be found, there also are the 
flesh-eating animals which prey upon them— 
the lion, the panther, the leopard, the hyena 
and the jackal. Bears, foxes and wolves are 
found nowhere in Africa. Formerly elephants 
were very common in all parts of the continent, 
but they have been so persistently hunted for 
the ivory of their tusks that there is danger of 
their complete extinction. In the swamp and 
river regions are to be found crocodiles in large 
numbers, as well as the hippopotami, which 
live nowhere but in Africa. 

It might seem that the great forests near 
the equator would furnish just the sort of 
homes that animals might desire, but one 
of the outstanding features of the life of the 
continent is the scarcity of life in these regions. 
Even the largest animals find the plant growth 
too dense, so these great tracts are given 
almost exclusively to reptiles, insects and the 
great monkeys, the chimpanzee and the gorilla, 
which are peculiar to Africa. Numerous other 
species of monkeys live in the less dense forests 
farther south, and on the southern savannas 
dwells the ostrich, which is to be found native 
nowhere outside of Africa. The reptile and 
bird life is abundant, many of the birds being 
characterized by their brilliant feathers. Song 
birds are not as common as they are in North 
America, and most of the gorgeous birds have 
but indifferent voices. 

With the exception of the great journeys of 
exploration, discussed below under the subhead 
History , the most famous of African expedi¬ 
tions was that undertaken by Theodore Roose¬ 
velt in 1909-1910. It was purely scientific in 
its object and sent back to the Smithsonian 


Institution (which see) a larger number of big 
game specimens than were ever before secured 
by any other single expedition. 

More destructive by far than the great ani¬ 
mals of Africa and far more important as a 
cause of the backwardness of the continent are 
the insects, which swarm everywhere. The 
white ants ruin frame buildings by hollowing 
out the timbers; the locusts make farmers poor 
by devouring the crops, and the tsetse fly has 
a bite which is fatal to dogs, horses and cattle, 
and which in some instances is believed to 
transmit sleeping sickness (see Tsetse Fly; 
Sleeping Sickness). But perhaps the greatest 
pest of all is the mosquito, which spreads by 
its bite the tropical fever, and so makes large 
parts of the continent uninhabitable. 

Mineral Wealth. When the mineral re¬ 
sources of Africa are referred to, diamonds and 
gold are at once brought to mind, and these are 
indeed the most valuable. The center of pro¬ 
duction for both lies within the Union of South 
Africa, the Transvaal ranking next to Australia 
and the United States in the production of 
gold, and Kimberley exporting nine-tenths of 
the world’s supply of diamonds. See Diamond ; 
Gold; Kimberley; South Africa, Union of; 
Transvaal. 

South Africa also bids fair to produce a large 
amount of coal when its resources are further 
developed; great deposits of tin have been dis¬ 
covered in Nigeria, and the Belgian Congo has 
opened copper mines which seem practically 
inexhaustible. Thus it may be predicted that 
when the “Dark Continent” is more thoroughly 
known it will prove to be one of the world’s 
richest treasure houses of minerals. 

The People. Broadly speaking, Africa’s pop¬ 
ulation, estimated at about 140,000,000, is made 
up of two races, the white and the black. It 
is not, therefore, strictly correct to use the 
term African as meaning the same as negro, as 
is so often done. But to eyes accustomed to 
looking upon the Caucasians of Europe and 
North America, the white men of Africa w r ould 
not look white, for they have been burned by 
century after century of tropic sun. Indeed, 
the division between the two races is made 
according to the shape of head and features, 
and language, rather than according to color. 
North and east of the Sahara the white race is 
to be found; south of that barrier the black; 
and, as is natural, on the borderland between 
the two is a mixed race. 

Just south of the white man’s country, in a 
broad strip called the Sudan, are the most 



PHYSICAL MAP 


HEIGHT OF LAND 


DEPTH OF SEA 


AFRICA 


0-100 fathoms 
100-1000 
1000-2000 
2000-3000 
Below-3000 ” 


SCALE OF MILES 


) 200 400 000 800 1000 1 

ISOTHERMAL LINES 

(In Degrees Fahrenheit) 
for January — ■ f 

Hammond’s Physical Map ot Africa 
Copyright 1917 by C.S.Bammond & Co.,N.Y, 


Navigable Rivers 


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Kfilahari 


tropic of 


Pretoria; 3 


rf nco Marques 


St. Helen 


from 40° Greenwich 50 


10° Longitude 20 


20° Longitude 10 


West 


Engraved and printed expressly for 


Over 6000 feet 


3000-6000 


1200-3000 


600-1200 ” 


0-600 


all 

Below Sea Level 



Hanson-Bellows Publishing Company 










































































































































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Agricultural products are 
indicated by initial letters in 
districts where the products are 
laigely obtained. 

B Barley 01 Olives 

Ca Cacao P Oil Palms 

Cf Coffee Ru Rubber 

Ct Cotton Su Sugar 

D Dates T Tea 

G Ground NutsTo Tobacco 
lv Ivory V Vineyards 

M Maize W Wheat 

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AFRICA 


81 


AFRICA 



A TYPICAL VILLAGE IN THE REGION OF THE EQUATOR 


northerly of the true negroes, and the blackest. 
It was in this region that the slave-dealers 
carried on their trade, and most of the negroes 
in the United States to-day are descendants of 
Sudan negroes. Southward, and beginning just 
north of the equator, is the Bantu family, a 
collection of tribes of light-colored negroes who 
are connected rather by a common language 
than by any physical peculiarities. These Ban¬ 
tus occupy all the remaining part of Africa, 
except the southwestern corner where live the 
Hottentots and Bushmen (which see). Tribes 
of very small, as well as very large, people, 
occur at intervals in Africa, and it is believed 
that the sight of these gave rise to many of 
the popular tales of dwarfs and of giants. Of 
Europeans and Americans there are only as 
many as are needed to control the numerous 
enterprises, private and governmental, which 
have been opened up in various parts of the 
continent. 

Religiously the continent is still “darkest 
Africa,” for almost sixty per cent of the people 
still hold to the old heathen superstitions 
which make right, and even necessary, demon¬ 
worship, fetishism (see Fetish), and barbaric 
cruelty. Over a third of the whole population 
are Mohammedans, and the remaining five or 


six per cent are Christians of one branch or 
another. 

Division Into Countries. The following 
statement has reference to conditions just be¬ 
fore the outbreak of the War of the Nations, in 
1914. There will probably be more extensive 
rearrangements of territory in Africa at the 
close of that struggle than in any other conti¬ 
nent. 

Africa contains two independent countries, 
Abyssinia and Liberia, but together they pos¬ 
sess less than five per cent of its area. Except 
for a neutral zone of 140 square miles at Tan¬ 
gier, all the rest of the continent is divided 
among seven European nations as follows: 

Belgium. Congo, formerly the Congo Free 
State; area, 909,654 square miles; population, 
about 15,000,000. 

France. Algeria, Congo, Madagascar, Mayotte, 
Comoro Islands, Somali protectorate, Senegal, 
Guinea, Ivory Coast, Dahomey, Upper Senegal 
and Niger, Niger territory, Mauritania, Tunis 
protectorate, Morocco protectorate; area, about 
3,000,000 square miles; population, perhaps 40,- 
000 , 000 . 

Germany. Kamerun, East Africa, Southwest 
Africa, Togoland; area, 931,460 square miles; 
population, about 11,000,000. 

Great Britain. East Africa protectorate, Ugan¬ 
da protectorate, Zanzibar protectorate, Nyassa- 
land protectorate, Rhodesia (governed by the 






























AFRICA 


82 


AFRICA 



Member of a. Wandering Tribe 


A Falconer in Morocco 

Aft/ . /5-.V 


A Laundry Girl of Tunis 


I uiiiuiiiilrr ."Ihh 

♦wji.imo.cft’iim, 


Arab Encampment on the 
Fringe of the Desert 


Oasis in Northern Sahara 


□ l 









































































































AFRICA 


83 


AFRICA 



The Telephone Is Only a Home-made Plaything 


Cc ■ 11; “ 

Native Art Specimens 


Calendar of 
Knotted String 


V*rrt»*>"' • 


•V "‘nt 

A Disk of Wood in the Upper Lip as 

a Beautifier 


Kaffir Woman’s Head Dress 


Friction Method of 
Fire Building Still 
Employed 


Village Scene: . 

Women Pounding, Sifting and Grinding Meal 












































































AFRICA 


84 


AFRICA 



B stands for British possessions, F for French, G for German, P for Portuguese, S for Spanish, 
I for Italian, Bel for Belgium. Since the war began Great Britain has formally declared a protec¬ 
torate over Egypt and the Sudan. The South Africans have conquered German Southwest Africa for 
Britain. The French and British together have conquered Togoland and Kamerun. The British in 
1916 were undertaking the conquest of German East Africa. 


British South Africa Company), Swaziland, Un¬ 
ion of South Africa, Nigeria colony and pro¬ 
tectorate, Gambia colony and protectorate, Gold 
Coast colony and protectorate, Ashanti, Sierra 
Leone colony and protectorate, Egypt protec¬ 
torate, Sudan; area, over 3,000,000 square miles; 
population, about 50,000,000. 

Italy. Eritrea, Somaliland colony and protec¬ 
torate, Tripoli and Cyrenaica ; area, about 600,000 
square miles; population, about 1,400,000. 

Portugal. Cape Verde Islands, Guinea, Saint 
Thomas and Principe, Angola, Mozambique; 
area, 793,980 square miles; population, 8,245,032. 

Spain. Canary Islands, Rio de Oro and Adrar, 
Guinea, Fernando Po, Morocco protectorate; 
area, about 100,000 square miles; population, 
about 2,500,000. 

Other Items of Interest. Where the Strait 
of Gibraltar is narrowest, the coast of Africa is 


within nine miles of that of Europe. The 
towns nearest each other are Tarifa and Ceuta. 

At a comparatively recent period, as . geolo¬ 
gists count time, Africa was joined to Asia all 
along the Red Sea; but there was an upheaval, 
a long, deep valley appeared, and water flowed 
in from the sea and separated the two conti¬ 
nents. 

The greatest heat in Africa is not, as might 
be supposed, at the equator, but ten or fifteen 
degrees north. Differences in altitude account 
for this. 

The highest point in the continent is Kili¬ 
manjaro, 19,728 feet above sea level; the low¬ 
est occurs in the Sahara Desert, which is in 
places 150 feet below sea level. 






















AFRICA 


85 


AFRICA 


The violent hot wind which blows across 
Northern Africa and helps to create the desert 
conditions is known as the simoom. 

The manner in which oases are formed is 
most interesting. Far, far away, on the very 
edge of the desert, perhaps, an isolated moun¬ 
tain range forces the moisture from a sea wind. 
The heavy rainfall which results sinks into the 
sand and travels underground for hundreds of 
miles, it may be. And then, somewhere in the 
desert it finds its way to the surface, and a 
restful oasis, with grass and waving date palms, 
is formed. 

The sands of the desert have buried many 
things out of sight. While a railroad was being 
built across the Sahara the workmen began the 
removal of a mound of sand, and beneath it 
they found a mosque and a number of houses— 
a whole village hidden by the shifting sand. 

Mohammedans are bidden by the Koran to 
bathe frequently, and the Arabs obey the 
injunction; but since they hate water they 
bathe in sand. 

The Desert of Sahara about equals in area 

History 

The story of Africa is one of contrasts. At 
the dawn of history the continent was the home 
of the world’s foremost civilization, that of 
Egypt. Later the empire of Carthage rivalled 
Rome, until it was overthrown and utterly 
destroyed in the last of the Punic Wars (which 
see). Under the sway of Rome, Africa’s Medi¬ 
terranean coast was still a vital section of the 
civilized world. Alexandria became a seat of 
learning, and there Ptolemy worked out his 
systems of astronomy and geography; Cyrene, 
farther west, was a city of prosperous traders, 
from which came that Simon to whom was 
given the burden of the Cross on the road to 
Golgotha; the land of Carthage gave birth to 
Saint Augustine, who made it a stronghold of 
active Christendom. But after the fall of 
Rome Africa’s Mediterranean region sank into 
a barbarism nearly as gross as that of the 
unknown regions south of it. The Vandals 
poured in from the west, then the Arab Mo¬ 
hammedans from the east, and the period of 
Africa’s glory was past. 

During the Middle Ages Europe knew little 
of its southern neighbor, though Spain and 
Sicily were partly under the domination of the 
Mohammedans, and the Crusaders once in¬ 
vaded Egypt. In the fifteenth century Portu¬ 
guese explorers sailed south along the Atlantic 


the United States, with Alaska and its island 
possessions. It has at least four hundred oases. 

The caravan trips across the desert are most 
hazardous undertakings. Usually there are 
from 1,000 to 1,500 camels in a caravan, and 
the journey takes fully three months. An 
average of one-third of the animals perish on 
the round trip, and occasionally a sandstorm 
of several hours’ duration destroys a whole 
caravan—men, camels and goods. 

Old people are not looked upon with respect 
by some of the native tribes. They are fre¬ 
quently led out into the forest and there aban¬ 
doned, to die of starvation or to be killed by 
prowling beasts. 

The pygmy tribes are wonderful hunters and 
are most ferocious. Indeed, they have been 
one of the chief obstacles to exploration. 

Only two states of Africa, Abj^ssinia and 
Liberia, are independent. 

The island of Madagascar is larger than any 
state of the United States except Texas. 

Africa contains examples of the smallest and 
the largest of mankind. a.mc c. 

of Africa 

coast, and in 1488 the great navigator, Bar¬ 
tholomew Diaz (which see), rounded the Cape 
of Good Hope. Neither these voyages nor 
that of Vasco da Gama, who reached India by 
this route ten years later, excited attention in 
other countries, but the Portuguese quietly 
founded several of the colonies which they hold 
to this day. After the discovery of America 
fortunes began to be made in the slave trade; 
about the same time the discoveries of gold 
became known, and adventurers from Holland, 
France, England and other countries became 
active. In 1652 the Dutch settled Cape Town, 
though merely as a half-way port on the road 
to the Indies. 

The Explorers. Toward the end of the 
period of Europe’s great wars a lively interest 
in Africa was awakened, and the period of 
great explorations began. In 1770-1772 James 
Bruce traveled to Abyssinia, the little-known 
Christian island in the sea of Mohammedanism. 
In 1797 Mungo Park made known the Niger 
country, and after him came several less known 
but no less important explorers. In 1840 David 
Livingstone began his missionary journeys, in 
the course of which he crossed Africa from 
ocean to ocean, discovered Victoria Falls and 
explored the Zambezi region. In 1869, when 
Livingstone was thought to be lost, a Welsh- 


AFRICA 


86 


AFRICA 



OUTLINE AND QUESTIONS ON AFRICA 


Outline 

I. Position 

(1) Latitude—37° 25' north to 34° 50' 

south. 

(2) Longitude—51° 21' east to 17° 30' west 

II. Size 

(1) Length, 4,960 miles 

(2) Breadth, 4,500 miles 

(3) Area, 11,500,000 square miles 

(4) Rank, second, only Asia surpassing it 

III. Shape and Const Line 

(1) Roughly triangular, with greatest 

width in north 

(2) Regular coast line 

(3) Few good harbors 

(4) Few islands 

(5) Coast waters 

IV. Surface 

(1) General 

(a) Lacks variety 

(b) Great tableland with average 
height 2,130 feet 

(2) Specific 

(a) Northern highlands 

(b) Southern peaks and Ruwenzori 

(c) Plateau of Abyssinia 

V. Drainage 

(1) Five great rivers 

(2) Lakes 

VI. Climate 

(1) Even temperature 

(2) General deficiency in rainfall 

(3) Deserts 

(4) Winds 


Questions 

Why are children in school usually asked to draw Africa before North America, Asia 
or Europe? 

Why is not Egypt a desert like the Sahara? 

How many miles higher is the loftiest point in Africa than the lowest? 

Why should Africa not have been as carefully explored and as thickly settled as 
North America? 

What is an oasis? How is one formed in the midst of desert dryness? 

If compelled to live in Africa, what part of the continent would you choose? 

Why are not the great rivers of Africa of more value for navigation? 

What is a simoom? 



( 1 ) 

( 2 ) 

(3) 

(4) 


(1) 

( 2 ) 

(3) 

(4) 

(5) 

( 6 ) 
(7) 


( 1 ) 

( 2 ) 

(3) 

(4) 


( 1 ) 

( 2 ) 


VII. Vegetation 

Northern vegetation like that of 
Europe 

Desert conditions 
Savannas 
Tropical forest 

VIII. Animal Life 

Largest members of animal kingdom 

Many forms found only in Africa 

Grass-eating animals 

Flesh-eaters 

Reptiles 

Birds 

Insects 


IX. Mineral 

Diamonds 

Gold 

Coal 

Copper 


Resources 


X. Inhabitants 


White 

Black 


XI. Political Divisions 

(1) Independent countries 

(2) Dependencies 

XII. History 

(1) Ancient 

(2) Early modern discoveries 

(3) Modern exploration 

(4) Discovery of mineral wealth 

(5) Recent development 






















AFRICA 


87 


AFRICA 



Outline and Questions on Africa—Continued 


What effect do the mountains of Africa have on the temperature? On the rainfall? 
On the rivers? 

What is one of the great dangers that desert caravans have to face? 

What cruel custom do some of the tribes have with regard to their aged? 

What are the two great divisions of the inhabitants of Africa? 

How did Stanley’s purpose in going to Africa differ from Livingstone’s? 

Is Africa chiefly an independent continent, or one governed from without? 

What part of the western hemisphere is in the same latitude as the Desert of Sahara? 
What are the differences in the conditions of the two places? 

What difference has the Suez Canal made to commerce? 

What is the largest island near Africa? Is its relation with the mainland very close? 
Why do not*the lions, elephants and giraffes make their homes in the tropical jungles 
of Africa? 

In what three respects does Africa rank second among the continents? 

What proportion of the drainage of Africa finds no outlet to the sea? 

What does the Arab of Africa understand by the word bath f 
What is the chief mountain range of Africa? 

Does it contain the highest peak? 

For what is Kimberley noted? 

What part of the continent produces copper in abundance? 

Name three animals that live in Africa and nowhere else in the world. 

How does the Congo compare in length with the Mississippi? The Nile with the 
Amazon? 

What part of Africa was known to the world in the time of the Romans? 

What explorer first sailed around the Cape of Good Hope? 

Who are the Boers? 

Compare Victoria Nyanza in size and shape with Lake Superior. 

Give some of the main characteristics of the Hottentots. 

How does the highest point in Africa compare in altitude with the highest point in 
South America? 

How much larger is Africa than South America? Than Europe? 

Would good natural harbors have had any effect on the history of Africa? 

What are rift valleys? 

Is the southernmost point of Africa as far south as the southernmost point of South 
America? 

How many of the great rivers of Africa discharge into the Atlantic? 

What is the longest lake in the world? 

How does the southern desert differ from the Sahara? 

Name several ways in which the Africans use the baobab tree. 

What is a savanna? 

What was the object of Roosevelt’s expedition to Africa? 

What was the popular name for Africa a generation ago? Is it still appropriate? 
About how many oases are there in the Desert of Sahara? 

Of what use is the date palm to the people of Africa? 

From the map, pick out the largest political division of Africa. 

What did David Livingstone accomplish for Africa? 

When was the Union of South Africa established? 

Compare the Bushmen and the Hottentots as to intelligence. 

Do all the Arabs live in Arabia? 

What harm has the desire for ivory done? 

What did the seventeenth-century traders carry off with them when they visited 
Africa? 

How does the African elephant differ from the Asiatic? 









AFRICA 


88 


AFRICA 


American, Henry M. Stanley, was sent by 
the New York Herald and the London Tele¬ 
graph to find him; this explorer’s great contri¬ 
bution to the world’s knowledge was the course 
of the Congo. See Stanley, Henry M.; Liv¬ 
ingstone, David. 

The Partition of Africa. At the time of 
Stanley’s voyage only small portions of the 
“Dark Continent” were under the flags of 
Europe. At the south the British had been in 
possession since 1806, and the Boers had 
trekked to their Orange River Colony and the 
Transvaal, farther inland. France had taken 
Algiers in 1830 and put an end to Mediter¬ 
ranean piracy (see Barbary) and the Portu¬ 
guese, French and English had sundry small 
settlements on the west coast. Two influences 
now acted to stimulate European activity in 
Africa—the dream of King Leopold I of Bel¬ 
gium to found a vast empire, and the spurring 
of French and German ambitions by the 
Franco-German War of 1870. 

King Leopold chose the Congo for his ef¬ 
forts, and in 1876 organized the African Inter¬ 
national Association, the avowed purpose of 
which was the systematic exploration of equa¬ 
torial Africa. Stanley was sent back to Africa 
to cany out the association’s plans. But the 
international character of the undertaking was 
largely a myth; French and Portuguese agents 
were also active in the Congo, aiming to fore¬ 
stall the Belgians wherever possible. King 
Leopold determined to secure definite interna¬ 
tional acknowledgement of his company. The 
United States and Germany recognized its flag 
in 1884, and the next year joined twelve nations 
of Europe in a treaty which created and 
neutralized the Congo Free State. In 1908 the 
Congo was formally declared a Belgian col¬ 
ony, and Leopold’s dream became a reality. 

The efforts of other nations may be briefly 
outlined; their relative success is best shown 
by the map. France’s aim has been to link its 
possessions on the different coasts by a massive 
inland empire. England, inspired by Cecil 
Rhodes, has worked for continuous possessions 
from Cape-to-Cairo. Germany has sought for 
its “place in the sun” regardless of its location. 
Portugal has expanded its already existing colo¬ 
nies. Italy has fought for influence over Abys¬ 
sinia, and recently has raised its flag in Tripoli. 
Spain has maintained its few small territories 
and has attempted expansion at its own door¬ 
way, in Morocco. For the stories of these 
varied activities the reader may refer to the 
articles on the Union of South Africa; Cape- 


to-Cairo Railway; South African War; 
Transvaal Colony; Orange Free State; Con¬ 
go; Abyssinia; Tripoli; Algiers; Morocco; 
Madagascar ; and each of the nations con¬ 
cerned. See, also, the story of Liberia, which, 
excepting Abyssinia, is the only independent 
state on the continent. c.h.h. 

Consult Keltie’s The Partition of Africa; Stan¬ 
ley’s Through the Dark Continent, which, though 
old, is valued as a book of original sources. 

Related Subjects. The following topical index 
of articles in these volumes relating to Africa 
will make possible a systematic study of the con¬ 
tinent : 

CAPES 

Agulhas Good Hope 


CITIES AND TOWNS 


Abomey 


Khartum 

Aboukir 


Kimberley 

Abydos 


Ladysmith 

Addis Abeba 


Memphis 

Alexandria 


Monrovia 

Algiers 


Morocco 

Assuan 


Oran 

Bloemfontein 


Port Elizabeth 

Boma 


Port Said 

Cape Town 


Pretoria 

Cairo 


Saint Paul de Loanda 

Carthage 


Siut 

Durban 


Suez 

Fashoda 


Tangier 

Fez 


Thebes 

Freetown 


Timbukter 

Heliapolis 


Utica 

Johannesburg 




COAST 

WATERS 

Atlantic Ocean 


Mediterranean Sea 

Delagoa Bay 


Mozambique Channel 

Guinea, Gulf of 


Red Sea 

Indian Ocean 




LAKES 

Albert Edward Nyanza 

Nyassa 

Albert Nyanza 


Tanganyika 

Chad 


Victoria Nyanza 


MOUNTAINS 

Atlas 


Kilimanjaro 


PEOPLES 

Bantu 


Kaffirs 

Berber 


Man dingo 

Bushmen 


Matabele 

Capts 


Negro Race 

Hottentots 


Zulus 

political divisions 

Abyssinia 


Egypt 

Algeria 


Ethiopia 

Angola 


Fezzan 

Ashanti 


French Guinea 

Barbary States 


French Somaliland 

Basutoland 


Gambia 

Cape of Good 

Hope, 

German East Africa 

Province of the 

German Southwest 

Congo 


Africa 

Dahomey 


Gold Coast 

Darfur 


Guinea 


AFRICA 


89 


AGASSIZ 


Ivory Coast 

Kamerun 

Kordofan 

Liberia 

Mashonaland 

Morocco 

Natal 

Nigeria 

Nubia 

Numidia 

Orange Free State 
Portuguese East Africa 
Portuguese Guinea 
Rhodesia 


Semgal 

Semgambia and Niger 

Sierra Leone 

Sokoto 

Somaliland 

Sudan 

Togoland 

Transvaal 

Tripoli 

Tunis 

Uganda 

Union of South Africa 

Wadai 

Zululand 


Congo 

Gambia 

Niger 

Nile 

Orange 


RIVERS 

Senegal 

Shire 

Victoria Falls 
Zambezi 

CLIMATE CONDITIONS 


Kalahari Desert Sirocco 

Sahara 


CHARACTERISTIC ANIMALS 


Antelope 

Buffalo 

Camel 

Chimpanzee 

Crocodile 

Elephant 

Giraffe 

Gnu 


Gorilla 

Hippopotamus 

Hyena 

Leopard 

Lion 

Ostrich 

Rhinoceros 

Zebra 


Diamonds 

Gold 


LEADING PRODUCTS 
Ivory 
Rubber 


HISTORY 

Livingstone, David South African War 

Park, Mungo Stanley, Henry M. 

Roosevelt, Theodore 


AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL 
CHURCH, a religious organization, formed ex¬ 
clusively for the colored people. It is a branch 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church and was 
established in Philadelphia in 1816 by Richard 
Allen. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion 
Church was organized four years later. While 
independent of the mother Church, these two 
bodies are conducted under the same rules and 
system of government as the older organiza¬ 
tion. In 1913 the African Methodist Episcopal 
Church had 620,000 members, and the Zion 
Church had 568,608. See Methodists. 

AGAMEM'NON, one of the outstanding fig¬ 
ures in ancient Greek legend, brother of Mene- 
laus, whose wife Helen was the cause of the 
Trojan War (see Troy). As king of Mycenae 
and Argos, and thus the most powerful ruler in 
Greece, Agamemnon was chosen to command 
all the Greek forces when the struggle com¬ 
menced. On his return from the war he was 
killed by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover 
Aegisthus. See, also, Mythology. 



LOUIS AGASSIZ 


AGANIP'PE, in Grecian mythology, a foun¬ 
tain near Mount Helicon, in Boeotia, sacred to 
the Muses, which had the property of inspiring 
with poetic fire any person who drank of its 
waters. 

AGASSIZ, ag' ah se, Louis John Rudolph 
(1807-1873), a great naturalist and teacher, one 
of those rare men who combined ability for 
research in science with the power of inspiring 
other men. Agassiz was the greatest authority 
of his day on ma¬ 
rine zoology, and 
he discovered 
many new facts 
in geology and 
animal life, 
his fame 
greater for 
imagination 
the enthusiasm 
which he com¬ 
municated to his 
pupils. His 
science was some¬ 
times at fault; 
his humanity 
never. At the age of 22 he wrote to his father: 
“I wish it may be said of Louis Agassiz that 
he was the first naturalist of his time, a good 
citizen, and beloved of those who knew him.” 
No higher praise can be given him than to say 
that all of this came true. 

Agassiz was born in Switzerland, in a little 
village not far from the shores of Lake Neu- 
chatel. He studied medicine at the universities 
of Zurich, Heidelberg and Munich, but before 
his course was completed was invited to assist 
a well-known naturalist on a study of Brazilian 
fishes. This work led to extended investigation 
of European fishes, and the study of fossil 
fishes in turn stirred his interest in geology. 
In 1847 he became a professor at Harvard 
University,- where he founded the Museum of 
Natural History, now world-famous as the 
Agassiz Museum. Another forward step, due 
to him, was the summer school on the island 
of Penikese in Buzzard’s Bay, opened in the 
year of his death. This was the first zoological 
laboratory built amid the haunts of the ani¬ 
mals to be studied. Over his grave in Mount 
Auburn cemetery, Cambridge, is a great 
boulder, brought from the glacier in Switzer¬ 
land where he made his first important obser¬ 
vation on geology, and the pine trees which 
shelter it were brought from the little village 
in which he was born. 







AGASSIZ ASSOCIATION 


90 


AGE 


Alexander Agassiz (1835-1910), son of Louis 
Agassiz, came to the United States from his 
Swiss home in 1849, two years after his father 
had accepted an appointment at Harvard Uni¬ 
versity. The son, under the father’s guidance, 
made a special study of zoology and geology, 
and was graduated from Harvard in 1857. 
Though he w r as interested chiefly in the animals 
of the sea, and became one of the world’s 
authorities on fishes, his geological studies were 
of great value to him after 1866, when he 
devoted most of his time to the study and 
development of mines. His investigation and 
engineering skill turned the Calumet and Hecla 
mine in Michigan from an unpromising venture 
to one of the richest mines in the world. Of 
his wealth, derived from this source, he gave 
about $1,000,000 to Harvard University to fur¬ 
ther the work in zoology begun there by his 
father, and contributed generously to other 
educational and charitable causes. w.f.z. 

AGASSIZ ASSOCIATION, an organization 
which has been extraordinarily successful in 
its purpose of interesting young people in 
nature study. Named in honor of Louis Agas¬ 
siz, the great nature student and teacher, it 
has aimed to carry out the conviction he 
expressed in the words, “The book of Nature 
is always open, and all that I can do or say 
shall be to lead young people to study that 
book, and not to pin their faith to any other.” 
It has therefore placed emphasis on direct ob¬ 
servation rather than on reading about natural 
objects. The association was founded in 1879 
by Harlan H. Ballard, and has spread until it 
has branches in most civilized countries. The 
membership varies from 12,000 to 15,000. One 
of its outstanding features is the offer of free 
correspondence instruction in nature study, and 
another is the offering of prizes for original 
research work. Association headquarters are 
at Pittsfield, Mass. If it is desired to organize 
a local association, full directions may be ob¬ 
tained from there. See Agassiz, Louis. 

AG'ATE, a variety of fine-grained quartz, 
usually classified as chalcedony. It is a little 
harder than steel, but more brittle, and takes 
a high polish, and it is therefore in demand for 
ornaments and jewelry. Agates are variegated 
in color, with bands of white, gray, brown, 
yellow, blue or black; or the colors may be so 
blended as to present a cloudy, moss-like ap¬ 
pearance. They are formed in cavities in rocks 
by layers of silica deposited by water. 

Agates are found in Austria and Germany, 
where their polishing is an important industry, 


also in India and many parts of the United 
States and Canada. The principal commercial 
supply, however, comes from Brazil and Uru- 


MOSS AGATES 

guay. Polished agates, which are often put 
through various processes to heighten the color 
effects, are used for knife handles, breast pins, 
watch charms, vases and other ornamental 
purposes. Chemists use mortars and pestles 


a, cross-section of onyx agate 
&, cross-section of bull’s-eye agate 

of agate to crush hard substances, and chemical 
balances are supported on “knife-edges” of 
agate, which is not affected by moisture or 
chemical fumes. 

AGAVE. See Century Plant. 

AGE. In law, age is applied to the period 
of life when men and women are enabled to 
do legally that which before, for want of years 
and, presumably, of judgment, they could not 
do. Full or legal age in male or female is 
twentjr-one years in most countries, though in 
some states women become of age at 18. The 
age is completed on the day preceding the 
anniversary of a person’s birth. 

The term is also used to designate the suc¬ 
cessive epochs or stages of civilization in his¬ 
tory or mythology. The Archaeological Ages 
or Periods are the Stone Age, the Bronze Age 
and the Iron Age, these names being given in 
accordance with the materials chiefly employed 
for weapons and other implements during the 
particular period. (See Bronze Age; Iron Age; 
Stone Age.) The word age is also applied to 
certain historical periods marked by special 
characteristics, as for instance the Elizabethan 
Age, noted for its literature and art, the Mid¬ 
dle Ages, and the Feudal Age, periods of transi¬ 
tion from the barbaric Dark Ages to times of 
enlightenment and culture. More modern still 









AGENT 


91 


AGRA 


is the Victorian Age, during which great pro¬ 
gress was made in art, literature and science, 
and the tone and morality of social life were 
greatly elevated. 

AGENT, in law, one who is employed to 
represent another individual, or company, 
called the principal, the relation between them 
being called agency. An agent may be general 
or special, the latter acting by authority for his 
principal in a special business only. The posi¬ 
tion of agent is one of trust, calling for faithful 
performance of specified duties. The com¬ 
pensation varies according to the responsibility 
incurred and the work done. A definite salary 
may be agreed upon, or the agent may receive 
a commission figured at a certain per cent of 
the value of the business resulting from his 
labor. 

The agent is personally liable to third per¬ 
sons when he does not disclose the principal 
for whom he is acting, but not otherwise, unless 
he exceed his authority. The employer is not 
responsible for acts of the agent which are 
unauthorized. The principal is generally liable 
to third persons for civil offenses committed 
by the agent when acting within the scope of 
his agency; but this does not relieve the agent 
of personal liability himself. As a means of 
enforcing payment for his services, the law 
gives the agent a lien upon the property of 
the principal which may be in his hands. See 
Contract; Lien. 

AGINCOURT or AZINCOURT, ah zhan koor', 
a village of Northern France, in the depart¬ 
ment Pas de Calais, where was fought, in 1415, 
a famous battle of the Hundred Years’ War 
(which see). In this battle the heavily-armed 
French, numbering about 60,000, were totally 
routed by the English archers of Henry V, 
whose force numbered only 15,000. The French 
nobility was almost destroyed in this conflict. 

AGNOS'TIC, a word of Greek origin, mean¬ 
ing unknowable. It refers to a person who 
believes that no one can really prove that a 
God exists, or that he does not exist. He 
takes the position of one who says, “I do not 
know.” The belief of the agnostic is based on 
the theory that the human mind can offer 
proof only for the things that are known 
through the senses; that is, that can be 
touched, or seen, or heard, etc. Likewise, he 
argues, man cannot prove many things that 
seem to be real, not even his own existence. 
An agnostic is not an atheist, for the latter 
denies that there is a God. An old school of 
Greek philosophers called Sophists held the 


same theory, but the word agnostic was first 
used in 1869 by Thomas H. Huxley. Agnosti¬ 
cism is the name given the principles of the 
agnostics. See Sophists. 

AGOUTI, ahgoo'te, the name of several 
rodents, or gnawing animals, related to the 
porcupines. There are eight or nine species, 
all belonging to South America and the West 
Indies. The common agouti, or yellow-rumped 



AGOUTI 


cavy, is of the size of a rabbit. It burrows in 
the ground or in hollow trees, lives on vege¬ 
tables and fruit, though eating meat whenever 
it can be obtained. The agouti grunts like a 
pig, and is as greedy, so where it is common 
it does much injury to crops. Its flesh is 
white and palatable. It is readily domesti¬ 
cated, but is too destructive to make a desir¬ 
able pet. 

AGRA, ah' gra, a city of India, in the United 
Provinces of Agra and Oudh, 841 miles north¬ 
west of Calcutta and 110 miles southeast of 
Delhi. It was the capital of the former prov¬ 
ince of Agra, and has interesting structures, 
among which are the imperial palace, the Moti 
Masjid, or Pearl Mosque; the mosque called 
the Jama Masjid, or Great Mosque, and the 
Taj Mahal, a mausoleum, or tomb, of the 
seventeenth century, built by the emperor 
Shah Jehan to his favorite queen (see Taj 
Mahal). Agra has an important trade in 
grain, sugar, tobacco and cotton, and the in¬ 
habitants have acquired a worldwide reputa¬ 
tion for the manufacture of gold lace and deli¬ 
cate inlaid mosaics. 

The city is one of the oldest in India and 
has been prominent since the first part of the 
sixteenth century. During the Sepoy Rebel¬ 
lion of 1857 it was a place of refuge for 
Europeans, being captured h>y the British after 
a siege lasting several months. At present 
Agra is an important railway center and also 
a commercial and financial center of northwest 
India. Population in 1911, 185,449. 











AGRARIAN LAWS 


92 


AGRICULTURE 


AGRA'RIAN LAWS. The word agrarian 
is derived from the Latin ager, meaning field, 
and was applied to all those laws enacted in 
Rome for the division of the public lands. 
Originally the right to the use of public land 
belonged only to the ruling class, or patricians, 
but latterly the plebeians, or commoners, were 
allowed to hold it, though they were often 
unfairly treated in the sharing of it. Hence 
arose much discontent among the plebeians, 
and various remedial laws were passed, some 
of them giving rise to the fiercest struggles 
which disturbed the Roman State. Few of the 
agrarian laws were ever seriously put into 
execution. 


AGRICOLA, agrik' o la, Gnaeus Julius (37- 
93), a Roman statesman and general, whose 
Life, by his son-in-law Tacitus, is considered 
one of the most perfect biographies ever writ¬ 
ten. As governor of Britain (77-84) Agricola 
reduced the greater part of the island to sub¬ 
jection, and although he was the twelfth Ro¬ 
man general who had been in the island he 
was the first who in any degree reconciled 
the Britons to the Roman yoke. He con¬ 
structed the chain of forts between the Forth 
and the Clyde, to afford protection against the 
barbarians from the north, and sailed around 
the island, discovering the Orkneys. His char¬ 
acter was blameless. 



G'RICULTURE is the art of culti¬ 
vating the soil to produce material for feeding 
and clothing the human race. It is the oldest 
of all occupations. “The first farmer,” says 
Emerson, “was the first man, and all historic 
nobility rests on possession and use of the 
land.” Agriculture is also the most widely- 
extended of all occupations, and it lies at the 
foundation of all other industries. Daniel 
Webster once said, “When tillage begins, other 
arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the 
founders of civilization.” Unless man were 
fed and clothed the race would perish. 

Illustrating Its Importance. Mr. and Mrs. 
Adams with their children, John, aged 14, and 
Mary, aged 12, lived in the city. Like many 
other city children, John and Mary knew but 
little of the country, and did not seriously 
consider farming or anything connected with it. 
Their father and mother, however, had come 
from the farm, and they decided to help John 
and Mary to obtain correct ideas of the coun¬ 
try and of a life such as they lived in their 
younger days. 

“John, where did this bread come from?” 
asked Mr. Adams, at dinner. 

‘Why, mother bought it at the baker’s, I 




77 


suppose. 

“Very well, but where did the baker get it?” 


‘0, I know,” said Mary, “he makes it.” 

‘But what is it made of?” continued the 
father. 




There is flour in it,” said John, “and water, 
and—and—lots of other things.” 

“A boy never knows anything about cook¬ 
ing; let me tell,” said Mary. “Bread is made 
of flour, water and yeast and—what else do 
they put in it, mother?” 

“I don’t see as you know much more about 
it than I do,” said John. 

“You children can learn how to make bread 
some other time,” said Mr. Adams; “I want 
to know where the baker got his flour.” 

“He bought it of the wholesale grocer,” re¬ 
plied John. 

“Well, where did the grocer get it?” 

“That is about as far as I can go,” said 
John. “I have often wondered where all the 
things we eat come from, but I have so many 
things to study in school that I don’t have 
time to read about anything more.” 

“Well,’ replied the father, “suppose w T e make 
a little study of these things at dinner. Let 
us begin with the bread. What you and Mary 
have said is true, but we need to look into 
the subject a little further, if we would 
know the real source from which we obtain 
bread and all other articles of food. The real 
source of all these is the farm, and were it 
not for the farmers all the people who live 
in the city, as we do, would soon be without 
food.” 

“Why, I never thought of that before; I 
never supposed the farmer amounted to much, 





































THE FARMER FEEDS THEM ALL 

































































AGRICULTURE 


94 


AGRICULTURE 


anyway,” said John. Mary expressed a similar 
idea, and both asked their father to tell them 
about those common articles of food which we 
all eat without giving a thought to the source 
from which they come, or the labor required 
to prepare them for our use. 

During the next few days Mr. Adams took 
the children on a number of imaginary jour¬ 
neys. With him they visited in fancy the 
great wheat fields of the Dakotas and Canada, 
the corn belt in Illinois and Iowa, the cattle 
ranches of Texas and Montana, the fruit or¬ 
chards of the Pacific states, the dairy farms 
and creameries of Wisconsin, the sugar plan¬ 
tations of Louisiana, the beet farms of Mich¬ 
igan and Colorado and the poultry farms near 
some of our great cities. Then he took them 
to far-off lands—to the coffee plantations of 
Brazil, the tea gardens of Formosa, the rice 
plantations of China and the spice groves of 
India. 

Before these imaginary excursions were 
ended John and Mary learned that everything 
they ate, except salt, came from a farm in 
some part of the world and that agriculture 
was carried on in every country. But Mr. 
Adams did not stop here. In the same delight¬ 
ful way he led the children to the study of 
cotton, flax, wool and silk, so that they were 
convinced that we depend upon the farm for 
what we wear as well as for what we eat. 
In their minds the farmer at once became a 
very important individual. 

Progress of Agriculture. Agriculture began 
when the first man selected plants for his 
food. His next step was to scratch the ground 
with a stick and plant seed. Then he took a 
forked stick and made a plow with it. Two 
or more men hauled this plow while another 
held it in position. But this labor was too 
hard, so man tamed the ox and the ass and 
made them do the hauling and the carrying of 
his burdens, as well. From these simple be¬ 
ginnings, agriculture has advanced through the 
centuries until to-day traction engines haul over 
our great wheat fields gang plows that turn 
more than fifty furrows at a time. Later 
these same engines haul over the fields of 
ripened grain a machine which at one operation 
harvests, thrashes and sacks the grain ready 
for market—does everything, one humorist 
says, except to cash the check for the crop. 

Such has been the progress in agriculture 
since the middle of the last century that the 
labor of producing a bushel of wheat with 
the most modern appliances has been reduced 


from a little over three hours to about ten 
minutes, and the cost from 17% cents to Mfa 
cents. Formerly it required four and one-half 
hours’ labor to produce a bushel of corn; now 



DECREASING SIZE OF FARMS 
Average size, in acres, in the United States, 
from 1850 to 1910. 


it requires less than forty minutes. Then, it 
cost 35% cents to produce the bushel; now it 
costs less than ten cents. Then, it took thirty- 
five and one-half hours’ labor to grow a ton 
of hay, at a cost of $3.06; now, it takes eleven 
hours and thirty-four minutes at a cost of 
$1.29. But this is not all. Production has been 
increased many fold; new and better varieties 
of grains, vegetables, fruits and live stock are 
being constantly produced; the use of agri¬ 
cultural machinery has enabled the farmer to 
give more attention to the business side of his 
affairs, and the best farms are now operated 
on a systematic plan which includes both the 
fields and the home. 

Causes of Progress. While the progress of 
agriculture may seem to have been slow, it has 
advanced about as rapidly as other arts. The 
more rapid advance of recent times is due 
chiefly to the following causes: 

Transportation. It is of no advantage to the 
farmer to raise crops that he cannot market, 
therefore good roads form one of the most 
essential conditions to his success. Of these 
the country has far too few, but railways have 
become so numerous that most farms are now 
within a few miles of a station if not directly 
on the railway itself. Increased facilities for 
marketing his crop have greatly increased the 
farmers’ production. 

Machinery. The machines which have done 
most towards the progress of agriculture are 
the harvester, or reaping machine, the gang 
plow, the seeder and the horse hoe. What 
these have accomplished in reducing the cost 
of production is told in the preceding para¬ 
graph. Without these inventions cultivation 
of the large farms in the Prairie states and the 
Canadian provinces of the Northwest would 
be impossible. Many other machines have also 
contributed their share. Among these are the 
steam thrasher, the traction engine, the gaso- 







WHAT AMERICAN FARMERS 
SEND TO CANADA 


WHAT CANADIAN FARMERS 
SENDTO UNITED STATES 


Cotton-10 



Tobacco 

4 


Figures Represent aYears Exports 
In Millions of Dollars 


Corn 

4 



Oranges, Lemons 
.3 


Wheat-7 Cattle-7 


Poultry-9 Flax Seed-12 





Vegetable 

Dried Fruits Vegetables Oils Seeds 
3 3 2 1 



Apples 

I 


MilKand 

Vegetables Cream 




Bran 1^ 



Oats 7 



THE SHARE OF EACH CROP 
IN TOTAL CROP VALUE 




ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT 


WHEAT 

Denmark 

47 

CORN 

Canada 

58 

Canada 

21 

New Zealand 

48 

United States 

15 

United States 

26 

OATS 

Belgium 

72 

POTATOES 

Belgium 

306 

Canada 

39 

Canada 

160 

United States 

32 

United States 

98 


CANADA UNITED STATES Figures Represent Bushels per Acre 

ALL SORTS OF WORKERS 

Ip each country the relative numbers are shown by proportion of heights 



UNITED 

STATES 


1 Agriculture CANADA 

2 Manufactures 

3 Trade and Merchandising 

4 Domestic,Personal Service 

5 Transportation 
0 Building Trades 

7 Clerical Occupations 

8 Professional 

9 Al I Others 


T 























































AGRICULTURE 


96 


AGRICULTURE 


line engine and the cream separator. More¬ 
over, we must not forget the improvement in 
the simpler farm implements such as the hoe, 
the spade, the rake, and the ax, which, by being 
made lighter and of better material than in 
the long-ago, have enabled those using them 
to do more work with less expenditure of 
strength. 

Chemistry. The application of chemistry to 
soils, plants and fertilizers lies at the founda¬ 
tion of scientific agriculture. The farmer can 
now learn from the nearest agricultural experi¬ 
ment station what fertilizer is best suited to 
his soil and what crops he can grow with 
greatest success. Agricultural chemistry is now 
applied to the study of soils, of plant food 
and of fertilizers wherever there is an agri¬ 
cultural college. 

Education. Not many years ago the average 
farmer was proud to express his contempt for 
what he styled “book farming.” Happily, that 
day is past, and 1 agricultural education (see 
subheading, below) now occupies an important 
position in the educational systems of all civil¬ 
ized countries. In the United States and Can¬ 
ada the demand for graduates from agricul¬ 
tural colleges and high schools is greater than 
these institutions are able to supply. Further¬ 
more, the outlook for supervisors and teachers 
of agriculture is so promising that young men 
from the city constitute no inconsiderable 
portion of the student body of these institu¬ 
tions. This is the beginning of a right sort of 
movement from the city to the country, and 
it is increasing. 

Scientific Agriculture. All the foregoing 
movements have combined to make agricul¬ 
ture a science as well as an art. The influence 
of the agricultural colleges and experiment 
stations extends to the remotest regions, and 
everywhere the trained scientist is helping the 
farmer to solve his problems and to make his 
farm more profitable. No longer can the old 
hit or miss methods maintain themselves in 
competition with the scientific methods of the 
“new agriculture,” which in the near future 
will not only render productive vast areas still 
barren, but also reclaim the so-called “worn- 
out farms” and repopulate with prosperous 
families those which have been abandoned. 

Prevention oj Disease. The application of 
scientific methods to the study of those dis¬ 
eases of plants and animals which are ever 
robbing the farmer of his profits constitutes 
one of the most important contributions of 
science to agriculture and is saving annually 


millions of dollars to the farmers. While not 
all of these diseases are conquered, many of 
them have been; the ravages of others have 
been checked, and new victories are gained 
each year. See Disease. 

Insect Pests. What has been said about the 
study of disease applies with equal force to 
the study of destructive insects. These pests 
also deprive the farmer of a portion of his 
income every season, and, now and then, they 
destroy his crop altogether. Through the dis¬ 
coveries made by the Department of Agricul¬ 
ture at Washington and in Canada by the 
same department of government, and at the 
various experiment stations, we now are able 
to deal successfully with these pests on the 
American continent. 

Branches. Agriculture is so widely extended 
over the earth and so varied in its industries 
that it is naturally divided into a number of 
branches. While many farmers are interested 
in several of these branches, each gives special 
attention to one or two. The farmer in the 
corn belt, for instance, makes corn the chief 
product of his land, but he must give enough 
attention to growing other crops and to dairy¬ 
ing to produce sufficient food for his family 
and live stock, unless he would purchase this 
food at an expense considerably greater than 
would be required to raise it. Likewise, the 
dairy husbandman must raise most of the feed 
for his herd, if he would carry on his business 
with profit. 

The following are the chief branches of agri¬ 
culture in America: 

Raising Cereals. In some regions the soil 
and climate are especially suited to raising 
cereals. For instance, Canada, Minnesota and 
North Dakota are adapted to raising spring 
wheat, and this constitutes their chief crop. 
On the other hand, Kansas is especially 
suited to raising winter wheat. Illinois and 
Iowa are the great corn states, because of the 
particular adaptation of the soil and climate 
of the corn belt to the production of this 
cereal. The growing of cereals is more widely 
extended than anjr other branch of agriculture. 
Each of these crops is described under its title 
in these volumes. 

Other Crops. In some of the Northern states 
having a cool climate and in Southern Canada, 
flax is extensive^ grown on new soil. Potatoes 
are also successful in these regions. Oats is 
an extensive crop throughout the northern half 
of the United States and in most of the 
Canadian provinces. In Texas, Georgia, South 




THE OLD AND THE NEW 


In the wheat harvest the farmer with four horses can 
do half as much work as his neighbor with one tractor. 

















AGRICULTURE 


97 


AGRICULTURE 


Carolina and a number of the other Southern 
states cotton constitutes the chief source of 
revenue (see Cotton). Fodder crops, includ¬ 
ing corn for ensilage, clover, timothy and 
alfalfa, am also of great importance in those 
localities where live stock is raised or dairying 
is the chief line of agricultural industry. 

Horticulture. Horticulture is that branch of 
agriculture which includes the raising of flow¬ 
ers, garden vegetables and fruits. The growing 
of vegetables and other garden produce for 
market is usually called truck jarming, and this 
branch of horticulture is very common near 

large cities and in those localities where soil 

« 

and climate admit of raising two or more crops 
a year. The raising of fruit is probably the 
most extensive branch of horticulture, particu¬ 
larly in those regions which depend upon irri¬ 
gation for their supply of water. All forms of 
horticulture are intensified farming—that is, 
the thorough cultivation of small tracts of land 
that is highly fertilized. 

Live Stock. Some localities are especially 
adapted to raising live stock. Iowa and Illi¬ 
nois, for instance, raise large numbers of hogs, 
which are fattened on corn. Iowa also raises 
beef cattle. Kentucky is noted for its fine 
horses; Montana, Wyoming and several other 
states contain extensive grazing lands where 
thousands of sheep find pasturage, and in 
Texas beef cattle are raised-in large numbers. 
See Cattle; Hogs; Horses; Sheep. 

Dairy Husbandry. Sections of the country 
having a cool climate, an abundance of pure 
water and soil adapted to growing alfalfa and 
other ensilage crops are suited to dairying, and 
this branch of agriculture is of great im¬ 
portance in those states. See Dairying; But¬ 
ter; Cheese; Cow; Milk. 

Poultry. The proceeds from the poultry 
raised in the United States exceed those re¬ 
ceived from the wheat crop; strange as this 
statement may seem, the hen is a mighty asset. 
Some poultry is found on nearly every farm, 
but there are numerous small farms which are 
devoted entirely to raising chickens, and when 
rightly managed, they prove a profitable in¬ 
vestment. While poultry raising is a branch of 
agriculture, it is so nearly a distinct industry 
that the reader is referred to the article Poul¬ 
try for a detailed account of it. 

The Outlook. Increase in Value of Land. 
Between 1900 and 1910 the value of United 
States farm lands more than doubled, the 
exact increase being 117.4 per cent. The chief 
cause of this rapid rise in value was the with¬ 


drawal of all free government lands from 
settlement on the old basis. Another cause 



WEALTH OF THE FARMS 

Value of farm lands and buildings, in billions 
of dollars, in the United States, from 1850 to 
1910. 

was the increased production per acre, due to 
better methods of tillage, a more thorough 
knowledge of fertilizers and more careful selec¬ 
tion of seed. This increase in value of the land 
has been an advantage to the farmer, and has 
also led men and women from the city to 
invest in and occupy farms. Since there is no 
more free land, and since the population of the 
country is constantly increasing, the value of 
land is destined to increase from year to year. 
Canada farm lands between 1901 and 1911 
increased nearly 140 per cent in value. 

Demand for Farm Products. The demand 
for food products is constantly on the increase, 
and, notwithstanding the increase in the pro¬ 
duction of corn, wheat, oats, and. numerous 
other crops, the price of these commodities 
has advanced from year to year. The United 
States and Canada feed not only their own 
population, but the peoples of other countries 
as well. Present facilities in transportation 
enable fruits, vegetables and fresh meat to 
arrive in European cities in as good condi¬ 
tion as when they leave American ports. These 
products, as well as flour, wheat and other 
grains, now constitute an important part of 
agricultural exports. These conditions assure 
the farmer a good income, and are likewise a 
guaranty against over-production. 

Assistance from the Government. Every 
farmer in the United States may receive valu¬ 
able information and aid from the Department 
of Agriculture at Washington free of charge, 
and the Canadian farmer may have the same 
service from the Department of Agriculture at 
Ottawa. His state agricultural college and 
state experiment station are also at his dis¬ 
posal. They will analyze his soil, help him to 
combat diseases of plants and domestic ani¬ 
mals, and to exterminate insect pests. The 
agricultural colleges are constantly studying to 
improve the condition of the farmers, and 
the Departments at Washington and Ottawa 















AGRICULTURE 


98 


AGRICULTURE 





BflBUIOOto $125 per acre 
Hi $125 and over per acre 






&| 
P E 


0^ 



AVERAGE VALUE OF FARM LANDS PER ACRE IN THE UNITED STATES 


carry on many lines of investigation over the 
entire country. Moreover, these great institu¬ 
tions do not limit their work to the farmer; 
every farmer’s wife and every boy and girl on 
the farms are receiving their careful attention. 
No other industry receives so much help from 
the state, provincial and national governments 
as does agriculture. See subtitles Agricultural 
Experiment Stations and Farms and Depart¬ 
ment of Agriculture, below. See, also, Boys’ 
and Girls’ Clubs. 

Field for Investigation. More than a genera¬ 
tion ago a wise philosopher said: “By and by 
it will be generally realized that few men live, 
or have lived, who could not find scope for all 
their intellect on a two hundred-acre farm.” 
Already this prophecy has become true. The 
application of chemistry to soils and fertilizers; 
the improvement of strains of live stock; the 
production of new varieties of grains, grasses, 
fruits and other farm plants; the extermination 
of diseases of plants and animals and of insect 
pests, and to such an adaptation of his farm 
to the market as will enable him to receive 
the greatest remuneration for his labor and 
investment, all give the up-to-date farmer 
ample opportunity for the use of a broad edu¬ 
cation and the employment of every power of 
a keen and well-trained mind. Modern farm¬ 
ing is not drudgery; it is the application of a 
trained mind to an interesting occupation, 


Country Life. General Conditions. The gen¬ 
eral conditions governing life in the country 
have been far less attractive to many young 
men and women who have grown up on the 
farm than those conditions which govern life 
in the city. Therefore many boys and girls 
have left the farm for the city, where a great 
majority of them have continued to live under 
far worse conditions than those from which 
they fled. 

The following causes for leaving the farm 
are summarized from a lecture by Dr. Liberty 
H. Bailey, who is an eminent authority on the 
subject. They are: 

1. Lack of business opportunity at home. 
The father runs the farm, and will not give the 
boy a share in the business. 

2. Education has given the youth a broader 
outlook on life, and the old farm does not 
seem to furnish sufficient opportunity for his 
activities. 

3. Lack of congenial associates. The edu¬ 
cated young man and young woman like to 
have for associates those whose outlook on life 
is as broad as theirs. The new things and 
great movements in government and society 
do not interest other members of the family 
or the young people of the neighborhood unless 
they have been educated. 

4. The boy thinks he sees greater oppor¬ 
tunities for success in the city, 




























AGRICULTURE 


99 


AGRICULTURE 



CZI Less than 40 acres 
Cm^O to 00 acres 
60 to 00 acres 
111 80 to 100 acres 
100 to 120 acres 
Bgg 120 to 100 acres 
OHi 160 to 200 acres 
■I 200 acres and over 


AVERAGE ACREAGE OF IMPROVED LAND IN EACH FARM IN THE UNITED STATES 


5. There is less financial risk in working on 
a salary than in running a farm, and there may 
be more ready money in other businesses. 

6. Both the boy and the girl expect to find 
more diversion and entertainment in the city. 

7. The trend of the education of both the 
boy and the girl has been away from the 
farm. 

These conditions are being rapidly overcome 
by the following agencies: 

Communication. The telephone and the 
automobile, both of which are now considered 
to be necessities in many farming communi¬ 
ties, are doing much towards overcoming the 
old conditions and ways of country life. With 
the automobile the city twenty miles distant 
is nearer in point of time than the town five 
miles away without it, and the telephone brings 
the city and all his neighbors almost in reality 
to the farmer’s door. 

With the automobile has come a country¬ 
wide demand for better roads, and both nation¬ 
ally and locally there is response to this de¬ 
mand. Concrete and macadamized roads are 
being rapidly extended throughout the coun¬ 
try. Numerous electric railway systems have 
also joined country towns to each other and to 
cities. Farmers may now receive daily papers 
from the great cities, left at their doors by 
rural free delivery; the great stores of cities 
can supply their more important needs 


through parcel post. If families in the country 
now lead isolated lives it is largely their own 
fault, for means of transportation are such 
that all families of a community are able to 
visit each other at their pleasure. 

Education. Formerly the teaching of the 
schools, with scarcely an exception, led away 
from the farm. Now, in addition to agricul¬ 
tural colleges and high schools, the public 
schools are required by law to place agri¬ 
culture in their courses of study, and some 
communities employ teachers skilled in agri¬ 
culture, who, during the summer vacation, go 
from farm to farm and give instruction in the 
practical application of the principles taught 
in the schoolroom. 

Agricultural periodicals of a high order, with 
departments suited to the various members 
of the family, are so inexpensive that one or 
more are easily within the means of every 
farm home. This is equally true of journals on 
household economics, which are as helpful to 
the housewife as the agricultural journal is to 
the farmer. 

Several states and provinces have a system 
of traveling libraries, by which every rural 
community is supplied with good reading 
throughout the year. The boys and girls of the 
country now have excellent opportunities for 
education. 

The Community Center, In many locali- 
























AGRICULTURE 


100 


AGRICULTURE 


ties adjoining school districts have combined 
and formed the “consolidated” school (see 
Schools, Common). Schools of this type are 
as thoroughly graded as those in the smaller 
cities. The consolidated school is of the great¬ 
est value to the community. As an educa¬ 
tional institution it is a great advance over the 
one-room schools it has supplanted. But in 
addition to this it binds together the interests 
of the community which it serves. The school 
house is the meeting place for numerous activi¬ 
ties such as social gatherings, literary societies, 
lectures and other entertainments by home 
or outside talent. The community gains a 
social atmosphere which it did not possess 
before, and the long-felt want for these things 
among the young people is here supplied. 

Advantages. The foregoing discussion leads 
to two conclusions—there is no more desirable 
place in which to live than the country, and 
there is no more desirable occupation than 


that of agriculture. The inhabitants of rural 
communities may have as much pleasure as 
those of the city. Agriculture is as remuner¬ 
ative and as free from uncertainties as any 
other line of business and, as a class, the farm¬ 
ers are the most self-reliant and independent 
men of the nation. To the young man and 
the young woman the farm should offer special 
inducements in its opportunities for the devel¬ 
opment of the highest type of character. Says 
an eminent authority: 

The farm offers opportunity to develop a more 
decent and desirable condition of life—a place 
where one can develop a physical, social and 
moral life superior to that which is possible to 
the great majority of the people who dwell in 
the city. 

A poet also uttered a truthful statement: 

Of all pursuits by man invented 
The farmer is the best contented; 

His profit sure, his calling high, 

And on his labors all rely. w.f.r. 


I 

Agricultural Education 


The foundation of agriculture on a scientific 
basis and its elevation to the rank of a profes¬ 
sion is distinctly the work of the last half of 
the nineteenth century. There was a time, no 
more than a generation or two ago, when the 
average farmer looked with contempt on what 
he called “book farming.” Who, he asked, 
could tell him more about his farm than he 
himself knew? He ploughed and harrowed, 
planted and harvested as he had always done, 
and as his ancestors had done before him. 
Most of his working principles were the out¬ 
come of his own experience or of the tradition 
of the neighborhood. When chemists and 
biologists first began to explain to him how 
he could improve his methods, they got little 
thanks for their offered help. It was not long, 
however, before farmers began to see the 
value of the facts which scientists were slowly 
establishing, and then came the development 
of a system by which the individual farmer 
might learn to use the knowledge which others 
had gained for him. 

To-day the education of boys and girls for 
life on the farms reaches from the common 
school to college. It goes beyond: it reaches 
older people whose school days were gone be¬ 
fore the dawn of the new era, and it continues 
to affect those who have had the training for 
farm life and are actually engaged in agri¬ 
culture. It gives them not merely the facts 
which help them to raise crops, but it goes 


farther, and in the words of Liberty H. Bailey, 1 
it is “the expression of a rapidly crystallizing 
desire to make rural life all that it is capable 
of becoming and to understand and to realize 
in the best way all the natural products of 
the earth.” 

The modem system of agricultural education 
naturally falls into three divisions: (1) instruc¬ 
tion in colleges and universities; (2) instruc¬ 
tion in secondary schools; (3) instruction in 
common or primary schools. Each of these 
divisions has had a gradual development, and 
each has shown from time to time, and shows 
to-day, a wide variety in the methods of indi¬ 
vidual institutions. Each, therefore, will be 
considered in detail. 

Institutions of Collegiate Rank. It is a re¬ 
markable fact that the first systematic instruc¬ 
tion in agriculture was begun by institutions 
which stood at the top of the educational 
scale. The “chemistry of agriculture” was 
announced in 1751 as a study in a model course 
for colleges, prepared by one William Smith. 
His plan was adopted in the Philadelphia 
Academy, out of which grew the University of 
Pennsylvania. The original prospectus of 
King’s College (now Columbia University) 
dated May 31, 1754, mentioned animal hus¬ 
bandry, and in 1792 a professorship of botany 
and agriculture was established there. At that 
time there was a general public interest in 
agriculture. The organization of agricultural 


EXPERIMENTS POINT THE VAT 


ADDING WEIGHT 
TO HOGS 


AN ACRE FOR 
COW FEED 



Corn meal 

alone 
o- 


With 

’alfalfa 

-t=r 


With meat meal 
and shorts 


TT 


Soy Beans Cow Peas Corn 

20 bushels 13 bushels 26 bushels 
□-□-[ 


BEFORE 15 YEARS AFTER 
Raising and sel ling corn 


20 


Insufficient fertilizer 




Raising corn,feeding 
st ocK ,Tn anur i n g 


m 


-WTHE GAIN THROUGH CATfLE 

The result in Income 1 

dollars and cents a- sel ling corn 

C- selling cattle 

^ Cost of farming S 

Change in land value □ 
b Decreased fertility 
d Increased fertility 


! 


80 


Figures represent bushels per acre 



Gain by 

feeding 

corn 


IC 


Loss by 
selling corn 


CROP ROTATION PAYS 
Figures represent 

bushels per 
acre 




3rd.year of 
wheat 


Wheat after 
oats and corn 


WHAT FERTILIZER CAN DO 
A Tennessee test (corn) 


Figures represent bushels per acre 




No fertilizer Manure 


15/4.1 

Phosphates Same 

Potash and plus 
Cotton seed meal. Quicklime 


TOO MUCH FERTILIZER HARMFUL 
Bushels of corn per acre 
30 


HEAVY YIELDS NOT ALWAYS MOST PROFITABLE 


25 

20 

15 




T6 



"24 



/l6 





y' eld -» 


yield, 


yield profit 


21 


profit 


1 


profit 

cost of fertilizer 


0 80 160 2A0 320 pounds of nitrate 


0 150 450 pounds of ferti lizer 


PLOW DEEP PLOW AT THE RIGHT TIME 

Two experiments in Kansas 



; §SllT 2It 

Plowed 7 inches . Plowed 3 inches July 15 August 15 September 15 

Figures represent bushels per acre 







:□ 


□1 

















































































AGRICULTURE 


102 


AGRICULTURE 


societies was followed by the foundation of 
professorships and schools of agriculture. 
Through the efforts of the Massachusetts Agri¬ 
cultural Society a professorship of natural 
history was established at Harvard College in 
1804, and during the next half century numer¬ 
ous schools of agriculture flourished for brief 
periods. 

In the United States when agitation for 
agricultural education came to an end at the 
outbreak of the War of Secession, one state at 
least, Michigan, was more fortunate. During 
the height of the agitation, in 1850, the state 
adopted a constitution in which some far¬ 
sighted person had procured the insertion of 
a clause making it obligatory for the state to 
maintain a school of agriculture either inde¬ 
pendently or in connection w r ith the state uni¬ 
versity. In accordance with this provision the 
state agricultural college was opened in 1857; 
it is the oldest institution of its kind now in 
existence in the United States. In 1859 Penn¬ 
sylvania and Maryland established similar col¬ 
leges, now still flourishing. 

Land-Grant Colleges. Instruction in agri¬ 
culture, however, was first put on a firm scien¬ 
tific footing in 1862, by the passage of the 
Morrill Act. It granted to each state 30,000 
acres of public lands for each member it had 
in Congress, the entire proceeds of the sale of 
this land to be set aside as a perpetual fund 
for the benefit of colleges of agriculture and 
mechanic arts. It is estimated that the en¬ 
dowment thus established has reached a total 
of over $20,000,000. 

At first the “land-grant colleges,” as they 
were called, had a hard struggle. They re¬ 
ceived recognition neither from the farmer nor 
from other colleges and universities. Grad¬ 
ually the value of the * work done by them 
became apparent, and a second Morrill Act 
of 1890 and several later laws provided con¬ 
siderable increases in the annual appropria¬ 
tions. In 1916 each of the colleges received not 
merely the income from the original land- 
grant, but also the annual Federal grant of 
$50,000 for instruction and $30,000 for agri¬ 
cultural experiment stations (see below), .in 
addition to large appropriations from the 
states. Porto Rico, Hawaii and each of the 
states has established at least one agricultural 
college, and seventeen of the Southern states 
have two, one for white students and one for 
negroes. 

If the special colleges for negroes are ex¬ 
cluded, the state agricultural colleges may be 


divided into two groups—first, the independent 
institutions; second, those which are depart¬ 
ments or schools of state universities. Each 
group included twenty-five institutions in 1916. 
Unique among them all is the Massachusetts 
Agricultural College, which is an independent 
school offering instruction only in agricultural 
subjects. Twenty-four independent colleges 
offer courses in the mechanic arts, including 
engineering, as well as in agriculture, and 
twenty-five others are parts of state universi¬ 
ties. In all of these colleges the regular course 
requires four years and leads to a bachelor’s 
degree. Three-fourths of the colleges require 
the equivalent of a four-years’ high school 
course for admission, but few of them agree in 
the requirements for graduation. Taking the 
colleges as a whole, the average course requires 
about one-fourth to one-third of the time in 
purely agricultural subjects, the remainder 
being divided chiefly among English, modern 
foreign languages, mathematics, social sciences 
and natural sciences. Many of the graduates 
become teachers in agriculture in secondary or 
elementary schools. In addition to the instruc¬ 
tion given by the state institutions, several 
privately-endowed schools offer courses in agri¬ 
culture, notably Syracuse and Harvard. 

Canadian Agricultural Colleges. As Canada 
is one of the leading agricultural countries of 
the world it is natural that agricultural educa¬ 
tion should receive careful attention. Each 
province has its agricultural college or supplies 
some instruction in agriculture through the 
provincial university. The oldest and probably 
best known of these institutions is the Ontario 
Agricultural College at Guelph. It has stu¬ 
dents from every province of the Dominion, 
from Argentina, Belgium, England, Ireland, 
India, Japan, Mexico and other foreign coun¬ 
tries. In Quebec, Macdonald College, affiliated 
with McGill University, has a school of agri¬ 
culture, and in Nova Scotia the agricultural 
college at Truro provides a complete four- 
years’ course. The Manitoba Agricultural Col¬ 
lege, in addition to its regular agricultural 
course for young men, offers a course in home 
economics for young women. The Saskatche¬ 
wan Agricultural College at Saskatoon was 
opened in 1912. In Prince Edward Island the 
Prince of Wales College offers agricultural 
courses, as does the University of Alberta at 
Edmonton, and in New Brunswick there are 
two agricultural institutes. Much of the in¬ 
struction in these institutions is to prepare 
men and women to become teachers. 


AGRICULTURE 


103 


AGRICULTURE 


The Short Course. The early attempts to 
teach agriculture in colleges failed largely be¬ 
cause they were based on the theory that tech¬ 
nical study in agriculture should follow the 
related studies, and because admission condi¬ 
tions were placed so high that most young men 
who desired to fit themselves for an agricul¬ 
tural career were eliminated. The few who 
entered the courses, moreover, lost much of 
their interest before they were allowed to begin 
their technical studies. To overcome these ob¬ 
jections the University of Wisconsin adopted a 
plan, which has been widely followed both in 
Canada and the United States, of giving a 
short technical course, usually for ten or twelve 
weeks in the winter. There are no require¬ 
ments for admission and no credit is given for 
study done; the knowledge gained is the only 
attraction. These short courses have been 
exceedingly popular, and have given oppor¬ 
tunities for advancement to many men who 
could not devote three or four college years 
to study. 

In Secondary Schools. It was not until 
thirty years after the establishment of the 
first agricultural colleges that the first suc¬ 
cessful agricultural high school was established. 
This was in 1888, in connection with the Uni¬ 
versity of Minnesota. Though its success was 
immediate, by 1898 there were only ten second¬ 
ary schools giving agricultural instruction. 
Since that date, however, there has been a 
great expansion, and in 1916 three-fourths of 
the state agricultural colleges had agricultural 
high schools in connection with them. The 
land-grant colleges for negroes in the Southern 
states, moreover, though organized as colleges, 
are yet hardly more than secondary schools. 
Agricultural courses are also offered in many 
state and county normal schools, but the object 
of this instruction is to prepare teachers for 
elementary schools rather than to make suc¬ 
cessful farmers. 

The independent agricultural high schools 
are of two classes, either district or county 
schools. Alabama, which was the first to estab¬ 
lish district high schools, now has one for each 
Congressional district. Georgia, Virginia and 
Minnesota are other states which have adopted 
the district system. Wisconsin, on the other 
hand, was the first to adopt the county plan, 
by which the state aids the agricultural high 
school established by any county. This system 
has also been adopted in Michigan, Maryland 
and Mississippi, but the experience of these 
states seems to indicate that in most states the 


county is too small a unit to bear the expense 
of a good high school in which only agriculture 
is taught. The natural compromise is to teach 
agriculture in the regular high schools, and this 
plan has been tried in practically all the re¬ 
maining states. In Missouri alone over 200 
high schools are giving some instruction 
in agriculture. In Canada, instruction in agri¬ 
culture in many high schools and collegiate 
institutes, particularly in Ontario, is a part of 
the regular work. Agriculture teachers for the 
elementary schools are trained at the agricul¬ 
tural colleges, provincial normal schools, or at 
special summer sessions of the provincial uni¬ 
versities. 

It is noteworthy that everywhere, both in the 
United States and Canada, the use of land for 
instructional purposes is increasing. Nearly all 
schools require some actual farm practice in 
connection with the school work, and many of 
the schools operate their own demonstration 
farms. Another feature is the increased use of 
the home-project method, in which the student 
is required to do a certain amount of prac¬ 
tical farming at home. This work is inspected 
and is credited to him in addition to his school 
work. 

In Elementary Schools. Instruction in agri¬ 
culture in elementary schools is distinctly a de¬ 
velopment of the twentieth century. A com¬ 
pulsory system has been employed in France 
since 1879, and in its revised national form 
since 1896, and in Germany, Switzerland, 
Sweden and other European countries similar 
systems have been in force since about 1900. 
In the United States and Canada almost noth¬ 
ing was done previous to 1900, but since then 
development has been rapid. Many states, as 
Iowa, require instruction in agriculture in all 
rural elementary schools. Indiana requires it 
in all rural schools, both high and elementary. 
In Ontario the system is optional. There seems 
to be a general agreement that instruction in 
elementary schools should emphasize the pupil 
rather than the subject, that is, the child’s eyes 
should be opened to the vegetable and animal 
life about him, and the child should be made 
to feel his relation to this environment. Up 
to the sixth year of school this work is usually 
a form of generalized nature study, but there¬ 
after it is directed towards more purely agri¬ 
cultural topics. In the elementary schools, as 
in the high schools, the tendency is away from 
text-books towards school gardens, home gar¬ 
dens and other activities. It has been said that 
no other new movement looking to the vital- 


AGRICULTURE 


104 


AGRICULTURE 


izing of the work of instruction in the elemen¬ 
tary school has ever met so ready a response 
on the part of the people. There is every 
reason to believe that agricultural instruction 
will become a regular feature in rural and 
small town schools in all agricultural sections. 


An important accompaniment of this move¬ 
ment has been the organization of agricultural 
clubs for boys and girls, and the interest which 
these clubs have aroused among the farmers 
themselves in all sections of the country (see 
Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs). w.f.z. 


Agricultural Experiment Stations or Farms 


There would appear to be little excuse for 
owner or tenant on a farm of average fertility 
to be a poor farmer. Ignorance of correct agri¬ 
cultural methods prevailed widely until about 
the year 1860; but the country was new, both in 
the United States and Canada, land was plen¬ 
tiful, and its richness for crop production had 
in no sense been exhausted. The need for sci¬ 
entific farming had not developed, and prob¬ 
ably would in any event have received scant 
consideration at a time when foundations were 
being laid, when expansion was a dominant 
idea and men struggled to gain secure foot¬ 
hold in a wilderness. The farmer knew of 
agriculture only what he learned from experi¬ 
ence or from his neighbors. 

The agriculturist knew why the “back forty” 
acres would grow wheat, but possibly he was 
puzzled to know why certain other crops on 
the same land were less successful. He found 
that the same crop for several years in suc¬ 
cession exhausted the soil, but nobody told him 
how to feed the soil to continue its produc¬ 
tiveness or how to manage crop rotation. 

In the United States. In 1837 an English¬ 
man named Lawes began experiments on his 
Rothamsted estate to learn the effect of bone 
superphosphate on soils. That was the begin¬ 
ning of the story of fertilizers, as we know 
them. The first experiments were so success¬ 
ful that they were broadened, and to-day the 
Rothamsted experimental station is accounted 
the greatest in the world. The Rothamsted 
idea reached America, and in the United States, 
between 1858 and 1862, experiments were con¬ 
ducted in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Mary¬ 
land. The first agricultural experiment station 
regularly organized in America was in connec¬ 
tion with Wesleyan University, Middletown, 
Conn., in 1875. It was supported partly by 
gifts of money and by small state appropria¬ 
tions. The record of growth in number of 
stations from this modest beginning, when less 
than $4,000 per year was available, to present 
proportions would be an uninteresting recital. 
It will merely be noted that in 18S7 there were 
seventeen experiment stations, located in four¬ 


teen states, and that in 1916 there were in ex¬ 
istence sixty-six stations in the forty-eight 
states, no state being without one. There is 
not the slightest reason except inertia on the 
part of the farmer why he should not go to 
school the year round and become a scientific 
agriculturist while remaining on his farm. It 
may be stated, too, that this education costs 
him practically nothing. 

Support. What are the various activities of 
these numerous experiment stations, and how 
are they supported? Since their success was 
first demonstrated it has not been difficult to 
finance them. The national government has 
been generous; the state governments have re¬ 
sponded to heavy demands. Largely the sta¬ 
tions are established in connection with agri¬ 
cultural colleges and share with the latter in 
state appropriations. The Federal government 
makes an annual appropriation of $30,000 to 
each state for the support of its station or 
stations, and an added $15,000 yearly to each 
state for carrying on original research work. 
Local state appropriations vary widely. 

Scope of Work. That there may be little 
duplication of work, each station, as a rule, car¬ 
ries on one special line of original investigation 
while working in wider fields to meet local de¬ 
mands. The local work in each state includes 
investigations relating to the following: 

The soil —its chemistry, physics and biology. 
This field includes drainage, irrigation, tillage, 
crop fertility, rotation of crops and fertilizers. 

Plant life —its physiology, chemistry, nutritive 
value and history. New varieties are studied ; in¬ 
creased productiveness is sought; new methods 
of selection and breeding are investigated; in¬ 
jurious insects and bacteria are studied with a 
view to eradication, and preservation of forests 
and reforestation receive attention. 

Animals —breeds ; diseases and their control; 
chemistry of foods ; dairying; feeding; etc. 

The matters undertaken in the line of orig¬ 
inal research, through which there will come 
some day a thoroughly organized science of 
farming, include the following: the chemistry 
of cream and milk and the construction of 
creameries; the care of poultry; butter-mak¬ 
ing; plant breeding; new diseases of plants; 


AGRICULTURE 


105 


AGRICULTURE 


developing larger and better fruits; reforesta¬ 
tion; insecticides and fungicides; silos, and the 
like. 

That there may be conservation of energy 
and a medium of regular interchange of re¬ 
ports, there has been organized by the experi¬ 
ment stations and the agricultural colleges the 
Association of American Agricultural Colleges 
and Experiment Stations. Annual meetings are 
held. 

Help Brought to the Farm. The progressive 
farmer has a vital interest in the energetic 


what has been stated above relative to agricul¬ 
tural experiment stations in the United States 
applies with equal force to like activities in 
the Dominion. In Canada these institutions 
are called experiment farms and stations. The 
Central Experiment Station is at Ottawa, 
where are located the general officials entrusted 
with the agricultural interests of the country. 
Branch farms or stations to the number of 
eighteen (in 1915) are located as follows, the 
record including the date of establishment and 
acreage: 


Branch Farm or Station 


Central Farm, Ottawa. 

Charlottetown Station . 

Nappan Farm . 

Kentville Station . 

Fredericton Station . 

Ste. Anne de la Pocatigre Station 

Cap Rouge Station. 

Lennoxville Station. 

Brandon Farm . 

Morden Station . 

Indian Head Farm. 

Rosthern Station . 

Scott Station . 

Lacombe Station . 

Lethbridge Station . 

Invermere Station . 

Summerland Station . 

Agassiz Farm . 

Sidney, Vancouver Island. 


Province 

Acreage 

Date 

Estab¬ 

lished 

Ontario . 

467 

1886 

Prince Edward Island. 

100 

1909 

Nova Scotia. 

300 

1886 

Nova Scotia. 

294 

1912 

New Brunswick. 

520 

1912 

Quebec. 

340 

1911 

Quebec. 

326 

1911 

Quebec. 

455 

1914 

Manitoba... 

625 

1886 

Manitoba. 

280 

1915 

Saskatchewan . 

680 

1886 

Saskatchewan . 

650 

1908 

Saskatchewan . 

520 

1910 

Alberta . 

850 

1907 

Alberta . 

400 

1906 

British Columbia. 

53 

1912 

British Columbia. 

550 

1914 

British Columbia. 

1,400 

1886 

British Columbia. 

125 

1912 


In addition to the above there are small sub-stations at Kamloops and Salmon Arm, British 
Columbia; Fort Vermilion, Alberta; and at Fort Smith, Fort Resolution, Fort Providence and 
Athabasca. 


work of the experiment station in his state. It 
works for him. If he cannot find the proper 
fertilizer for his soil, he can send some soil to 
the station for analysis. He will be told what 
it lacks and receive suggestions upon which he 
may act. He may inquire into irrigation ques¬ 
tions; he can get instruction which will in¬ 
crease his success with poultry. The station 
(in some states) will send an expert, at cost, 
to consult with him on matters which may not 
have been standardized. He may write for and 
receive, without cost, bulletins on any farm sub¬ 
ject which may be published by his station. 

Canadian Experiment Farms. In general 


Range of Investigation. The work of the 
farms and stations covers the whole agricul¬ 
tural field, and each organization is a bureau 
of information for the agriculturist, horticul¬ 
turist or stock raiser who needs solutions for 
his difficulties. The strictly scientific, or ex¬ 
perimental phase of the work is carried on at 
the Central station at Ottawa, which is organ¬ 
ized in the following nine divisions: field hus¬ 
bandry, animal husbandry, horticulture, cereals, 
chemistry, forage plants, botany, poultry, to¬ 
bacco. See subheading, Agricultural Educa¬ 
tion, a part of this general article, beginning on 
page 100. e.d.f. 


Department of Agriculture 


In the United States. The agricultural in¬ 
terests of the United States were first officially 
recognized by the government in 1836, when 
the Commissioner of Patents began in a small 
way to supply farmers with seeds. The pur¬ 
pose of seed distribution was commendable, for 
new and valuable plants were needed in many 
districts,' and there were no local experiment 
stations to encourage their development. By 


1862 the necessity for more definite and sys¬ 
tematized assistance was seen, and in that year 
the Bureau of Agriculture was established; the 
work was transferred from the Patent Office 
and became a branch of the Department of the 
Interior, with the Commissioner of Agriculture 
in charge. 

In 1889 this Bureau was raised to the rank 
of an executive department, styled the Depart- 






















































AGRICULTURE 


106 


AGRICULTURE 


ment of Agriculture, and its head was given a 
place in the President’s Cabinet, with the title 
Secretary of Agriculture. This official thus 
became the eighth member of the Cabinet. 
The first secretary was Norman J. Coleman, 
who had been Commissioner of Agriculture. 
The fourth secretary was James Wilson, of 
Iowa; he was appointed by President McKin¬ 
ley in 1897 and remained in the office until 
March, 1913, a period of sixteen years. He 
served under four Presidents in succession, a 
record not before equalled by any Cabinet 
officer. 

As organized in 1889 the Department in¬ 
cluded the bureaus of plant industry, animal 
industry, chemistry and soils, to which was 
added in 1891 the weather bureau; it assumed 
charge of all of the government agricultural 
experiment stations, and included as well the 
divisions of forestry, entomology and biological 
survey; a later division was organized to pro¬ 
mote and encourage the national development 
for good roads, and the division of publications 
was established to serve all the bureaus. 
Stated briefly, the work of the various bureaus 
and divisions is as follows: 

1. Weather bureau; conducts investigations in 
meteorology and climate; forecasts weather 
from twenty-four hours to three days in ad¬ 
vance, warns of floods and announces coming 
storms. See Weather Bureau. 

2. Bureau of plant .industry; conducts re¬ 
searches in every department of botany; reports 
on the history, distribution and utilization of 
forage plants; investigates varieties of fruits 
and grains with respect to their adaptation to 
particular soils and climates ; collects seeds from 
every part of the world for testing at the ex¬ 
periment stations; purchases and distributes 
seeds annually through Congressmen (although 
this practice may be soon abandoned). It also 
studies and experiments with rotation of crops, 
a matter of great importance in those localities 
where farmers are inclined to raise on the same 
ground the same crops year after year, thereby 
exhausting the soil of certain elements of plant 
life. 

3. Bureau of animal industry; studies animal 
diseases and means of combating them, and in¬ 
vestigates methods of dairying; inspects imports 
and exports; supervises interstate shipment of 
cattle, and examines slaughter house products. 

4. Bureau of chemistry; conducts researches 
in chemistry related to agriculture, particularly 
with foods, fertilization and soils. See subtitle 
Agricultural Education , above. 

5. Bureau of soils; conducts studies in physics 
as related to agriculture; surveys, locates and 
maps various kinds of soils. 

6. Division of forestry; devotes particular at¬ 
tention to the conservation of forests, and the 
most economic use to which forests and forest 
products can be put. See Forests and Forestry, 


7. Division of biological survey; reports on 
geographic distribution of plants and animals, 
furnishing maps of zones ; investigates the food 
and food habits of birds and all animals; in¬ 
troduces desirable birds and.animals into locali¬ 
ties where they have not before been known. 

8. Division of entomology; studies the history 
and distribution of insects, determines which 
are beneficial and investigates means of ex¬ 
termination of those which are injurious. 

9. Good roads movement; conducts experi¬ 
ments in road making and reports on economic 
features of road management. The government 
is undertaking to assist any state financially 
in its efforts to provide good roads. In 1912 
Congress appropriated half a million dollars to 
help the states in their efforts toward road im¬ 
provement ; the act provided that for every dol¬ 
lar any state would appropriate for building good 
roads, the Federal government would give a like 
amount, up to $10,000. Construction of broad 
and smooth highways was expected to result 
from this movement. See Roads and Streets. 

10. Division of publications. The Department 
prints annually hundreds of books and pamph¬ 
lets bearing upon the manifold branches of its 
work. Usually the latter are distributed free 
upon request, but a small charge is made in 
some cases ; books are offered at practically the 
cost of production. The monthly list of publica¬ 
tions of the Department will be sent at small 
cost regularly to any person who applies for it. 
Requests should be sent to the Chief of the Di¬ 
vision of Publications, Department of Agricul¬ 
ture, Washington. 

In Canada. The Canadian Department of 
Agriculture, unlike that of the United States, 
was one of the original departments of the 
government. Since the formation of the Do¬ 
minion, it has ranked as the equal of any other 
Department, and its head is a member of the 
Cabinet. 

The Canadian Department differs from that 
of the United States in the details of its organ¬ 
ization. The principal difference is the absence 
of the forestry service and weather bureau; 
the former is a branch of the .Department of 
the Interior, and the latter, officially known as 
the meteorological service, is a part of the 
Department of Marine and Fisheries. The 
branches of the Canadian Department corre¬ 
spond to the bureaus in the United States. 
Thus there are the dairy and cold storage com¬ 
missioner’s branch, the seed commissioner’s 
branch, the health of animals branch and the 
publication branch. The Department as a 
whole has charge of agriculture, experimental 
farms, immigration, marine and immigrant hos¬ 
pitals, public health, patents, copyrights and 
trade marks. Canada is expanding so rapidly, 
particularly in the West, that the opportunities 
for the Department are increasing ah a truly 
marvelous rate. e.d.f. 


AGRICULTURE 


107 


AGRICULTURE 


Courses in Agriculture for Schools 


The effort to relate the work of the school¬ 
room to the outside life of boys and girls— 
the emphasis on the practical—is one of the 
most striking tendencies in modern education. 
It has resulted in the introduction of manual¬ 
training and domestic science courses in the 
public schools, in greater emphasis being placed 
on laboratory work in science courses, and what 
is of equal importance, it has given the study 
of agriculture a definite place in the school in 
many communities. The agricultural college 
has become too well established to excite com¬ 
ment; agricultural courses in town and rural 
schools are of more recent date, but their prac¬ 
ticability and value, which have been weighed 
and not found wanting, are bringing them more 
and more into favor with educators every¬ 
where. 

Below is given a suggested course covering 
the months from September to June, inclusive. 
This may be adapted to the graded town 
schools or to those in rural communities. Any 
teacher will find it helpful as a basis of work, 
and it can easily be modified to meet local 
conditions. The object of this plan is to make 
the work in agriculture more than a text-book 
course; in other words, to make it a vital part 
of the pupils’ every-day experiences. 

SEPTEMBER 

Practical work in the school and fields. Sep¬ 
tember is the month for schoolroom demon¬ 
strations of selecting, testing, curing and storing 
seed corn. (In communities where this is not 
cultivated some other grain may be chosen.) It 
should be pointed out that the amount of mois¬ 
ture in seed corn at harvest time (from 20 to 50 
per cent) is sufficient to cause serious trouble 
in case of early frost. Freezing of the water 
would result in its expansion, which in turn would 
cause the destruction of the germinating cells. 
There should be practical demonstrations of cur¬ 
ing, or drying, the seed, and of storing it to 
protect it from mice and insects and to keep it 
from dampness and excessive cold. Another 
timely line of work is an excursion into the fields 
to observe their condition, to recognize and de¬ 
stroy weeds, and to collect seeds, insects and 
other material used in illustrative lessons. If 
the pupils have cultivated project fields of their 
own, they may be visited on these excursions. 

Composition work. The local fairs should be 
attended, and each pupil should prepare a report 
of the exhibits. In connection with field work 
use notebooks. Descriptions of the pupils’ ex¬ 
periences as summer gardeners may form the 
basis of drill in composition work, both written 
and oral. For practice in business letter-writing 
direct the pupils to write to various authorities 
for bulletins, periodicals and catalogues. 


Exercises in reading and spelling. The sup¬ 
plementary-reading books of the school library 
and other books available should be utilized 
whenever possible. Such portions or passages 
as have a bearing on the work of the month 
should be carefully selected by the teacher and 
made a part of the reading lessons. The follow¬ 
ing are suggestive titles suitable for this pur¬ 
pose : 

Fosdick’s Maize; Longfellow’s The Legend of 
Maize (in Hiawatha) ; Kingsley’s Eyes and No 
Eyes; Pope’s Happy the Man; Bryant’s To a 
Waterfowl; Trowbridge’s Evening at the Farm; 
Cooper’s Bobwhite. 

Agricultural journals and other farm periodi¬ 
cals or bulletins to which the school may have 
access should also be used. 

The spelling lists of the regular lessons may 
be varied by the addition of new words learned 
by the pupils in their agricultural reading. As 
in the regular work, both the pronunciation and 
definition of these words should be learned. The 
list of terms they will encounter includes such 
words as cankerworm, parasite, aphis, bind¬ 
weed, weevil, environment, etc. 

Lessons in arithmetic. Measurements of the 
school yard and of fields, and computations of 
average yields of crops, cost per acre, profits, 
rate of interest on the investment, etc., are 
illustrative of what may be done in arithmetic. 
Use the agricultural work of the month as the 
basis of problems that involve the particular 
mathematical principles the pupils are then 
studying. 

Lessons in geography. Give lessons in map¬ 
making. Some of the pupils, by personal ob¬ 
servation, will be able to draw their own maps 
of the district, or sections of it, while others 
will succeed only in making copies of original 
maps made from surveys. Maps of the state or 
province may also be copied, and on these should 
be indicated the principal crops of different sec¬ 
tions. Make comparisons of crops in different 
communities, states and provinces. 

Work in history. The history of a com¬ 
munity, state, province or nation cannot be 
studied apart from the industries of its peo¬ 
ple. Show how a particular period or section 
under consideration is connected with certain 
agricultural facts. The history of Northwestern 
Canada, for instance, has been affected by the 
opening up of the great wheat fields, and the 
part that corn and cotton have played in the 
history of the American people is well known. 
The plans for the regular lessons need not be 
dropped, but suggestive topics may be added 
and adapted to these plans. In planning both 
the history and the geography lessons, certain 
topics may be assigned to pupils for outside in¬ 
vestigation, reading and inquiry. Reports on 
these topics should furnish opportunity for valu¬ 
able classroom discussion. Make free use of 
texts, reference works, periodicals and news¬ 
papers. 

Drawing lessons. As a part of the work in 
drawing, assign the sketching and coloring of 
parts of the corn plant, and of fruits, weeds and 


AGRICULTURE 


108 


AGRICULTURE 


insects. Drawings may also be made of such 
apparatus or tools as have been used during 
the month. 

Exercises in physiology. The study of the 
various local crops with respect to their nutri¬ 
tive and fuel value, that is, their desirability as 
foods, is timely and important. Such topics can 
be included in the regular physiology assign¬ 
ments. Lessons in sanitation and hygiene should 
also be included, whenever it is feasible. 

Manual training exercises. The making of 
shelves for exhibits, window boxes and seed¬ 
drying racks will occupy the energies of the 
boys, and the braiding of husk mats and baskets 
will interest the girls. The transplanting of 
garden plants into pots and boxes is another 
interesting line of activity. Such work can be 
varied indefinitely. 

OCTOBER 

Out-of-door work. Trips to the fields should 
be continued. Poultry of high grade, espe¬ 
cially flocks with good records as layers, may 
be visited, and notes be taken as to the care 
given them. Soils should be gathered and stored 
in boxes or pails for lessons on soils and for 
germination experiments in the spring. Modern 
methods of harvesting and the machinery used 
should be examined carefully. October is also 
the month in which to destroy the garden weeds 
and rubbish in which insect pests may be hid¬ 
den. Those who are interested in poultry may 
now make their selections among the layers at 
home, and begin fattening the chickens intended 
for the market. The ones who expect to have 
gardens the next season should plow their land 
this month. 

A school fair. The month of October is an 
attractive time for a school fair or exhibit. The 
exhibits may include produce from the school 
garden, fruits and vegetables raised by the 
pupils in their project gardens, cooking, can- 
• ning and sewing exhibits, and, if desired, speci¬ 
mens of the school work in manual training, 
drawing, etc. The matter of prizes may be left 
to the judgment of the individual schools. In 
some cases it may be well to have an auction 
sale of the exhibits to raise funds for the 
school library or for other improvements. Make 
the fair an event in the community. 

Composition work. Descriptions of field ex¬ 
cursions, reports on investigations, etc., should 
be carefully written up. Have each pupil pre¬ 
pare a description of the school fair, as if for 
one of the local papers. Also have each one 
compose a formal invitation to the fair. 

Reading and spelling lessons. Among the 
reading selections appropriate for the season 
are Edward Everett’s The Farmers’ Gold; 
Whittier’s The Corn Song; Burroughs’ The 
Apple; Baldwin’s The Horse Fair; Longfellow’s 
Hiawatha’s Brothers. Others may be found by 
the teacher. Continue the reading of agricul¬ 
tural journals and bulletins, and the drill on 
new words met in reading. Include in the 
spelling lists those terms misspelled in the com¬ 
positions. 

Drill in arithmetic. Assign problems similar 
to those suggested for September work. Have 


advanced pupils compute amount of lumber 
needed for poultry houses, silos, and other farm 
structures and apparatus (see Lumber). Have 
neat and accurate statements made of the cost 
and income of various farm projects, also tabu¬ 
lated reports of the school exhibit. 

Lessons in geography. Have recorded on 
maps and charts local surveys of crops and 
poultry. Study the commercial side of the com¬ 
munity farming. Locate chief shipping points, 
lines of traffic and outside points from which 
produce is brought in. Locate on outline maps 
the chief agricultural areas of various countries. 

Exercises in history. Make a special study of 
the effect of city growth on the development of 
neighboring agricultural districts. How have 
the needs of city-dwellers with respect to milk, 
poultry, butter, eggs and vegetables affected 
local farming? How, on a larger scale, are the 
different sections of a country and the different 
countries of the world affected by interchange 
of products? Show the work of national and 
state governments in encouraging farming, giv¬ 
ing instruction, controlling plant and animal dis¬ 
eases, etc. % 

Lessons in drawing. Continue work of sketch¬ 
ing and coloring fruits, grains, vegetables, etc. 
Have working drawings made of model farm 
structures. 

Physiology lessons. Make a special study of 
the food value of poultry and eggs, and of the 
value and digestibility of such local crops as 
are used in feeding farm animals. 

Manual training exercises. Have the pupils 
plan and construct a model poultry house, with 
full-sized nests and feed boxes. 

NOVEMBER 

Out-of-door exercises. Examination of high- 
grade poultry should be continued, in addition 
to inspection of cows and other farm animals. 
Investigate local methods of storing grain and 
of housing animals. Report on orchard work, 
if any is carried on. What methods of com¬ 
bating insect pests prevail? Note attention 
paid to cleaning and repairing of poultry houses, 
methods of fall planting of trees and shrubs, 
and how cutting, pruning and grafting are done. 
Complete the collection of soils and seeds begun 
in the previous month. 

Composition work. Field excursions and in¬ 
vestigations of farm equipment and various lines 
of fall work should be written up. Oral discus¬ 
sions of the subjects considered will increase 
the pupils’ ability to use English. The Thanks¬ 
giving festival furnishes much timely material 
for compositions. Send short articles on va¬ 
rious lines of school work to the local papers. 

Reading and spelling lessons. Appropriate se¬ 
lections for the month are Thoreau’s Walden 
Pond; Helen H. Jackson’s November Woods; 
selections from Audubon’s writings; Alice 
Carey’s November. Continue use of periodicals 
and supplementary readers, and drills on new 
terms and misspelled words. Have an evening 
spelling contest which shall include many agri¬ 
cultural words. 

Lessons in arithmetic. Assign problems based 
on cost of harvesting and marketing apples, 


AGRICULTURE 


109 


AGRICULTURE 


corn, potatoes, etc. Make computations of cost 
of feed for poultry, cows and other animals; 
also cost of egg production per hen and profit 
on various flocks. 

Lessons in geography. Make a study of 
climate in connection with different plants. Find 
northern and southern limits of important prod¬ 
ucts. Tabulate on maps or charts results of 
district poultry survey. Have indicated on out¬ 
line maps the roads and other traffic routes used 
for commercial purposes. 

History work. Have a study made of the 
origin and distribution of different varieties of 
poultry. Have the story of The Geese that Saved 
Rome and similar stories of fowls written up. 
Study local methods of marketing - poultry. How 
has the development of railroads affected the 
history of the state or province? Make a study 
of rural festivals, especially Thanksgiving. 

Drawing lessons. Assign sketching and col¬ 
oring of typical fowls and of varieties of apples, 
berries, pumpkins and nuts, and working draw¬ 
ings of farm equipment. Have sketches made 
showing the historical development of modes of 
transportation from the era of the ox cart to the 
present time. Assign Thanksgiving sketches. 

Lessons in physiology. In connection with the 
study of human breathing, point out value of 
constructing light, well-ventilated and roomy 
poultry houses. Extend this idea to other animal 
houses. Show that farm animals require dif¬ 
ferent foods for winter, as do human beings. 
Make a special study of fruit as a food. Com¬ 
pare milk and eggs with other foods as to cost 
and food value. 

DECEMBER 

Practical exercises indoors and out. Modern 
methods of dairying may be studied. Investi¬ 
gate management of dairies and methods of 
marketing milk. If feasible have milk-testing 
exercises in the school. Begin examination of 
school collection of soils. Direct pupils to ob¬ 
serve and take notes on habits and food of 
winter birds. 

Composition work. Have reports of examina¬ 
tion of dairies written out in full. Assign 
essays on such subjects as An Ideal Ear of 
Corn, A Model Dairy, Proper Feeding of Cows 
(or Poultry), How to Test Milk, etc. 

Reading and spelling lessons. For supple¬ 
mentary reading choose such selections as 
Whittier’s Snow Bound; Burroughs’ Our Rural 
Divinity; Hawke’s The Winter Herd Scene (from 
Shovelhorns) . Use such dairy and poultry 
journals as are available. Drill on spelling and 
correct use of new scientific terms. 

Work in arithmetic. Assign problems based 
on milk records, feed computations, and cost and 
profits of dairy and poultry projects. Have 
pupils invent problems dealing with money saved 
by use of sprays and other insect destroyers; 
also probable saving to farmers through winter 
birds which feed on insect pests. 

Lessons in geography. Have outline maps 
drawn of township or county. Locate thereon 
industrial plants connected with farming, such 
as gristmills, grain elevators, creameries and 
cheese factories. Trace connection between local 


and distant markets for farm produce. Enumer¬ 
ate the steps from farm to home of consumer. 
Make climatic records, such as depth of freezing, 
dates of early frost and snowfall, amount of 
snowfall, etc. Tabulate number of dairy cattle 
in district, with statistics as to breeds, amount 
of milk and butter produced, etc. 

History lessons. Compare modern farming 
methods with past methods. How have these 
been modified by historic events? What great 
men began life on farms, Why is the farmer 
considered so important to-day? 

Work in drawing. During examination of 
dairies have working drawings made of milk¬ 
testing machines. Have different parts of a 
cream separator drawn. Make a sketch of an 
ideal dairy cow, dividing it into sections and 
enumerating each, as flank, thigh, etc. Winter 
birds and scenery may also be assigned. 

Physiology lessons. Make a practical appli¬ 
cation to the care of farm animals, of what was 
learned in physiology concerning winter exer¬ 
cises, ventilation and exposure. Point out the 
value of vigorous exercise in winter, both in 
work and in sports. 

JANUARY 

Practical exercises indoor and out. Work in 
milk testing may be continued. Pupils planning 
to raise chickens should select the breeding 
fowls and see that they have suitable food. 
Egg testing and care of market eggs are now 
important lines of work. Let each pupil decide 
on some home project for the coming season. 
Local factories and warehouses dealing in agri¬ 
cultural material should be visited. 

Composition work. The winter season sug¬ 
gests an abundance of topics for oral and writ¬ 
ten composition. Have pupils write descriptions 
of trips, investigations, sports, winter birds, 
etc. Report on the feeding of cows and poultry. 
Letters to available authorities for seed cata¬ 
logues and publications regarding spring work 
are now timely. 

Reading and spelling lessons. The following 
are suggestive of what may be used in supple¬ 
mentary reading: Stevenson’s Winter Time; 
Lambs’ Essay on Roast Pig; Venable’s The 
Forest Song; Lowell’s Winter; Morris’ Wood¬ 
man, Spare that Tree; Longfellow’s The Home 
Song. Publications on forestry, milk and eggs, 
especially on shipping eggs, should be obtained. 
Continue drill on spelling, pronunciation and use 
of agricultural terms. 

Problems in arithmetic. Give problems based 
on records from milk testing combined with 
milk-production records; make computations of 
yield of butter fat, value in money and esti¬ 
mated profit. If feed records can be obtained 
find exact profit over feed cost. Use egg records 
and accounts of poultry feed as a basis for 
similar computations. Make computations of 
amount of fertilizer needed on specified fields 
and gardens. Ascertain volume and capacity of 
ice houses (in tons). Get measurements of 
woodpiles, logs and lumber, and use in problems. 

Lessons in geography. Make a study of origin 
and present source of materials used in ferti¬ 
lizers. Read dairy records of different states, 


AGRICULTURE 


110 


AGRICULTURE 


provinces and countries and make comparisons. 
Have pupils make outline maps of home farms 
and locate thereon fields and crops decided upon. 
Different soils should be indicated by color or 
shading. Take up the study of the lumber in¬ 
dustry, national forestry, different varieties of 
native and imported woods, importance of ice 
in modern dairy farming. Study methods of 
producing, storing and transporting artificial and 
natural ice. 

Lessons in history. The subject of the forests 
opens the way for several important related 
subjects—development of the lumber industry, 
its effect on settlement, the conservation move¬ 
ment, etc. Historical forests of the world may 
be studied. Compare present winter conditions 
of the farm with those of pioneer days. To 
what extent was the farm self-supporting then? 
What industries then carried on have since been 
taken from the farm? 

Drawing lessons. Farm animals and winter 
trees make good subjects for sketches. Lum¬ 
bering and ice-cutting tools may also be as¬ 
signed. 

Lessons in physiology. The following sub¬ 
jects may be taken up: Diseases and acci¬ 
dents common to winter; dangers of using milk 
from tuberculous cows ; milk and cream as dis¬ 
ease carriers; how to prevent epidemics; local 
and national health laws. 

Manual training exercises. Have the pupils 
construct egg testers, apparatus for testing corn, 
models of stables and poultry houses, and bird 
houses. 

FEBRUARY 

Practical exercises indoors and’out. Detailed 
plans for garden and field projects may now 
be made. Show different methods of testing 
corn and other seeds. Assign home work in 
testing and ask for reports. Sow seeds in hot¬ 
beds or window boxes to obtain early plants, 
and study their germination and growth. Egg 
testing may be continued at school and at home. 
Have a neighborhood meeting in the school to 
show ability of pupils to test seed, milk and 
eggs and to judge corn. 

Composition work. Direct the pupils in the 
writing and mailing of orders for seeds and for 
agricultural bulletins. Have all records and re¬ 
ports written out carefully. 

Reading and spelling lessons. For supple¬ 
mentary readings select such titles as Pope’s 
Happy the Man; Longfellow’s The Home Song; 
Caroline Norton’s The Arab to his Steed; Burns’ 
To a Mouse. Get literature on school gardens, 
the home vegetable garden, egg marketing and 
poultry raising. Have a neighborhood spelling 
contest, making use of all agricultural terms 
the pupils have used. 

Arithmetic problems. Assign practice work 
in the making of invoices, checks, receipts and 
other business forms. Make computations of 
garden areas; have the space for each variety 
of vegetables laid out to scale. Problems as¬ 
signed may be based on sales of eggs, cost of 
marketing and net income. Using figures found 
in milk testing, find the values of the butter fat 
per hundredweight of milk. Allowing thirty 
cents per hundredweight for skimmed milk, what 


is the total value of specified quantities of 
milk? Compute income from specified cows. 

Geography lessons. Have pupils make a dis¬ 
trict survey map showing kinds of seeds used 
for garden and field crops. Make comparisons ; 
which gives better results—home-grown or pur¬ 
chased seed? Which are the most profitable 
garden crops? Make a study of demand and 
supply. What possibilities are there for good 
and bad yields for the coming season? 

Lessons in history. Have pupils make a study 
of the history of certain important local crops. 
Trace back to date when each was first used 
as a food. How are new fruits and vegetables 
made available for human food? Why are cer¬ 
tain well-known vegetables or grains not raised 
locally? 

Drawing lessons. The seed planting in win¬ 
dow boxes gives opportunity for sketching the 
development of the germinating plant up to the 
opening of the true leaves. Have working draw¬ 
ings made of seed testers ; plan and make pat¬ 
terns for egg tester and shipping cases. Have 
home and school gardens drawn to scale. 

Lessons in physiology. Make a study of 
local, state or provincial laws concerning sani¬ 
tation. Wherein are these laws inadequate? 
Are the people of the rural sections as well 
protected as those of the cities in regard to 
water supply, sewage, infectious diseases, clean 
milk, etc. Study methods of heating and venti¬ 
lation in the community. Criticise the school 
facilities. 

Manual training exercises. Have pupils con¬ 
struct seed and egg testers, window boxes and 
shallow boxes, or “fiats,” for starting seeds. 
Make a model of a hotbed or cold frame. 

MARCH 

Practical exercises indoors and out. Make 
preparations for incubation of eggs. Make 
visits to a successful poultry plant to study 
methods of incubation. Prepare cold frames for 
seeds. Begin early planting of lettuce, tomatoes, 
pansies and other plants, under glass or in 
“flats.” As soon as weather permits have field 
demonstrations of grafting, pruning and spray¬ 
ing. Begin setting out of fruit trees. 

Composition work. Have written and mailed 
necessary letters regarding seeds, fertilizers or 
tools. Have a full report written whenever a 
hen is set or an incubator started. Direct pupils 
to write full descriptions of field trips and 
visits to establishments. 

Reading and spelling lessons. For supple¬ 
mentary reading use material on rural life, such 
as Grady’s The Homes of the People; Holmes’ 
The Plowman; Hamlin’s The Meadow Lark; 
Aldrich’s Bluebird; Mackay’s Tubal Cain; Riley’s 
Out at Old Aunt Mary’s; and the Parable of the 
Sower, from the Bible. Use bulletins and pe¬ 
riodicals on special garden vegetables, incuba¬ 
tion of hens’ eggs and other seasonal topics. 

Problems in arithmetic. Poultry records, bills 
for seed, fertilizer and tools, orchard work and 
dairy projects furnish material for problems. 
Wherever feasible, study methods of assessing 
taxes and their relation to farm management, 
and invent problems involving the facts learned. 


AGRICULTURE 


111 


AGRICULTURE 


Geography lessons. Peculiarities of the local 
climate with respect to early spring farm work 
should be studied. Have maps drawn showing 
the market radius for various products. Indi¬ 
cate with ink of different colors the places where 
local farm supplies are purchased. Have maps 
drawn of state or province and have indicated 
thereon farmers’ associated creameries, etc. Com¬ 
pile information regarding late spring frosts and 
dates for planting or transplanting. 

History work. The following subjects are 
suggested for classroom discussion, after they 
have been looked up by the pupils: sources of 
food supply and transportation facilities in the 
early days of the nation; the effect of crops 
and industries in certain sections; the attitude 
of those sections toward national issues; the 
inter-relation between agricultural progress and 
invention. 

Drawing lessons. For sketching material use 
seedlings, buds, open or bursting, tools used in 
grafting and pruning; in certain localities a 
sugar camp is an excellent subject. Have dia¬ 
grams made of cold frame, brood nests or in¬ 
cubator. 

Physiology lessons. Make a further study of 
foods and compare different varieties of fruits 
and vegetables as to food value. Study the 
digestion of starch in the human body and in 
plants. Begin spring clean-up campaign, with 
special attention to breeding places of flies and 
mosquitoes. 

Manual training exercises. Direct pupils to 
construct brood nests, transplanting boxes and 
wooden garden labels. Make sample crates for 
shipping eggs. 

APRIL 

Practical exercises indoors and out. Arrange 
for demonstrations of methods of hatching and 
early brooding of chickens, and of transplanting 
tomatoes and other plants started in cold frames. 
Plowing and harrowing of project fields and 
gardens should be undertaken. Make a garden 
and crops survey of the district. Have records 
kept of habits and food of returning birds. Now 
is the time for planning and beginning work on 
the improvement of the school grounds. Bird 
houses may be placed and fruit and shade trees 
planted. Make plans for the fall exhibit before 
planting crops. 

Composition work. Assign written reports of 
excursions, demonstrations and work begun on 
projects. There are many timely subjects for 
essays, such as early care of chickens, starting 
tomato plants, neighborhood birds, etc. A useful 
drill in composition is the arrangement of a 
tree-planting exercise See Arbor Day. 

Reading and spelling lessons. For supple¬ 
mentary readings choose such selections as 
Alice Carey’s That Calf; Whittier’s The Bare¬ 
foot Boy; Riley’s South Wind and Sun; Bryant’s 
The Song of the Sower; Helen Hunt Jackson’s 
April; Brown’s In the Heart of a Seed; Emily 
Miller’s The Bluebird; Saxe’s Solomon and the 
Bees. Look up reading matter on the home 
fruit garden, annual flowering plants, managing 
poultry, how to grow an acre of corn, incu¬ 
bators, how to make and use bird houses. Con¬ 
tinue drill on words. 


Problems in arithmetic. Base the problems 
on areas for each crop, amount of fertilizer 
used, estimated crop, etc. Make estimates of 
damage prevented by insect-eating birds. Con¬ 
tinue use of poultry, feed and milk records in 
devising problems. 

Geography lessons. Trace, by means of news¬ 
papers and personal investigations, the sources 
of and nearest large market for the supply of 
eggs and poultry. Locate on state or provincial 
maps the chief producing areas and large 
markets for tomato plants, ripe and canned 
tomatoes or other produce. From what sec¬ 
tions do the best supplies come? If local out¬ 
put is below par, how could it be improved? 

History lessons. Study the history of na¬ 
tional legislation with respect to agricultural 
education. Make a survey of agricultural 
schools and colleges established by provinces 
or states and the nation. What advantages have 
farmers to-day as compared with those of a 
century ago. Begin study of the movement to 
save the birds. 

Drawing lessons. Make illustrations showing 
how small plants and fruit trees are trans¬ 
planted. Make working drawings to illustrate 
construction of bird houses; also of garden 
markers and other implements. 

Physiology lessons. Begin a district sanitary 
survey which shall include water supply, dis¬ 
posal of sewage, control of flies and mosquitoes 
and other features of home sanitation. Include 
care of milk and other foods, dairy inspection, 
tests for tuberculosis, etc. Give a lesson on 
the interchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen, 
showing how plants and animals aid one an¬ 
other. See Plants. 

Manual training exercises. Construct bird 
houses, garden markers and transplanting trays. 
Have needed repairs of school apparatus made. 
If Arbor Day occurs in this month, have a tree 
set out and a trellis made for its protection. 
It is a good plan to have a road drag made 
and to see that it is used in the district. 

MAY ; JUNE 

Practical exercises. Those who live in the 
fruit belt should visit orchards and observe 
methods of spraying trees to kill insects. Com¬ 
plete work of planting or transplanting in school 
gardens, and all other projects. Arrange with 
local farmers to have the pupils see practical 
demonstrations of field cultivation and methods 
of controlling insects. Make observations of 
early feeding and summer care of chickens. 

Composition work. Reports of planting and 
other field and garden work may be written up. 
Also have descriptions written of field trips and 
demonstrations. 

Reading and spelling lessons. It will be easy 
to find numerous selections appropriate for the 
summer season. Choose such titles as Mann’s 
The Farmer’s Creed; Anderson’s The Pea Blos¬ 
som; Saxe Holm’s A Song of Clover; Howells’ 
Song of the Oriole; Longfellow’s Blessing the 
Cornfield (from Hiawatha ) and Birds of Killing- 
worth; Lowell’s A Day in June. Search for 
literature on the apple and corn and their cul¬ 
tivation. Continue reading on the fly. All the 


AGRICULTURE 


112 


AGRICULTURE 


- 

I OUTLINE AND QUESTIONS ON AGRICULTURE 


Outline 

I. What It Is 

II. Its Importance 

(1) Practically all foodstuffs produced by 

it 

(2) Almost all clothing materials 

III. History ami Progress 

(1) Primitive Methods 

(2) Animal labor 
(3 ) Modern machinery 
(4) Decreased cost of production 

IV. Causes of Progress 

(1) Better transportation 

(a) Roads 

(b) Railways 

(c) Waterways 
(2 ) Farm machinery 

(3) Application of chemistry to soils 

(4) Spread of agricultural education 

(a) Colleges 

(b) Rural schools 

(c) Clubs and institutes 

(5) Scientific farming 

(6) New methods of combating disease 

and insect pests 

v V. Branches of Agriculture 

(1) Grain raising 
( 2 ) Other crops 

(a) Potatoes 

(b) Flax 

(c) Cotton 

(d) Tobacco 

(e) Forage crops, etc. 

(3) Horticulture—raising of 

(a) Fruits 

(b) Garden vegetables 

(c) Flowers 

(4) Stock-raising 

(5) Dairying 

(6) Poultry-raising 

(7) Bee-keeping 

Questions 

How does agriculture rank in importance among the industries? • 

Can you think of any common article of food with the production of which the 
farmer has nothing to do? 

Are the textile industries as dependent upon the farmer’s activities as are those 
connected with food? 

What is that branch of agriculture called which has to do with the raising of fruit? 
How are the birds of use to the farmer? 

What is a silo? Has it played a very large part in recent agricultural development? 



VI. Future Possibilities —governed by 

(1) Increase in land value 

(2) Increasing demand for food products 
(3 ) Governmental assistance 

(4) New investigations 

VII. Improved Rural Conditions —due 

to 

(1) Better communication facilities 

(a) Telephone 

(b) Automobile 

(c) Rural mail delivery 

(d) Parcel post 

(2) Spread of education 

(a) Agricultural courses in many 

schools 

(b) Periodicals 

(c) Traveling libraries 

(d) Consolidated schools 

VIII. Specific Topics 

(1) Farm equipment 

(2) Soils 

(a) Formation 

(b) Classification 

(c) Texture 

(d) Relative value 

(e) Exhaustion 

(3) Fertilization 

(4) Drainage and irrigation 
( 5 ) Cultivation 

( 6) Harvesting 

(7) Crops 

(a) Localization 

(b) Relative values 

(8) Seed 

(a) Testing 

(b) Methods of seeding 

(9) Plant and animal diseases 

(10) Weeds 

(11) Farm arithmetic 













AGRICULTURE 


113 


AGRICULTURE 



Outline and Questions on Agriculture—Continued 

What are the principal grains? 

In what parts of North America is flax grown? 

How does agriculture rank in importance among the industries? 

Trace the steps in the development of the plow. 

II the farmer of thirty years ago could visit a fully-equipped modern farm, what are 
some of the things he would see which would amaze him? 

How much less does it cost now to produce a bushel of wheat than it did a half 
century ago? 

Is it of any advantage to the farmer to understand the principles of chemistry? 
What change has there been in the attitude of the farmer toward agricultural educa¬ 
tion? 

What is an agricultural experiment station? 

What is meant by the statement that agriculture has become “a science as well as 
an art”? 

What enemy does the grower of cotton most dread? the grower of wheat? 

What insecticides can the farmers use to rid themselves of these pests? 

What is the most widely extended branch of agriculture? 

Name some of the principal forage crops of Canada and the United States. 

Is it necessary for the dairy husbandman to raise any crops at all? 

What conditions are necessary to the growing of rice? 

What is meant by intensified farming? 

Would you trade the proceeds from the wheat crop in the United States for those 
received from poultry? 

In what way can clover benefit the soil? 

Is the earthworm a hindrance or a help to the farmer? 

Make a list of the various kinds of soil. 

Describe briefly three great irrigation projects. 

In what way are school gardens helpful? 

How are oats tested for seed? 

How can you recognize an apple tree when it is bare of leaves? a cherry tree? 
Should a farmer shoot robins? 

What is a weed? Name several of the most troublesome, and tell how they should 
be dealt with. 

What were some of the reasons for the strong “away from the farm” tendency? 
How do the departments of agriculture of Canada and the United States stand ready 
to assist the farmers? 

Name four or five causes of the “back to the farm” movement. 

What are “consolidated” schools? Of what help are they to the community? 

How does the winter life of a farmer’s family differ from winter life on a farm of 
a score or more of years ago? 

With the aid of the indexes and articles in these volumes, answer the question which 
troubled John and Mary—where does bread come from? 

How many hours’ labor does it take, according to the present estimate, to grow a 
ton of hay? 

What is meant by dry-farming? 

In what parts of the United States and Canada is dry-farming practised? 

How can a farmer be absolutely certain as to which of the crops he is raising are 
profitable? (See Bookkeeping, subhead Farm Bookkeeping.) 

Under what headings would a farmer open his various accounts? 

About how much rainfall must a region have in order that ordinary farming may be 
profitable? 

What do you understand by grafting? 

What has been accomplished by canning clubs? 

Why is Luther Burbank called the “plant wizard”? 

Name some of the cattle diseases the stock-grower has to combat. 










AGRICULTURE 


114 


AGRICULTURE 


topics for summer work will provide new spell¬ 
ing lists. 

Problems. Assign problems based on plowing, 
harrowing and planting. Estimate cost of crops 
up to this time, making allowances for rent of 
land and cost of fertilizer, seed and labor. The 
home and school gardens, flocks of chickens, 
etc., will furnish material for other problems. 
Have each pupil keep an accurate record of his 
own projects. 

Geography lessons. Study the common insect 
pests with reference to their origin and distribu¬ 
tion. Make a similar study of weeds. Suggest 
that the pupils make collections of pictures show¬ 
ing farming methods carried on in European 
countries. Locate fruit and vegetable canning 
factories which utilize crops produced in the 
community. Can crops of home projects be 
raised and canned at such cost as will enable 
the output to compete with factory products? 
How would they compare in quality? 

History lessons. Trace the methods of plow¬ 
ing, cultivating and harvesting from pioneer 
days to the present; show development of farm 
implements. What has been the effect of in¬ 
vention of farm machinery on distribution of 
crop acreage and types of farming? Trace also 
the domestication of animals. 

Drawing lessons. Apple or other fruit blos¬ 
soms in different states of growth may be 
sketched. Sketch a codling moth or other in¬ 
sect pest. Draw parts of apparatus and im¬ 
proved machinery. Fill in the details of garden 
maps begun previously. 

Physiology lessons. Give lessons on first aid 
to the injured. Show pupils how to deal with 
cuts, sprains, fractures and burns, and poison¬ 
ing from weeds. Study preservation of foods 
in the home. Continue study of fly control. 

Manual training exercises. Manual work in 
May and June can best be done in the fields and 
gardens. In some communities it may be prac¬ 
ticable to construct a fireless cooker and demon¬ 
strate its use. * b.m.w. 

Consult Bailey’s Cyclopedia of American Agri¬ 
culture, and his Rural Science Series; Voorhees’s 
First Principles of Agriculture; Carney’s Country 
Life and the Country School; Warren’s Farm 
Management; Earle’s Southern Agriculture. 

Related Subjects. Those who wish to make 
a systematic study of agriculture are referred to 
the topics below, each of which will be found in 
its alphabetical order in these volumes. The 
topics are arranged in groups according to their 
relations : 


Irrigation 

Rotation of Crops 

Manures 

Soil 

Phosphates 

CROPS 

Alfalfa 

Hay 

Barley 

Kaffir Corn 

Buckwheat 

Millet 

Clover 

Oats 

Corn 

Rice 

Cotton 

Rye 

Flax 

Wheat 

Fruit (see Fruits, 

below) 


FRUITS 

Alligator Pear 

Lemon 

Almond 

Lime 

Apple 

Logan Berry 

Apricot 

Loquat 

Banana 

Melon 

Bergamot 

Mulberry 

Blackberry 

Muskmelon 

Brazil Nut 

Nectarine 

Breadfruit 

Orange 

Butternut 

Pawpaw 

Casaba 

Peach 

Cherry 

Peanut 

Chestnut 

Pear 

Citron 

Pecan 

Cocoanut 

Persimmon 

Crab Apple 

Pineapple 

Cranberry 

Pistachio 

Currant 

Plum 

Fig 

Pomegranate 

Gooseberry 

Prune 

Grape 

Quince 

Grapefruit 

Raspberry 

Guava 

Strawberry 

Huckelberry 

Walnut 

Kumquat 

Watermelon 


VEGETABLES 

Artichoke 

Lentil 

Asparagus 

Okra 

Bean 

Onion 

Beet 

Oyster Plant 

Brussels Sprouts 

Parsnip 

Cabbage 

Pea 

Carrot 

Potato 

Cauliflower 

Pumpkin 

Celery 

Radish 

Chard 

Squash 

Cucumber 

Sweet Potato 

Eggplant 

Tomato 

Gumbo 

Kohl-rabi 

Turnip 


FARM EQUIPMENT 


Agricultural Machinery 
Barn 

Binding Twine 

Flail 

Hoe 

Mowing Machine 
Plow 


Rake 

Reaping Machine 

Scythe 

Silo 

Sowing Machine 
Thrashing Machine 
Traction Engine 


SOIL TREATMENT 

Agricultural Chemistry Fertilizers 
Drainage Guano 

Dry Farming Gypsum 


ENEMIES OF PLANTS 


Blight 
Boll Weevil 
Brown-tail Moth 
Chinch Bug 
Codling Moth 

Herbicides 

Paris Green 

Mildews 

Locust 

Potato Bug 

Diseases of Plants 


t 

Curculio 

Ergot 

Grain Beetle 
Gypsy Moth 

See also 

San Jose Scale 
Scale Insect 
Smuts 
Weevil 

Insecticides and 
Fungicides 


AGUE 


AGRIGENTUM 115 


STOCK AND POULTRY RAISING 


Breeding 

Hog 

Cattle 

Horse 

Cow 

Incubator 

Duck 

Pigeon 

Egg 

Poultry 

Ensilage 

Sheep 

Fowl 

Turkey 

Goat 


THE DAIRY INDUSTRY 

Butter 

Creamery 

Buttermilk 

Dairying 

Cheese 

% 

Milk 

Churn 

Separator, Cream 

Cow 


ANIMAL DISEASES 

AND INSECT PESTS 

Animals, Diseases of 

Glanders 

Anthrax 

Lumpy Jaw 

Distemper 

Mange 

Foot and Mouth Disease Rinderpest 

Gapes 

Sheep Tick 

Heaves 

Spavin 


See also 

Veterinary Medicine 

AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 

Agricultural College 
Agricultural Education 
Agricultural Experiment Station 
Agricultural, Department of 
Canning Clubs 
Farmers’ Institute 


GENERAL TOPICS 


Birds, subhead 
Relation to Man 
Gardening 
Grafting 
Greenhouse 


Horticulture 
Hotbed 
Nursery 
Pruning 
School Garden 


AGRIGEN 'TUM, the modern city of Gir- 
genti, was founded on the southern coast of 
Sicily about 582 b. c., by a Greek colony from 
Gela, and tvas once one of the most important 
places on the island. It possessed many fine 
buildings and was recognized as a seat of cul¬ 
ture; ruins of the Temple of Jupiter, the most 
magnificent in Sicily, are still to be seen. Agri- 
gentum has never possessed its ancient splen¬ 
dor (although partially rebuilt in 340 b. c.) 
since its destruction at the hands of the Car¬ 
thaginians in 405 b. c. It was conquered by the 
Romans during the first Punic War and was 
under the control of the Saracens from 825 to 
1086 a. d. Once a city of 200,000, Girgenti now 
has about 22,000 inhabitants. 

AG'RIMONY. Though belonging to the rose 
family, this genus of plants differs widely from 
the roses, occurring as a wayside weed, with 
deeply indented, downy leaves and small, yel¬ 
low flowers at the end of a tall stalk. It has 
an aromatic odor and a bitter taste. An in¬ 


fusion of the dried leaves is used as a gargle in 
some forms of throat trouble. 

AGRIPPI'NA (a. d. 16-59), called Agrippina 
the Younger, was the mother of Nero, and a 
woman of whom it is impossible to say a good 
word. After having poisoned her second hus¬ 
band she married her uncle, the Emperor 



Claudius, whom she induced to disinherit his 
own son in favor of her son Nero. She then 
poisoned Claudius, placed Nero on the throne 
and prepared to govern through him, but he 
proved to have a strong will of his own. When 
she plotted against him he had her put to 
death. See Nero. 

AGUAS CALIENTES, ah' gwas kahlyen’- 
taze, capital of the Mexican state of the same 
name, situated on a plateau 6,000 feet above 
sea level, 300 miles northwest of Mexico City. 
There are many hot springs in the neighbor¬ 
hood, hence the name, which in Spanish means 
hot water. In times of peace it is a flourishing 
city, with important manufactures of cotton, 
tobacco, leather and pottery. The surrounding 
country is rich in minerals, particularly silver, 
copper and lead. Population in 1910, 45,198. 

A'GUE, a common name for malarial fever. 
It is caused by a certain animal parasite, and 
is communicated to man through the bites of 
mosquitoes poisoned by this parasite. The at¬ 
tacks come at regular intervals; in some forms 
they occur twice in twenty-four hours, in others 
once a day or every other day. In some cases 
there is an interval of two days between at¬ 
tacks. There are three stages in the progress 
of ague. First, the patient feels a coldness 
creep up the back and spread over the bodj'; 



AGUINALDO 


116 


AID-DE-CAMP 


he shivers, his teeth chatter and his face, lips, 
ears and nails become blue, while his tempera¬ 
ture rises to 102° or more. In the course of 
time the coldness is succeeded by warmth, the 
face becomes red and the head aches. In this 
stage the fever is between 103° and 105°. 
Finally, the skin becomes soft and damp, the 
patient sweats profusely, and, the fever having 
gone down, he falls asleep. Quinine is almost 
the only medicine known which is a satisfac¬ 
tory remedy for ague. The best means of pre¬ 
venting the disease is by exterminating the 
mosquito in -sections which are known to be 
malarial. Special attention should be given to 
destroying their breeding places. See Malaria. 

AGUINALDO, ahgenahV do, Emilio (1870- 
), a notable character at the age of twenty- 
nine, in connection with American occupation 
of the Philippine Islands. He was the leader 
of stubborn resistance to United States author¬ 
ity, which ended only with his capture by 
Colonel, later Major General, Frederick 
Funston. 

Aguinaldo had a varied career up to 1898, the 
year the islands were occupied by American 
forces. His parentage was unknown. He was 
reared by a priest and received a good educa¬ 
tion, intending to become a physician. Before 
he was twenty he was obliged to leave home to 
escape arrest, and in Hongkong learned some 
of the methods of European warfare. For a 
time the adventurous youth is said to have 
served in the Chinese navy. When Dewey’s 
fleet ended Spanish authority in the Philippines, 
he returned home, with the good intention of 
aiding the American authorities. However, he 
was offended because he was not recognized at 
his own appraised value, and within a year 
headed a very formidable revolt against the 
Americans. His forces were driven to the 
mountains, where for two years resistance con¬ 
tinued. 

Aguinaldo was well-treated . after his cap¬ 
ture, became reconciled to those in authority, 
and set a good example to his followers by 
becoming a useful citizen. He is now prosper¬ 
ous as a gentleman farmer near the city of 
Manila. 

AGULHAS, a goo' lyas, Cape, the southern¬ 
most point of Africa, avoided by mariners be¬ 
cause of the storms which frequently rage 
around it. It is about 100 miles east and south 
of Cape Town, and is marked by a lighthouse 
whose beacon may be seen nearly twenty miles. 

A'HAB, the seventh king of Israel, who, in¬ 
fluenced by his evil wife, Jezebel, set up the 


worship of Baal and cruelly persecuted the true 
prophets. Jezebel was so notorious that the 
name has come to signify any sharp-tongued, 
scheming, ungovernable female. Ahab reigned 
from about 875 to 853 b. c., and was bitterl}'- 
opposed by the prophet Elijah. His history is 
told in the last seven chapters of I Kings. 

AHASUERUS, ahazue'rus, in Bible nar¬ 
rative a king of Persia, to whom the beautiful 
Queen Esther made her appeal to save the 
Jews from the wicked plot of Haman. Around 
these characters centers one of the most ap¬ 
pealing stories of the Bible, found in the Book 
of Esther. This king is thought to have been 
Xerxes I. Ahasuerus is also a Scripture name 
for Cambyses, the son of Cyrus (Ezra IV, 6), 
and for Astyages, king of the Medes (Dan. 
IX, 1). See Esther. 

A'HAZ, son of Jotham, was the twelfth 
king of Judah and ruled from 736 to 728 b. c. 
His reign was marked by a return to idolatry, 
and at his command the Temple was plundered 
to secure presents for Tiglath-pileser, the king 
of Assyria, whose aid had been sought against 
the Syrians (II Kings, XVI). 

AID A, ah e'da, an Italian opera composed 
by Verdi in 1871 to celebrate the opening of the 
grand opera house at Cairo, Egypt. Verdi 
was chosen for this honor by Ismail Pasha, 
the Khedive of Egypt. The scenes are laid 
at Memphis and at Thebes, and the opera re¬ 
lates the story of Aida, daughter of the king 
of Ethiopia, and her lover, Radames, captain 
of the Egyptian royal guard. The lovers pre¬ 
fer death to separation, and the curtain falls 
upon their death song in a vault beneath the 
temple. The music is elevated and there are 
many passages of majestic beauty. Melba, 
Nordica and Carolina White are among the 
great prima donnas who have sung the part of 
Aida. 

AID-DE-CAMP, aiddekamp', or aid-de- 
kaN ', an officer who serves on the staff of a gen¬ 
eral, and assists him in performing his military 
and social duties. In time of war the duties are 
arduous and dangerous, and the successful aid 
must be alert, resourceful and prompt. Mod¬ 
ern warfare has considerably changed the duties 
of aids-de-camp. The automobile has taken 
the place of the horse, and the telephone and 
telegraph facilitate the sending of orders, but 
the duties of the aid still take him constantly 
into the zone of danger. The position carries 
great military and social prestige, and is eagerly 
sought by young officers of all branches of the 
army. 


AIKINS 


117 


AIR 


AIKINS, a' kinz, James Cox (1823-1904), a 
Canadian statesman, for many years one of 
the leading Conservatives of the Dominion, 
best known as the author of the Public Lands 
Act, under the terms of which he then organ¬ 
ized the Dominion Lands Bureau. Though he 
began life as a farmer, he was chosen to the 
legislature in 1844, when he was only twenty- 
one years old, and from then until his death 
was always conspicuous in politics. From 1869 
to 1873 and from 1878 to 1880 he was Secretary 
of State under Sir John A. Macdonald, and 
from 1880 to 1882 was Minister of Inland Reve¬ 
nue. He then served a five-year term as lieu¬ 
tenant-governor of Manitoba, and for the re¬ 
mainder of his life sat in the Dominion Senate. 

His son, Sir James Albert Manning Aikins 
(1852- ), one of the leading barristers of 

the Dominion, president of the Canadian Bar 
Association since 1914. After graduation from 
Upper Canada College and the University of 
Toronto, he studied law, was called to the bar 
in 1878, and was created Queen’s Counsel in 
1884. For thirty years, 1881 to 1911, he was 
the Winnipeg counsel for the Canadian Pacific 
Railway, and from 1911 to 1915 represented 
Brandon in the Dominion House of Commons. 
After the fall of the Roblin ministry in 1915, 
Sir James took an active part in reorganizing 
the Conservative party in Manitoba and was 
chosen its leader. Though the task was hope¬ 
less, he accepted it; he resigned his seat in the 
Commons and offered hknself as member for 
Brandon in the legislature, but was defeated. 
Sir James has given largely of his time to 
various educational enterprises; he is a director 
of Wesley College and of Manitoba Agri¬ 
cultural College, is a member of the council of 
the University of Manitoba and has been its 
honorary bursar since 1887, is a member of the 
Board of Visitors, Royal Military College, 
Kingston, Ont., and an honorary officer in two 
regiments. He was knighted on January 1, 
1914. 

AILANTHUS, a lan' thus, a tree whose 
leaves are second only to those of the mul¬ 
berry in importance as food for silkworms. It 
is native to China and Japan, but because it 
is a handsome tree, valuable for shade and for 
its timber, it has been extensively introduced 
into Europe and the United States. The leaves 
are much like ash leaves, and the flowers, 
which have a most unpleasant odor, are small 
and greenish. Ailanthus silk is much cheaper 
and more durable than mulberry silk, but is not 
so soft and glossy. 


AINO, i' no, or AINU, i' noo, the name of 
the hairy, brown, short-statured race which 
peoples the island of Yezzo, the Kurile Islands 
and parts of Saghalien, and is perhaps the orig¬ 
inal race of Japan itself. The Ainos, who num- 



AINO MAN AND WIFE 


ber about 20,000, are still uncivilized. Their 
religion, in which a sort of bear-worship fig¬ 
ures, in some respects resembles that of the 
American Indians. They are said to average 
less than five feet in height. 

AIR, the element in which human beings 
and plants and animals live and breathe, is an 
invisible mixture of gases which can be 
weighed, expanded or compressed, transformed 
into a liquid, or even frozen into a solid. 

Weight. That air has weight was observed 
by Galileo, about 300 years ago, from the oper¬ 
ation of a pump which sucked water in the 
same manner as an ordinary kitchen or well 
pump of to-day. When you press the handle 
of the pump, you pull the air out of the pipe 
(see Air Pump). The .water in the cistern or 
well is weighed down by air and forces the 
water in the pipe, which is bearing no weight, 
to rise. Torricelli, a pupil of Galileo, proved 
that the weight of the air over a square inch 
of surface equals that of a column of mercury 
about thirty inches high. At the sea level one 
square inch sustains the weight of about 14.7 
pounds of air, but at higher points in the at¬ 
mosphere the pressure is of course less (see 
below). It also varies with the state of the 
weather, and Torricelli’s apparatus has become 
the barometer, an instrument which foretells 
storms. See Galileo; Torricelli; Barometer. 

Weight, we know, is a universal property of 
matter. Therefore, as air has weight, it is 
made up of particles of matter. Under pressure 
these particles come closer together, so the air 
at the earth’s surface is more dense than that 
higher up. About thirty-three miles above us, 
scientists say, the particles do not even touch 
each other. Just how far from the earth there 
ceases to be any we do not know. We are 




AIR 


118 


AIR BRAKE 


sure, however, that there are some at a height 
of one hundred miles, because about that dis¬ 
tance away grains of dust falling toward the 
world .are set on fire by friction with them, and 
become shooting .stars. See Meteor. 

Buoyancy. As the tendency of air is to ex¬ 
pand, any portion of it presses upward against 
the weight of the air above. Normally this 
upward pressure exactly equals the downward 
pressure at the same point. If it were less, the 
air would be further compressed; if it were 
greater it would expand. For the same reason 
the pressure is equal in all directions. Without 
this elastic upward pressure you could not in 
the open air turn the leaf of this book, for the 
weight of the air upon it would be nearly a 
half a ton. 

If any object is lighter than the air which 
it displaces, its downward pressure, due to 
gravity, is less than the upward pressure of the 
air underneath it, and it rises. Thus a balloon 
filled with light gases ascends till it reaches a 
point where it equals in weight the rarer at¬ 
mosphere it displaces. 

An opened newspaper floats gently to earth, 
while the same paper, folded, falls rapidly. In 
the first instance the downward force of its 
weight is distributed over a larger surface, thus 
reducing the pressure which drives the air from 
under the paper in order that it may fall. The 
flight of a heavier-than-air machine depends 
upon this buoyancy; its planes do not keep it 
from falling, but make it fall more slowly, so 
that its engines are able to support it (see 
Flying Machine). In a vacuum all things fall 
with equal rapidity, and only in a vacuum can 
objects be accurately weighed. 

What the Air Is Made of. The proportion 
of gases in the air varies with place and height. 
About seventy-nine per cent is nitrogen, nearly 
twenty-one per cent, oxygen. Water vapor, 
carbonic acid gas, traces of ammonia, ozone, 
argon, helium, neon, krypton, xenon and 
minute particles of animal, vegetable and min¬ 
eral matter form the very small balance. Be¬ 
cause plants absorb carbonic acid gas and re¬ 
turn oxygen to the air, while men reverse this 
process, city air has less oxygen than country 
air. Coal, oil, natural gas and other substances 
in the earth which have been formed by plants 
or animals formerly living on it, contain gases 
extracted from the air, so there is probably 
slightly less atmosphere around us than there 
was a few thousand years ago. But it is be¬ 
lieved that the proportions of its parts remain 
the same. 


What the Air Does for Us. Besides furnish¬ 
ing oxygen for us to breathe, the air in other 
ways enables us to live. It absorbs heat from 
the sun, giving it out to us during the hours of 
darkness; without an atmosphere the earth 
would be burning hot by day and intensely 
cold by night. It is also a medium for sound 
waves, which, unlike light, travel only through 
material bodies. It turns our windmills; makes 
air brakes possible; we ride on air in automo¬ 
biles; we have many machines which operate 
by compressed air; the housewife uses air in 
vacuum cleaners to make her work less tire¬ 
some. See Wind; Air Brake; Compressed 
Air; Liquid Air; Geology. c.r.m. 

Outline for the Study of Air 

1. What air is 

2. Weight 

(a) How discovered 

(b) Weight of air at sea level 

(c) Why air far above the earth weighs 

less 

3. Buoyancy 

(a) Equality of pressure 

(b) Why balloons rise 

(c) Why airships do not sink 

4. Composition 

(a) Nitrogen 

(b) Oxygen 

(c) Water vapor 

(d) Other gases 

5. What air does 

(a) Furnishes oxygen • 

(b) Absorbs sun’s heat 

(c) Permits passage of sound 

(d) Operates mechanical contrivances 

AIR BRAKE, a device which uses the power 
of compressed air to stop railway trains or 
regulate their speed. Before the invention of 
the air brake the only way of bringing a train 
to a stop was by the hand brake attached to 
each car. The brakernan had to run from one 
end of the train to the other, setting each 
brake as he went. If the train was long, sev¬ 
eral minutes elapsed before it finally could be 
brought to a stop. Many accidents occurred 
because of defective brakes and also because a 
train could not be stopped quickly. 

One of these railroad accidents, which he wit¬ 
nessed, set a certain twenty-year-old youth to 
thinking. Two years later, in 1868, this youth, 
George Westinghouse, had perfected a device - 
with which the engineer in his cab, by turning 
a valve, could stop his train. Westinghouse 
took his plans to Cornelius Vanderbilt, then 
the foremost railroad man in the United 
States; but the old “Commodore” somewhat 
angrily told him that he had no time to waste 


AIR BRAKE 


119 


AIR CELLS 


on fools who thought they could “stop trains 
with wind.” Fortunately, however, Andrew 
Carnegie and several of his friends were willing 
to bear the expense of an actual test, and in 
October, 1868, the first train equipped with the 
Westinghouse air brake ran from Pittsburgh 
to Steubenville, Ohio, a distance of forty-three 
miles. The experiment was entirely successful, 
and proved that a train could be stopped 
within its own length. The old-fashioned hand 
brakes are still used in sections where traffic 
is light and every train has only a few cars, 
but on all the great railway systems of the 
world the Westinghouse automatic air brake is 
used. It has also been adapted for use on elec¬ 
tric railways, the power being furnished by an 
electric motor instead of by a steam engine. 


triple valve automatically slides so that the 
auxiliary reservoir is placed in connection with 
the brake. If, for any reason, the pressure in 
the train pipe ceases, the train comes to a stop. 

When the engineer wishes to apply the 
brakes, he throws the handle of the air brake 
valve to a specified position, thus permitting 
the air in the train pipe to escape into the open 
air. The escape of the air lowers the pressure 
in the train pipe, and the triple valve, respond¬ 
ing to the higher pressure in the auxiliary reser¬ 
voir, slides back, thus opening an aperture 
through which the air in the auxiliary or car 
reservoir reaches the brake cylinder. The 
pressure of the air forces the piston of the 
brake cylinder forward, and the piston in turn, 
through proper levers, presses the brake shoes 



DETAILS OF AIR BRAKE MECHANISM 



(a) Hose and coupling 

(b) Brake pipe 

(c) Pull rod to brake beam 
Id) Cylinder levers 

( e ) Emerging reservoir 
(/) Service reservoir 
(< 7 ) Brake cylinder 

Its Operation. The air brake in use to-day is 
a great improvement over the first one used in 
1868, but the principle is the same. Some of 
the steam in the engine works an air pump, 
which compresses air in a reservoir under a 
pressure of eighty to ninety pounds per square 
inch. From this central reservoir in the loco¬ 
motive, pipes run under the cars the entire 
length of the train, the connection between the 
cars being made by rubber tubing. Attached 
to the bottom of each car is a secondary or 
auxiliary reservoir; this receives the compressed 
.air through a device called the triple valve, 
which is the automatic feature of the entire 
system. So long as the air pressure continues 
in the train pipe, the triple valve remains in 
position so that the air pressure is exerted in 
the auxiliary reservoir but not on the brake; if 
the pressure is reduced or entirely removed, the 


( h ) Conductor’s valve 

( i ) Hose and Coupling 

O') Centrifugal dirt collector 

(k) Battery and switch 

( l ) Universal valve with electric magnet 

On) Auxiliary reservoir 

(n) Train pipe to engineer’s cab 

against the wheels. When the engineer wishes 
to release the brakes he turns the valve in the 
locomotive so that air rushes from the central 
reservoir through the train pipe. The pressure 
thus increases on the triple valve, which is 
forced back, thus opening an aperture through 
which the compressed air in the brake cylinder 
escapes into the open air. Inside the cylinder 
is a coiled spring, which then reacts and forces 
the brake piston back to its normal position. 
The brakes are thus released. The valve in the 
locomotive may be turned so that the brakes 
operate either slowly or suddenly. See West¬ 
inghouse, George; Locomotive. c.r.m. 

AIR CELLS, small cavities, either in plants 
or animals, which contain only air, and exist 
for the sake of giving buoyancy. Water plants 
which float upon the surface, such as water 
lilies, have them in abundance, and are held up 

























































AIR COMPRESSOR 


120 


AIR ENGINE 


by them, while certain sea-weeds have actual 
air-bladders. These last are not cells in the 
technical sense, nor are the so-called air cells 
in the bodies of birds, which may be inflated 
when the bird prepares for flight. These en¬ 
closed, air-filled areas are most fully developed 
in birds of strong, powerful flight, such as the 
albatross. 

AIR COMPRES'SOR, a mechanical device 
for compressing air by forcing it into a recep¬ 
tacle, where it is kept until required for use. 
The most widely used form of compressor con¬ 
sists of a cylinder, with necessary valves, in 



ONE FORM OF AIR COMPRESSOR 


which a piston is worked back and forth by 
steam or other power. The piston sucks air 
into the cylinder through one set of valves, 
which close as the piston commences its return 
stroke. The strokes of the piston compress the 
air and force it through other valves into a 
reservoir, or receiver. From the receiver the 
air is sent through pipes to points at which its 
power is required. Some appliances are so 
•powerful that the compressed air exerts a 
pressure of 3,500 pounds per square inch. 

Drilling and riveting, in bridge and ship- 
* building, are usually performed by tools oper¬ 
ated by compressed air, which is also used for 
pneumatic dispatch tubes, ventilating, rock 
drilling, air cleaning and many other purposes. 
A more simple form of air compressor is found 
in the pumps for forcing air into bicycle and 
automobile tires. These have a valve in the 
cylinder to admit air, and a valve through 
which the air is forced into the tire by the 
pressure of a piston. See Air; Compressed 
Air; Pneumatic Tools; Air Brake. 


AIR ENGINE, an engine in which heated or 
compressed air is used as the motive power. A 
great many engines of this type have been in¬ 
vented, but most of them have been failures. 
It has been found impossible to get very much 
power in return for the amount of heat ap¬ 
plied, because the expansion of air is so small 
compared, for instance, with that of water in 
the form of steam. In the form of motors for 
producing very small amounts of power, air 
engines have been found convenient for use on 
farms, but even here they have proved so ineffi¬ 
cient that they are rapidly being replaced by 
gasoline engines. . 

The most common and the most effective air 
engine is the Erickson engine, which burns 
wood or solid fuel or gas. It consists of a 
heating chamber surrounding an iron cylinder, 
with a burner at the bottom, the flames of 
which play on the bottom of the cylinder. 
The heating chamber is insulated, and the heat 
is applied directly to the cylinder itself, to 
avoid waste. Within this cylinder is a piston, 
which is alternately lifted and dropped by the 
heating and cooling of the air. Such an engine 
is started by giving the wlieel a revolution or 
two by hand in order to lift the piston and thus 
to drive the cool air to the bottom, where the 
flame heats and expands it so that it gives the 
piston another impulse. 

The motion of this piston is up and down. 
It may be connected with a rocker arm which 
is in turn attached to the crank on a driving 
shaft, or, if it is used for pumping, the piston 
in the cylinder may be connected directly with 
the piston of the pump and the up and down 
motion transmitted directly to it. 

An interesting use of an air engine has been 
made in some fans which were designed to take 
the place of electric fans, wherever electricity 
was not available. * Enclosed in the base of the 
fan is a tiny air engine, exactly similar in prin¬ 
ciple and construction to a large engine, with 
an alcohol lamp for furnishing the necessary 
heat for expanding the air. 

The first air engine, invented in 1816 by 
Rev. R. Stirling, was the subject of two pat¬ 
ents, one in 1827 and another in 1840. A 
double-acting Stirling engine of fifty horse¬ 
power was used for some years in a Dundee- 
(Scotland) factory. There is a modern engine, 
known as Robinson’s, which is modeled on the 
original Stirling engine. In 1833 John Ericsson, 
later famous as the builder of the Monitor, in¬ 
vented an air engine to be used in the ship 
Calcoric, but it did not prove a success. 













































































AIR GUN 


121 


AIR PUMP 


Engines working by compressed air, which 
can easily be conveyed long distances, are used 
in mining and tunneling, and compressed air 
tools are used in riveting, in drilling and cut¬ 
ting rock, in boring holes in concrete, and in 
many similar operations, but these do not come 
strictly, under the term air engine and will be 
found under other headings. See Compressed 
Air. c.r.m. 

AIR GUN, a weapon designed to project bul¬ 
lets or darts by means of compressed air. The 
stock contains a chamber into which air is 
forced by compressing a spring, which works a 
piston in a cylinder. When the trigger is 



pressed, the spring is released and the air is 
forced into the barrel, propelling the charge in 
front of it. The force applied by compressed 
air is far less than that of gunpowder or other 
explosives, and the range of air guns is corre¬ 
spondingly short. 

The so-called toy gun used by boys for target 
shooting, and sometimes for killing small birds, 
has a range of not more than 150 feet, and 
even at that distance cannot be relied on for 
accuracy. The careless use of these weapons 
has been the cause of many grave accidents, 
and, while they are not sufficiently powerful to 
kill, many boys have suffered the loss of an 
eye and other injuries through reckless shoot¬ 
ing. In most cities the use of air guns is for¬ 
bidden, and the weapons are liable to confisca¬ 
tion by the police. 

AIR PLANTS or EPIPHYTES, ep'ifites. 
Most plants send down roots into the ground 
to draw up food from the soil, but there are 
some, known as air 'plants, which receive all 
their nourishment from the air. They fasten 
themselves upon other plants, but, unlike para¬ 
sites (which see), they do their hosts no harm. 
Few, if any, flowering air plants grow in the 
temperate regions, for there is not to be found 
there the intense heat and moisture which they 
must have, but in the jungles of South Amer¬ 
ica, Asia and Africa gorgeous air-fed orchids 
flourish. Practically the only air plants with 
which dwellers in temperate .regions are famil¬ 
iar are the mosses and lichens. 

AIR PUMP, a device for exhausting air or 
other gases from a closed vessel. The air 
pump designed for use in schools is the form 


that comes readily to mind when the term is 
mentioned. The accompanying illustration is 
one of the many forms used for experimental 
purposes, and is designed for demonstrating the 
physical laws governing the pressure of air 
rather than for practical use in business or in¬ 
dustry. The principle governing the operation 
of all such pumps is the same; a receiver, 
such as r in the illustration, is made air-tight, 
and the air is pumped out through the tube t. 
A simple arrangement of valves in the pump 
prevents the air from returning through the 
tube into the receiver. The ordinary suction 
pump for raising water from a well is con¬ 
structed on the same principles as the air pump, 
and before the water reaches the top of the 
pipe the air has been exhausted by the pump, 
which then pumps the water. The vacuum 
cleaner (which see), is another practical appli¬ 
cation of the principles of an air pump. 

Some Things to Be Learned from It. The 
air pump may be used in a variety of simple 
experiments which illustrate some of the prin¬ 
ciples of physics. For example, if a lighted 
candle is placed under the receiver, it will go 
out the moment the air is exhausted, thus illus¬ 
trating the well-known fact that oxygen is nec¬ 
essary to combustion. If the air is gradually 
exhausted from a receiver under which a glass 
of water has been placed, bubbles will begin to 
rise to the surface of the water, thus showing 
that the water contains air, which tends to ex¬ 
pand and rise as the air pressure in the receiver 
is gradually decreased. Another simple experi¬ 
ment can be made to show that air is necessary 
to the spread of sound. The ringing of a bell 
suspended inside the receiver by a thread can 
be heard when the receiver is filled with air, 
but when the air is exhausted no sound is 
heard. Scientists know, what this simple test 
proves, that sound is a vibration of the air. 

Description of a Simple Air Pump. In order 
that the operation of an air pump may be 
understood beyond any possible doubt, the 
simple form illustrated herewith will be ex¬ 
plained in detail. It must not be forgotten 
that there are several varieties of air pumps, 
and that the explanation given here would not 
apply, without slight changes, to any other 
form. In the illustration r is the receiver, 
which is made to fit closely upon a flat plate, 
usually of metal. The bottom edge of the re¬ 
ceiver is often greased to make an air-tight 
connection. From r a tube, indicated by the 
letter t, leads to a cylinder c, in which there is 
a piston p. In the base of the cylinder is a 






AIRSHIP 


122 


AIX-LA-CHAPPELLE 


valve which allows air to escape from the tube 
t, and in the piston is another valve which 
alldws air in the cylinder to escape into the 
space above the piston. 

Raising and lowering the pump-handle has 
an immediate effect. A down-stroke of the pis¬ 
ton closes the valve in the base of the cylinder. 
The expansive force of the air confined below 
the piston head opens the valve in the piston, 
and some of the air escapes to the upper side of 
the piston. The next up-stroke of the piston 
closes the cylinder valve, and opens the one in 



the piston. The air which escapes through the 
piston valve into the space above the piston is 
forced out through an opening in the top of the 
cylinder when the piston moves upward. The 
expansive tendency of the air in the receiver r 
again fills the lower part of the cylinder, and 
the entire process is then repeated until a par¬ 
tial vacuum is created. A perfect vacuum cannot 
be obtained by this apparatus because of me¬ 
chanical imperfections which are unavoidable. 
But for ordinary experiments the vacuum is so 
nearly perfect as to cause no difficulties, c.r.m. 

AIRSHIP. See Flying T^Iachine. 

AISNE, ane, a river in the northeastern part 
of France, which henceforth will be one of the 
historic streams of Europe. Rising in the Ar¬ 
dennes mountains it flows first north and then 
almost straight west and joins the Oise River 
near Compiegne. Its length is about 180 miles, 
of which nearly 100 miles are .navigable. .The 
river Aisne has nearly a parallel course with 
another historic river, the Marne, (which see), 
that flows a little distance to the south of it. 

Battle of the Aisne. During the War of 
the Nations two very important battles were 
fought on its banks. The first, known as the 
Battle of the Aisne, took place in September, 
1914. After the Germans were defeated on the 
Marne, they retreated across the Aisne and 
took up positions prepared beforehand. The 
French and English pursued them, and a series 
of desperate battles with great losses on both 


sides took place. No decisive victory was won 
by either side, and the opposing armies main¬ 
tained their positions and began to dig them¬ 
selves into a series of fortified trenches. It was 
after the battle of the Aisne that trench war¬ 
fare started, which became such a character¬ 
istic feature of the War of the Nation*. 

The second battle on the Aisne took place in 
January, 1915. It began with a great offensive 
movement by the French, who succeeded in 
crossing the river at Soissons. They occupied 
some ground held by the Germans, but after 
desperate battles lasting five days they were 
compelled to retire across the river to their old 
positions. See War of the Nations. 

AIX, ayks, a city of France, in the depart¬ 
ment of Bouches-du-Rhone, eighteen miles by 
rail north of Marseilles. It contains the facul¬ 
ties of letters and law of the University of Aix- 
Marseilles, and for this reason some quarters of 
the town have the aspect of the famous Latin 
Quarter of Paris. Aix is the seat of a Roman 
Catholic archbishop, and it has an interesting 
cathedral in Gothic style, dating from the 
twelfth century. There are here a number of 
warm springs, containing lime and carbonic 
acid, which have been used since the Roman 
period. 

Aix was founded in 123 b. c. by the Romans, 
who named it Aquae Sextiae. It was near this 
place that Marius gained in 102 b. c. his famous 
victory against the Cimbri and Teutons. Dur¬ 
ing the Middle Ages Aix was the capital of an 
independent county of Provence and became 
an important seat of learning and a brilliant 
artistic center. The town began to lose its im¬ 
portance when Provence was passed under the 
crown of the kings of France in 1487. 

AIX-LA-CHAPELLE, ayx lah sha pel', since 
1815 officially but not popularly known as 
Aachen, is a city of Rhenish Prussia, 44 miles 
southwest of Cologne. The most important 
building is the cathedral, the oldest portion of 
which was erected in the time of Charlemagne, 
as the palace chapel, about 796. This place 
was the favorite residence of Charlemagne, who 
died in 814, and was here buried. A gold coffin 
in the cathedral contains his .remains. Thirty- 
seven German emperors and eleven empresses 
have been crowned in the city, and the imperial 
insignia w T ere preserved here till 1795, when 
they were carried to Berlin and placed in the 
imperial treasury. 

There are a number of warm sulphur springs 
in and near the city, one having a temperature 
of 140°, and several mineral springs which have 






































AKRON 


AJACCIO 

a world-wide reputation for curing rheumatism. 
Aix-la-Chapelle is an important commercial 
center; the chief manufactures are needles, 
cloth, gloves, leather, chemicals, linen and 
paints. Two celebrated treaties were signed 
in Aix-la-Chapelle, and a congress of the great 
powers was held there in 1818. On the out¬ 
break of the War of the Nations in 1914 the 
city became an important German military 
center, and vast armies were sent from there 
to take part in the invasion of France which 
the allies succeeded in checking. Population in 
1910, 156,000. 

Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, a meeting of 
representatives of the great nations of Europe, 
held at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818, for the pur¬ 
pose of adjusting the affairs of Europe after 
the wars of Napoleon. This was not, however, 
the authority which banished Napoleon to 
Saint Helena. Czar Alexander I of Russia, 
Emperor Francis I of Austria, and King Fred¬ 
erick William III of Prussia were "present j n 
person, while among the great statesmen in at¬ 
tendance were Metternich, Castlereagh, Wel¬ 
lington, Hardenberg and Richelieu, the grand¬ 
son of the great cardinal. The main things 
accomplished were the withdrawal of the for¬ 
eign troops from France and the recognition of 
France as one of the great powers of Europe 
on her agreeing to the Holy Alliance. See 
France, subhead History; Holy Alliance. 

Treaties of Aix-la-Chapelle, two treaties of 
importance in maintaining the balance of 
power among European nations. After the 
death of Philip IV of Spain, Louis XIV of 
France claimed a large part of the Spanish 
Netherlands in behalf of his wife, and seized 
the fortresses of Charlerois, Lille and Franche 
Comte. Holland, to protect herself against 
further aggressions, joined England and 
Sweden in forming the Triple Alliance. Fear¬ 
ing such a strong combination, Louis was forced 
to accept their terms, and on May 2, 1668, he 
signed the first treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, by 
which he agreed to return Franche Comte to 
Spain. 

The second treaty concluded the War of the 
Austrian Succession in 1748 (see Succession 
Wars). In this war, caused by Maria Theresa’s 
claim to the Austrian possessions, all of the 
great powers of Europe were involved. By the 
terms of the treaty, the different countries held 
nearly the same territories as before. 

AJACCIO, ayah' cho, the capital of Corsica, 
famed as the birthplace of Napoleon. The 
house in which “the little Corsican” was born 


123 

is still well preserved and is owned by the 
French government. Ajaccio is the seat of 
a bishop. It has famous coral and sardine 
fisheries. The population is not increasing; 
in 1911 it was 19,227. 

A' JAX. Two of the legendary Grecian heroes 
in the Trojan War were named Ajax. The son 
of Telamon, king of Cyprus, was known as the 
Greater or the Telamonian Ajax, and the son of 
Oileus, the king of Locris, was called the Lesser 
or the Locrian Ajax. The Greater was the 
commander of twelve ships and was called by 
Homer the bravest of the Greeks except 
Achilles. In the combat between Ulysses and 
Ajax for the arms of Achilles after the latter’s 
death, the prize was awarded to Ulysses. The 
disappointment of Ajax drove him mad, and 
after slaying all of the sheep of the Greeks, 
thinking they were the enemy, he killed him¬ 
self. 

The boastful and quarrelsome Ajax the 
Lesser was a rival of Achilles in swiftness of 
foot. As a punishment for his brutal treat¬ 
ment of Cassandra after the fall of Troy, it 
is said that his ship was wrecked and he was 
struck by lightning. (See Troy). 

A KEMPIS, Thomas. See Thomas a Kem- 
pis. 

AK'RON, Ohio, the largest rubber manufac¬ 
turing city in the world, is the county seat of 
Summit County, in the northeastern part of 
the state. The population was 69,067 in 1910; 
in 1915, according to the census taken under 
the direction of the United States Department 
of Labor, it was 100,079, an increase of over 
30,000 in five years. About twenty-five per 
cent of the people are foreign born, Hungarians 
predominating. The area of the city is nearly 
twelve square miles. Cleveland and Toledo, 
both on Lake Erie, are respectively thirty-five 
and 160 miles north and northwest. Columbus, 
the state capital, is 130 miles southwest. Akron 
is a Greek word meaning height, indicating the 
elevation of the city, which is 1,000 feet above 
sea level. Within a radius of twelve square 
miles are twenty small lakes, giving to the 
region great natural beauty and an excellent 
location for its many hotels and recreation 
places. 

Akron is on the Little Cuyahoga River and 
the Ohio Canal. The Erie, the Baltimore and 
Ohio, the Pennsylvania, the Northern Ohio, 
and the Akron, Canton and Youngstown rail¬ 
roads enter the city. Interurban lines run to 
many of the surrounding towns and cities. 
Conspicuous among the many fine buildings of 


ALABAMA 


124 


ALABAMA 


the city, including banks, churches, schools, 
hotels, etc., is the postoffice, erected in 1890 
at a cost of nearly $100,000; the county court¬ 
house, costing about $450,000, and the new 
$150,000 auditorium-armory. Akron is the seat 
of Buchtel College, a non-sectarian school for¬ 
merly under Universalist control. The corner 
stone was laid by Horace Greeley in 1872. This 
college and a normal school, with the public 
school system, offer good educational advan¬ 
tages. 

Industries. The output of rubber goods 
manufactured in Akron in 1915 was valued at 
$125,000,000. Twenty plants making automo¬ 
bile tires and every kind of rubber goods em¬ 
ploy 30,000 workers. Beds of fire and pottery 
clay near the city furnish raw material for one 
of the largest industries, including manufac¬ 


tories of pottery, tile and terra-cotta. Among 
a great number of other important manufac¬ 
turing industries are printing, publishing and 
lithographing works, hoisting and mining-ma¬ 
chinery works, manufactories of farm imple¬ 
ments and of furnaces. In the suburb Barber¬ 
ton is the largest match-making concern in 
the world. 

History. A small settlement on the banks 
of the Cuj^ahoga River received the name of 
Akron in 1825. The place was incorporated 
as a village in 1836 and received a city charter 
in 1865. Two of the most important historical 
features are the old Indian trail, Portage Path, 
once a part of the western boundary of the 
United States, between the Cuyahoga and Tus¬ 
carawas rivers, and the one-time residence of 
John Brown, the abolitionist. v.s.s. 



LAB AM'A, popularly called the 
Cotton State, one of the Southern states of 
the American Union. Alabama is said by some 
authorities to be the Creek Indian word for 
here we rest, or place of rest, but it is probably 
another form of Alibamu, the name of a tribe 
of Creek Indians who once inhabited part of 
the present state. Alabama was admitted to 
the Union on December 14, 1819, being the 
ninth state organized after the adoption of the 
Constitution. At that time its area, 51,998 
square miles, was exceeded only by three states, 
but since the admission of the larger Western 
states it ranks twenty-seventh in size. It has 
about one-fourth the area of France or the 
German Empire, and is equal to Maine, New 
Hampshire and Vermont combined. Its popu¬ 
lation in 1910 was 2,138,093, making it the 
eighteenth state in this respect. In the same 
year the city of Chicago had about the same 
number of people. 

Location and Physical Characteristics. Ala¬ 
bama is really the central one of the Southern 
states east of the Mississippi River. Between 
it and the Atlantic Ocean lies Georgia; on the 
west Mississippi stretches between it and the 
great central river. On the north is the border 
state of Tennessee, separated from Alabama by 
the parallel of 35° N., which is also the ap¬ 


proximate latitude of Los Angeles, Yokohama 
and Algiers. On the south, except for a strip 
fifty miles long which touches the Gulf of 
Mexico, Alabama is bounded by Florida. 

Alabama has the physical characteristics of 
the Atlantic coast states. Like them, it may 
be divided into three sections, according to 
surface—the coastal plain, the Piedmont region 
and the mountains. The Appalachian chain has 
its southern extremity in the north and east- 
central part of the state, where it dwindles into 
several parallel ranges of flat-topped hills which 
nowhere exceed 1,800 feet in height. The most 
prominent are Raccoon and Lookout mountains, 
which follow the southwest trend of the Appa¬ 
lachian chain. It was on the northern end of 
Lookout Mountain, in Tennessee, that one of 
the great battles of the War of Secession wa’s 
fought. Southeast of the mountains is the 
main Appalachian valley, here known as the 
Coosa. The section is drained by the Coosa 
River, whose waters eventually find their way 
through the Alabama and Mobile rivers into 
the Gulf of Mexico. 

North and west of the Appalachian region is 
the Cumberland Plateau, whose central feature 
is the valley of the Tennessee River. The val¬ 
ley itself includes a broad strip of rolling low¬ 
lands, well adapted for farming, but on both 

























ALABAMA 


125 


ALABAMA 


sides are rocky tablelands separated by deep 
river valleys. To the southeast of the Appala¬ 
chian valley is the Piedmont region, drained 
chiefly by the Tallapoosa, which unites the 
Coosa to form the Alabama River. Ages ago 
the Piedmont section was worn down by ero¬ 
sion almost to sea level, and then by a great 
natural change was uplifted to form a plateau 
(see Piedmont Region). 

This varied northern section, including moun¬ 
tains, plateaus and many valleys, comprises 



rivers, and sections where coal is found. 

only two-fifths of the state; the remaining 
three-fifths belong to the coastal plain. In the 
central part of the state the plain has an alti¬ 
tude of 600 to 700 feet, but it gradually slopes 
to the southwest, until in the vicinity of Mo¬ 
bile it is practically at sea level. It is not 
entirely flat, however, for at irregular intervals 
are limestone ridges, sometimes ten or twelve 
miles wide. Here the rains and rivers have 
washed away the surface sands and clays. The 
plain has several belts of yellow pine and 
other woods, which supply not only lumber 
but tar, turpentine and resin. 

In all parts of the state, but especially in the 
mountains and the Piedmont region, the cli¬ 


mate is delightful. Extremes of temperature 
are unusual, as the prevailing winds from the 
south and southeast are cooled in summer and 
warmed in winter by their passage over the 
Gulf of Mexico. The lowest temperature ever 
recorded in the state was —17° F., in 1899, and 
the highest was 109°, in 1902. The mean tem¬ 
perature for the state is 42° in January and 
84° in July. Snow falls occasionally in the 
north, and perhaps once during the winter on 
the coastal plain. The rainfall is everywhere 
abundant, ranging from an average of fifty-two 
inches a year in the north to sixty-two inches 
in the south. 

Agriculture. Alabama is primarily an agri¬ 
cultural state. More than three-fifths of the 
total area is occupied by farms, and a slightly 
larger percentage of the people make farming 
their occupation. Through the central part 
of the state, as also in Georgia and Mississippi, 
runs a belt of rich black soil containing con¬ 
siderable lime. This is the “cotton belt/’ with 
its center at Montgomery. For many years 
Alabama has produced more than 1,000,000 
bales (about 240,000 tons) of cotton annually, 
and sometimes its crop is nearly 2,000,000 bales. 
The value of the crop ranges between $50,000,- 
000 and $100,000,000, giving the state usually 
third or fourth rank among cotton producers. 
Not long ago cotton and cotton seed were 
worth nearly twice the total of all other crops, 
but now they are almost rivalled in importance 
by the cereals, of which corn is the foremost. 
About 60,000,000 bushels of corn and 10,000,000 
bushels of oats are produced, but the wheat 
crop seldom reaches 1,000,000 bushels. Cereals 
are raised chiefly in the Piedmont region and 
in the Tennessee valley, where the soil is a 
rich red or yellow loam. Here melons, apples, 
peaches, strawberries and other fruits are also 
grown, and in the south the cultivation of figs 
and pecan nuts flourishes. Sweet potatoes, 
sugar cane and peanuts are important. 

Mining and Manufactures. Though Alabama 
is still mainly an agricultural state, the most 
striking feature of its growth since the War 
of Secession is the unparalleled development 
of its mineral resources, followed by the intro¬ 
duction of manufacturing on a large scale. 
The northeastern part of the state, and the 
central part as far south as a line from Tusca¬ 
loosa to Columbus, Ga., is rich in iron and coal 
deposits, and also has asbestos, limestone, 
graphite, bauxite and petroleum in paying 
quantities. Though the existence of large min¬ 
eral deposits has been known for many years, 












ALABAMA 


126 


ALABAMA 




mining has become a great industry only since 
1900. In 1886 about 82,500,000 worth of bitu¬ 
minous coal was produced; in 1898 about 
$5,000,000; and at present over $20,000,000 each 
year. The annual output is about 15,000,000 
tons, making the state among the first seven 
in rank in the Union; this amount is slightly 
more than the average annual production in 
the Dominion of Canada. About one-third of 
the coal mined is immediately made into coke, 
in the production of which Alabama is ex¬ 
ceeded only by Pennsylvania. Over seventy- 
five per cent of the coal mined is taken from 
three counties—Bibb, Jefferson and Walker— 
but the coal-bearing formations cover more 
than a third of the northern half of the state. 


Fortunately for the industrial prosperity of 
the state, these great coal deposits are in close 
proximity to the greatest beds of iron ore, 
except those in Minnesota and Michigan, 
which have yet been found in the United 
States. The annual production of iron ore is 
now about ten per cent of the total for the 
United States, and the output of pig iron is 
worth about $25,000,000 a year, or five per 
cent of the total for the United States. Much 
of the ore is still shipped to other states for 
smelting, but this proportion is steadily de¬ 
creasing. 

It is due to coal and iron that Alabama, and 
especially the northern section, has become a 
manufacturing community, with a product 
whose value has increased from $14,000,000 in 


1880 to an annual average of more than $200,- 
000,000. Of this total the allied iron and steel 
industries produce one-fourth, making them 
by far -the most important group. Cotton 
products, including cottonseed oil and cake, 
have an annual total of about $35,000,000. 
Cotton, instead of being sent to the North and 
to England for manufacture, is now used ex¬ 
tensively in home factories. The most im¬ 
portant single industry is the making of lumber 
and timber products, whose value approaches 
$30,000,000 a year. Thus each of the three 
great groups of manufactures is based on one 
of the home industries which produce raw 
materials—mining, agriculture and lumbering. 

Transportation and Commerce. The state 


is fortunate in that nearly all of the rivers are 
navigable for most of the year. Its mileage 
of navigable waterways is greater than that 
of any other Southern state; the Alabama is 
navigable for 300 miles, and the Tombigbee 
for about 350 miles. In the north, that part 
of the Tennessee River lying within the state 
is navigable except near Florence, where a 
canal has been built around the Mussel Shoals. 
Mobile is the only seaport of importance, and 
is the center for the state’s export trade in 
cotton and lumber, but much lumber is also 
sent to Pensacola and a great deal of cotton 
to New Orleans. 

The railroad mileage is now over 5,500, an 
average of one mile to every 400 of popula¬ 
tion and to 9.5 square miles of area. All of 


THE FARM • 

Cotton 

Corn 

Cotton Seed 
Animals Slaughtered 
Dairy Products 
Poultry. Eggs 
Oats 

Hay, Forage 
Sweet potatoes,yams 
Orchard Fruits 
Sugar Cane 
Peanuts 
Potatoes 
THE MINE 
Bituminous Coal 
Iron Ore 


ALABAMA PRODUCTS CHART 

Figures Based on U.S Government Reports 
Millions of Dollars Annually 
10 20 30 40 50 60 



THE FACTORY 


1 Brick Jile 
I Bread etc. 
Turpentine, Rosin 
Printing,Publishing 
Flour and Grist 
Fertilizers 

Railroad-carRepairs etc. 
Coke 

Cottonseed-oil ,eak4 

Foundry, Machineshop 
Iron and Steel 
Cotton Goods 
Lumber, Timber 




























































































Methodist 


People per square mile, by decades 


Religions 


Congressional 

Districts 




Interior of coal mine 


gg 

g> fM 

ipp 

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. -'■■ .:r 

/ 

1Jb 


life 

i.y 


sms 

an 

it! 


py r 1?!5 

nS|| 

aC 3 " 


igag&s 


r4 



Im 

W9K3 


: VH3 

§PJ| 


fl| 


1 

" 1 

spU 

1 

:fj 


B < ~ :t i 



SB 

























































































































































ALABAMA 


128 


ALABAMA 


the great railway systems of the South tap the 
mineral regions of the northern part the 
Southern, the Mobile and Ohio, the Louisville 
and Nashville, the ’Frisco lines, the Seaboard 
Air Line, the Atlantic Coast Line and the 
Central Railroad of Georgia. Through these 
systems the state has connection with the 
great trunk lines of the north and west. 

The People. Since its admission to the 
Union the population of Alabama has increased 
steadily, but not rapidly. From 127,900 in 
1820 it increased to 309,000 in 1830 and 590,000 
in 1840. Thereafter the average increase was 
about twenty per cent every ten years, bring¬ 
ing the total to 2,138,093 in 1910. Of this total 
132,600, or 6.2 per cent, lived in Birmingham, 
a city which owes its existence to the iron and 
steel industry. Over eighty per cent of the 
people, however, live in rural districts, only 
thirteen cities having more than 5,000 people. 
After Birmingham, the largest cities, in order, 
are Mobile, Montgomery, Selma, Anniston, 
Bessemer and Gadsden. 

Alabama has a large number of negro in¬ 
habitants; in 1910 the percentage was 42.5 as 
compared with 45.2 in 1900. The further de¬ 
velopment of the great industrial region sur¬ 
rounding Birmingham is bound to lower this 
percentage still more, for the mills and fac¬ 
tories are drawing white people from other 
states. Alabama has long been notable because 
it has few foreign-born citizens, but in the 
decade from 1900 to 1910 their number in¬ 
creased from 14,300 to 51,370. This was partly 
due to the opportunities offered in factories, 
but also to those in farming. Germans, Eng¬ 
lish, Irish, Italians, Scotch, Russians and 
Canadians are the most numerous. 

Education. The first constitution of Ala¬ 
bama, adopted in 1819, declared that “schools, 
and the means of education, shall be forever 
encouraged in this state.” This declaration was 
not put fully into effect at once. For more 
than twenty-five years the only public schools 
in the state were in Mobile, and it may safely 
be said that until after the War of Secession 
there were no free public schools. Even those 
schools to which the state contributed were 
supported in part by tuition, and as late as 
1872 it was estimated that one-third of all 
money received by the schools came from 
private gifts or subscriptions. 

Since 1875, when a new constitution was 
adopted, the public school system has made 
rapid progress. The permanent school fund, 
derived chiefly from the sale of lands donated 


by Congress, now amounts to more than 
$2,000,000. There is also an annual state 
tax of thirty cents per $100 for school pur¬ 
poses, and certain license and other fees are 
also devoted to the same end. All state funds 
are apportioned among the counties according 
to the number of children between the ages 
of seven and twenty-one. Of the children 
between those ages a few more than half at¬ 
tend school. About twenty-two per cent of the 
total population and more than fifty per cent 
of the negroes are illiterate (see Illiteracy). 

Secondary and Higher Education. A state 
law of 1907 permits the establishment of at 
least one high school in every county, but the 
operation of the law depends on the governor— 
whenever, in his judgment, the condition of 
the treasury permits. There are six state nor¬ 
mal schools for whites, at Florence, Troy, Jack¬ 
sonville, Daphne, Livingston and Moundville. 
At Montgomery is a state normal for negroes. 
The state also maintains schools for deaf, 
dumb and blind children, all at Talladega, the 
Alabama Polytechnic Institute at Auburn, and 
nine agricultural high schools (one in each 
Congressional district) which are preparatory 
schools for the University of Alabama (which 
see). Besides the state university there are a 
number of private institutions for higher edu¬ 
cation, including Southern University, at 
Greensboro, and Birmingham College at Bir¬ 
mingham, both supported by the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, South; Saint Bernard Col¬ 
lege at Saint Bernard and Spring Hill College 
at Spring Hill, both Roman Catholic; Judson 
College for women at Marion and Howard 
College for men at East Lake, both Baptist; 
Alabama Synodical College for women (Pres¬ 
byterian) at Talladega; and Tuscaloosa Fe¬ 
male College (Methodist Episcopal Church, 
South) at Tuscaloosa. Perhaps the most 
famous school in the state is the Tuskegee 
Normal and Industrial Institute (which see). 

Government. Alabama has been governed 
under five constitutions. The one now in force, 
adopted in 1901, provides an executive depart¬ 
ment consisting of a governor, lieutenant- 
governor, attorney-general, secretary of state, 
state auditor, state treasurer, commissioner of 
agriculture and industries, and superintendent 
of education. Each of these officers is elected 
for four years and is not eligible for reelection. 
The governor is not eligible by appointment or 
election to any office in the state or to the 
United States Senate during his term of office 
or within one year of its expiration. The 


ALABAMA 


129 


ALABAMA 


governor may veto any bill passed by the 
legislature, but if he fails to do so within one 
week after it has been submitted for his ap¬ 
proval it automatically becomes a law. The 
legislature may pass a bill over the governors 
"veto by a two-thirds vote. Members of the 
legislature, which is composed of two houses, 
are also elected for four-year terms. The sen¬ 
ate may not exceed in number one-third of 
the members of the house; the latter has 107 
members and the former thirty-five. The judi¬ 
cial power is vested in the supreme court, a 
court of appeals, circuit courts, chancery and 
.probate courts, and various local courts. The 
senate may sit as a high court of justice for 
the impeachment of any state officer. 

The unit of local government is the county, 
but cities may be chartered in various classes 
according to their population. In the first 
class, over 100,000, the commission form of 
government is required; it is optional for cities 
between 50,000 and 100,000, but required for 
cities between 25,000 and 50,000. Birmingham 
is the only city in the first class, Mobile in the 
second and Montgomery in the third. Mobile 
and a number of other cities, including Talla¬ 
dega, Tuscaloosa, Florence and Huntsville, 
have adopted this system (see Commission 
Form of Government). 

Suffrage in Alabama is restricted by the con¬ 
stitution to those who can read and write any 
article of the Constitution of the United States, 
have worked or been regularly engaged in some 
lawful business or occupation for the greater 
part of the year preceding the date of regis¬ 
tration, or who own and have paid taxes on 
property valued at $300 or more. Permitted 
exceptions are those persons who are physically 
unable to read, write or work, and those who 
have served in the army or navy of the United 
States or of the Confederate States, in war 
time, and their lawful descendants. 

History. The first white men positively 
known to have visited Alabama were Spaniards 
led by De Soto, who journeyed along the Ala¬ 
bama River and its tributaries in 1539 (see 
DeSoto, Fernando). The English also claimed 
this region, but no attempts at settlement were 
made until 1702, when the French soldier-ex¬ 
plorer Iberville founded Fort Louis, on the 
Mobile River. In 1711 the river floods forced 
the removal of the settlement to a point twenty 
miles farther south, on the present site of 
Mobile. Fort Conde, as it was then called, 
was the nucleus of the first permanent settle¬ 
ment in Alabama, 


When the French colonial empire was trans¬ 
ferred to England in 1763, Southern Alabama 
became a part of West Florida, and Northern 
Alabama was included in the Illinois country, 
then set aside for the Indians. In 1783, at the 
close of the Revolutionary War, England ceded 
the Illinois country to the United States by 
the treaty of Paris, at the same time giving 
West Florida to Spain. The boundaries be¬ 
tween these sections w T ere already uncertain, 
and remained in dispute until 1812, when Con¬ 
gress annexed the Mobile Bay district. In 
1813 American soldiers took possession of this 
territory, and thus for the first time gave the 
United States actual jurisdiction over the en¬ 
tire area now included in the state. For several 
years the settlers were in constant danger from 
the Creek Indians, who went on the warpath 
to help the British, and at Fort Mims, in 1813, 
several hundred settlers were massacred. In 
the next year, however, the power of the 
Creeks was broken and most of their land 
claims were turned over to the United States. 
Thus by 1817 it seemed desirable to make Ala¬ 
bama, which had formerly been a part of Mis¬ 
sissippi, a separate government; it was there¬ 
fore made Alabama Territory, and on Decem¬ 
ber 14, 1819, was formally admitted to the 
LTnion as the twenty-second state. The years 
of statehood fall naturally into three periods: 
(1) before the War of Secession; (2) war and 
reconstruction; (3) a new era of industrial 
growth. 

Bejore the War. The first half century of 
statehood was a prosperous period. Unfortu¬ 
nately, however, this prosperity was founded 
only on cotton, and the cotton crop was the 
product of slave labor. The people of Ala¬ 
bama, as a whole, favored the extension of 
slavery into the territories, and in 1848 the 
ardent supporters of state’s rights, led by 
William L. Yancey, secured the adoption of the 
‘‘Alabama Platform,” in which the Democratic 
state convention declared that neither the 
United States government nor any territory 
possessed the right to interfere with slavery in 
a territory. The institution of slavery, accord- 
ingljq could be only under state control. The 
Compromise of 1850 inaugurated a decade of 
bitter political discussion, which came to an 
end only with secession and war. 

War and Reconstruction. Even after the 
election of Lincoln, there was in Alabama a 
strong minority opposed to secession. The 
legislature, however, had voted to call a special 
state convention in the event of a Republican 


ALABAMA 


130 


ALABAMA 


victory, and Governor Andrew Moore, follow¬ 
ing these instructions, called the convention to 
meet on January 7, 1861, and on January 11 
an ordinance of secession was adopted. The 
convention also invited the other Southern 
states to send delegates to Montgomery for 
the purpose of “securing concerted and harmo¬ 
nious action in whatever measures may be 
deemed most desirable for the common peace 
and security.” On February 8 a temporary 
organization was completed by this new con¬ 
vention, and the Confederacy came into official 
existence (see Confederate States of Amer¬ 
ica). During the war Alabama suffered little 
material damage, but practically the entire 
body of white men was in the army. In 1863 
the Union forces secured the control of a small 
section in the northern part, and in 1864 Mobile 
was bombarded. On the whole, however, the 
state was spared the ruin which war spread 
over Tennessee and Georgia. 

But if Alabama was spared in war, it suf¬ 
fered after peace was declared. Under Presi¬ 
dent Johnson’s reconstruction policy, a pro¬ 
visional government was at once organized, but 
was supplanted in 1867 by a military govern¬ 
ment under the congressional plan (see Recon¬ 
struction). With the support of the ^oldiers, 
the negroes and carpetbaggers controlled the 
state government until 1874, except from 1870 
to 1872. In seven years the state debt was in¬ 
creased from $8,000,000 to over $25,000,000, 
practically all of the increase being spent waste- 
fully. In 1874 the Conservative Democrats 
succeeded in electing all the state officials and 
began a thorough reform. The state debt was 
compromised to $15,000,000, the carpetbaggers 
were driven from minor offices and a new con¬ 
stitution was adopted in 1875 (see Carpet¬ 
baggers). 

A New Era. The end of reconstruction was 
the beginning of a new prosperity for Alabama. 
The agricultural districts gradually readjusted 
themselves to the new conditions and made 
steady progress. In the north the founding of 
Birmingham in 1871 was followed by the devel¬ 
opment of the surrounding region. Coal had 
been discovered as early as 1834, but not until 
the last two decades of the nineteenth century 
was it extensively mined. Blast furnaces were 
erected and Birmingham by 1895 was one of 
the world’s greatest centers of pig-iron manu¬ 
facture. The first coke furnaces were erected 
in 1881, and the first steel mills in 1897. This 
development of manufactures has sometimes 
seemed to injure agricultural development, 


notably for a few years after 1890, when the 
Populists, with the aid of the Republicans, 
nearly carried the state. 

Since 1900, Alabama, like many other states, 
has been visited by a wave of prohibition sen¬ 
timent, which reached the high-water mark in 
1908, when the legislature passed a state-wide 
prohibition act. This has been called “the 
most drastic prohibition act ever passed by any 
state”; it was bitterly fought, but in 1909 a 
prohibition amendment to the constitution was 
defeated by a large majority. This reaction 
was followed in 1911 by the adoption of a local 
option system in which the county is the unit. 
Finally, in 1915, the legislature adopted a state¬ 
wide prohibition law which went into effect on 
June 30, 1915. 

Other Items of Interest. Alabama may be 
broadly divided into four great production 
regions. Farthest north is the cereal region, 
which includes the Tennessee valley and the 
land to the northward; next is the mineral 
region; then comes the cotton belt or black 
belt with its rich black soil; and finally, along 
the Gulf of Mexico and extending inward for 
150 miles, is the timber belt with its poor and 
sandy soil. 

The turtle is called the “Alabama gopher.” 

It was in Alabama that Aaron Burr’s final 
arrest for treason occurred. 

Alabama has had four capitals. In 1817, 
when the territory was organized, the capital 
was located at Saint Stephens. Three years 
later it was removed to Cahaba, and in 1826 
to Tuscaloosa. Not until 1846 was it perma¬ 
nently located at Montgomery. 

The “peonage” cases occurred not only in 
Alabama, but in other states of the South as 
well, and it is only because they first came to 
light there that they are more intimately con¬ 
nected with the history of that state. See 
Peonage. 

The highest point in the state is Mount 
Cheaha, 2,407 feet above sea level. 

The first discovery of coal in Alabama was 
made in 1834. 

The clause which excepts from suffrage re¬ 
strictions the descendants of those who have 
served in time of war in the United States or 
the Confederate army is known as the “Grand¬ 
father Clause.” See Grandfather Clause. 

Birmingham is known as the “Pittsburgh of 
the South.” 

Perdido Bay, at the boundary line between 
Alabama and Florida, was formerly the resort 
of pirates and filibusters. 


ALABAMA 


131 


ALABAMA 


Even the fertile “cotton belt” land has shown 
signs of exhaustion, so constant has been the 
raising of cotton; and alfalfa and cow-peas 
have been grown of late years over wide areas, 
to enrich the soil. 

Many of the negroes who are serving long 
terms in the penitentiary are employed in min¬ 
ing coal. 

Montgomery was the first capital of the Con¬ 
federate states. 

Alabama was one of the very early states to 
introduce railways, indeed, it had the first rail¬ 
road west of the Alleghanies—a forty-mile line 
connecting the town at either end of the Mus¬ 
cle Shoals. To-day this would scarcely be con¬ 
sidered worthy the name railroad, as its rails 
were of bar iron and its trains were drawn by 
mules. w.f.z. 

Consult Alabama, in the American Common¬ 
wealths Series; Brown’s School History of Ala¬ 
bama. 

Related Subjects. The above article confines 
itself to general description. A more detailed 
knowledge of the geography of Alabama may 
be gained from a study of the following articles: 


Anniston 

Bessemer 

Birmingham 

Florence 

Gadsden 

Huntsville 


CITIES AND TOWNS 

Mobile 

Montgomery 

Selma 

Talladega 

Tuscaloosa 

COAST WATERS 


Gulf of Mexico Mobile Bay 


EDUCATION 

Alabama, University of 

Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute 


HISTORY 

Carpetbaggers Local Option 

DeSoto, Fernando Prohibition 

Fort Mims, Massacre of Reconstruction 


LEADING PRODUCTS 

Iron 
Lumber 
Sugar Cane 


Coal 

Coke 

Corn 

Cotton 

Alabama 

Chattahoochee 

Coosa 


RIVERS 

Mobile 

Tennessee 

Tombigbee 


SURFACE FEATURES 

Appalachian Mountains Cumberland Mountains 
Coastal Plain Piedmont Region 

ALABAMA, a river of Alabama which flows 
through the most fertile farm lands and the 
richest forests of the state. It is formed by 
the junction of the Coosa and the Tallapoosa 
rivers six miles north of Montgomery, in the 


central part of the state. From Montgomery 
it follows a winding southwesterly course to a 
point about fifty miles north of Mobile, where 
it unites with the Tombigbee to form the Mo¬ 
bile River. It is navigable from its mouth to 
Montgomery, a distance of 320 miles. In earlier 
days the river was the chief commerce carrier 
of the state, a large part of whose products 
were sent to Mobile for shipment, and in spite 
of the more recent development of railways it 
still carries extensive traffic in cotton, wheat, 
oats and other products of the section. 

ALABAMA, The, the most destructive and 
consequently the most famous of the Confed¬ 
erate privateers which preyed on Federal mer¬ 
chant vessels during the War of Secession. 
The Alabama was built at Birkenhead, Eng- 



THE FAMOUS “ALABAMA” 


land, in 1862, under circumstances so suspicious 
that the United States minister, Charles Fran¬ 
cis Adams, called the British government’s 
attention to the vessel. Contrary to interna¬ 
tional law and Queen Victoria’s proclamation 
of neutrality, it was allowed to sail, and made 
its way to the Azores Islands, where it took on 
guns and stores from another vessel. Captain 
Raphael Semmes, who named the vessel, took 
command on August 24, 1862, and for two 
years made his name and the name of his ship 
the terror of Federal merchantmen. In two 
years the Alabama captured sixty-five ships, 
and destroyed property valued at $4,000,000. 
For two years Federal cruisers sought for the 
Alabama on all seas, and finally on June 11, 
1864, it was compelled to take refuge in the 
harbor of Cherbourg, France. The United 
States Kcarsage, Captain John A. Winslow 
commanding, entered the harbor a few days 
later, and gave battle on June 19, 1864. Within 
an hour the Alabama was sunk, in sight of 
hundreds of spectators who crowded the shores. 

Alabama Claims. During the War of Seces¬ 
sion and for several years after its close, the 








ALABAMA 


132 


ALABAMA 




QUESTIONS ON ALABAMA 


(An Outline suitable for Alabama will be found with the artiele ‘‘State.”) 

Give two theories as to the origin of the name of the state. 

What is the “Alabama gopher”? 

What is meant by the “Grandfather clause”? 

What serious hindrance to navigation is there in the Tennessee River? 

How does Alabama compare in size with Mississippi? With Georgia? 

How does it rank among the states as regards population? As regards area? 
What has been Alabama’s chief industrial development since the War of Seces¬ 
sion? 

What is meant by the “black belt”? 

How does the density of population compare with that of Illinois? Of Florida? 
Of Ontario? 

What is meant b}' the Piedmont region? 

If the population of New York were transferred to Alabama, what would be the 
density per square mile? 

What is the capital of Alabama? Has it always been the capital? 

Why is Birmingham called the “Pittsburgh of the South”? Contrast the two 
cities with respect to population; with respect to output. 

What were the Yazoo land frauds? 

Where was the first railroad west of the Alleghanies? 

For what is Fort Mims noted? 

How many states, after the original thirteen, were organized before Alabama? 
How may the state be divided according to surface features? 

What part did Alabama play in the early history of the Confederacy? 

What stand did Alabama take from the earliest days of statehood on the sub¬ 
ject of education? 

When did the first white man enter the territory? 

How does Alabama rank among the states of the Union with regard to its coal 
production? 

When did the territory now included in Alabama become a part of the United 
States possessions? 

Flow does the coal output compare with that of Canada? 

What special reason did Alabama have for being strongly in favor of slavery? 
What is there especially fortunate in the arrangement of Alabama’s productive 
mineral beds? 

What determined the location of Birmingham? 

Where does Alabama rank among the Southern states with respect to mileage 
of navigable waterways? 

What is the ratio of railway mileage to area? 

Is the population largely urban or rural? 

Trace the course of the prohibition movement in Alabama. 

When was the first settlement made on the site of Mobile? 

In what does Mobile’s importance consist? 

To how many nations has the Alabama territory belonged? 

How many cities has Alabama with more than 100,000 inhabitants? With more 


than 50,000? With more than 25,000? 
What is the state flower? 













ALABAMA 


133 


ALADDIN 


chief diplomatic issue confronting the United 
States was whether or not Great Britain was 
responsible for the damage done by the Ala¬ 
bama and other cruisers fitted out in British 
ports. After considerable useless negotiation 
the issue was submitted to arbitration (see 
Washington, Treaty of). The arbitrators 
were five in number, one appointed by the king 
of Italy, one by the President of Switzerland, 
one by the Emperor of Brazil, one by Great 
Britain and one by the United States. Charles 
Francis Adams was the American representa¬ 
tive, and Sir Alexander Cockburn, Lord Chief 
Justice of England, represented Great Britain. 
The arbitrators met at Geneva, Switzerland, 
on December 15, 1871, and on September 14, 
1872, signed the final award. The decision held 
Great Britain responsible for losses caused by 
the Alabama and several other ships, and or¬ 
dered the payment of $15,500,000 by Great 
Britain to the United States in settlement of 
all claims. This money was afterward distrib¬ 
uted to the individuals who had actually suf¬ 
fered losses. 

ALABAMA, University of, a non-sectarian, 
coeducational institution under state control. 
The seventy-two sections of land which formed 
the basis of its original endowment were do¬ 
nated by Congress in 1819, the year of Ala¬ 
bama’s admission to the Union. In 1884 an 
additional grant of seventy-two sections was 
made as compensation for the destruction of 
the university buildings by Federal troops in 
1865. The leases of this land, much of which 
is coal-bearing, bring an annual return of ap¬ 
proximately $50,000, which amounts to one- 
third of the income of the institution. In 1907 
the legislature appropriated $400,000 for the 
construction of three new buildings, and also 
increased the annual appropriation for mainte¬ 
nance to $25,000. The legislature of 1911 ap¬ 
propriated an additional $300,000. 

The first classes were held in 1831, and the 
annual attendance is now about 1,500. Except 
in the professional schools, in which the annual 
fees range from $25 to $75, tuition is free to 
residents of Alabama. The teaching staff in¬ 
cludes about 150 members, and the library con¬ 
tains 35,000 volumes. The school of medicine 
is located at Mobile, but the other departments 
—arts and sciences, education, engineering, law 
and the summer school—are at Tuscaloosa. 

The institution has for many years been fur¬ 
nishing a large percentage of the public pro¬ 
fessional men of Alabama. Within recent years 
it has been striving to take the lead in the 


industrial development of one of the poten¬ 
tially richest sections of the country. Its loca¬ 
tion in the so-called “Birmingham district” 
gives to it a strategic opportunity to perform 
this function. g.h.d. 

ALABAS'TER, the name given to a special 
kind of gypsum, which has a pure white color, 
and is so soft that it can be scratched with the 
finger nail. It was a favorite material used by 
the ancients for statues and columns, and for 



the manufacture of vases and ornaments. Ala¬ 
baster is found in many parts of Europe, but 
the best variety is found in Italy and in some 
parts of England. Vases, clock-stands, statu¬ 
ettes and other ornamental articles are made 
of the finest grade of alabaster. This is some¬ 
times called in England potters’ stone, because 
it is also used for moulds in potteries. From 
inferior grades the cement known as plaster of 
Paris is made. 

The chief center of the alabaster industries 
is Florence, Italy, where many exquisite works 
of art are made from a form of alabaster which 
is found in caves in the form of stalactites and 
stalagmites (see Stalactite). This kind of ala¬ 
baster is very hard and brittle, which make 
carving and polishing delicate operations. 

ALADDIN, a lad,' in, one of the most popular 
of all the heroes of legend. He appears in one 
of the tales of the Arabian Nights, in which, 
from dire poverty as the son of a poor widow, 
he advances to wonderful wealth, because of 
the possession of a magic lamp and ring which 
he gains through his uncle, a wicked magician. 
Both the lamp and the ring, when rubbed, 
bring to his aid powerful genii, who are forced 
to do his bidding. Through his wealth he wins 
as a bride the daughter of the emperor of 
China, and for her he orders the slaves of the 
lamp to build in one night a gorgeous palace. 













ALAMEDA 


134 


ALARIC 


This is done, but later, when the princess is 
left alone in the house, she is deceived by the 
magician uncle, who gains control of the lamp 
and compels the genii to carry off the palace 
to Africa. The slave of the ring, however, 
brings back the palace and regains for Aladdin 
possession of the lamp, while the wicked magi¬ 
cian meets his deserved fate. See Arabian 
Nights. 

Allusions to Aladdin’s lamp, both serious and 
humorous, abound in literature. Thus, Byron 
in Don Juan makes use of the expression, “Yes! 
ready money is Aladdin’s lamp.” 

ALAMEDA, ah la may' dah, Cal., in Alameda 
County, is a residential city, situated on an 
island on the east side of San Francisco Bay, 
south of Oakland and six miles east and south 
of San Francisco, with which it is connected 
by ferry. The Southern Pacific Railroad and 
electric lines enter the city over bridges span¬ 
ning the estuary. The area is six and a half 
square miles. In 1910 the population was 
23,383; in 1914 it was 26,330. 

Alameda is the home of many San Fran¬ 
cisco business men. There are attractive sub¬ 
urban residences, splendid parks and play¬ 
grounds, and the city has a Carnegie Library. 
The fine bathing beaches and municipal bath 
houses attract visitors during the summer 
months. In the industrial section along the 
north shore of the island are large ship-building 
and ship-repairing yards and important petro¬ 
leum and borax-refining establishments. The 
city has also a packers’ association and manu¬ 
factories of aeroplanes, motors, pumps and clay 
products. 

Alameda was settled during Mexican occupa¬ 
tion of the territory, was chartered in 1854 and 
became a city in 1885. In 1913 the commission 
form of government was adopted. The electric 
light plant is owned and operated by the 
municipality. 

ALAMO, ah' lah mo, the scene of a famous 
battle fought during the war for Texas inde¬ 
pendence (see Texas, subhead History), some¬ 
times called the “Thermopylae of America.” 
It was originally a Catholic mission, moved to 
the city of San Antonio from the Rio Grande 
by Padre Olivares, about 1718. The mission 
was called San Antonio de Valero and con¬ 
sisted of a monastery and church, surrounded 
by high walls. 

The mission San Antonio de Valero, called 
“The Alamo,” by reason of the grove of cot¬ 
tonwood trees surrounding it, was built by 
Franciscan monks and garrisoned by Spanish 


soldiers. During the war for Texas indepen¬ 
dence in 1836, the Mexican General Santa 
Anna, with an army estimated at from 4,000 
to 6,000 men, invaded Texas. A company of 
163 Texans under Lieut.-Col. William Barrett 
Travis, made a stand in the Alamo in order to 


THE HISTORIC ALAMO 

give Gen. Sam Houston time to organize the 
Texas army. The border heroes, James Bowie 
and Davy Crockett, were in the company. 
J. B. Bonham and nineteen others from Goliad 
fought their way in. 

The siege lasted from February 23 to 
March 6. Only one man elected to try to 
escape, and he was never heard from. The 
little garrison of 183 died to a man for Texas 
independence. So it is said, “Thermopylae had 
her messenger of defeat; the Alamo had none.” 
On March 6, with ammunition practically ex¬ 
hausted, they resisted with clubbed muskets 
until they were all killed. The only survivors 
were Mrs. Dickinson, wife of one of the officers, 
her baby, her Mexican nurse and a colored 
boy. This heroic defense gave General Hous¬ 
ton time to organize the Texas army, and on 
April 21, at San Jacinto, not far from Houston, 
Texas, he utterly routed Santa Anna and drove 
his army from Texas. “Remember the Alamo” 
was the battle-cry that w T on independence for 
Texas. 

This historic structure stands in the center 
of San Antonio. It has been purchased by the 
state and restored as far as possible as it was 
left by the siege. It ranks with Independence 
Hall and Bunker Hill as one of the monuments 
of American liberty. j.b.c. 

AL'ARIC I (?-410), the famous barbarian 
warrior who led the Visigothic invasions in 
Greece and Italy. In his second invasion of 
Italy in 410, his army entered Rome in tri¬ 
umph, and sacked it for three days. Though 
a pagan, Alaric generously spared the religious 











































ALASKA 


POPULATION t 



The Territory 

Incorporated Towns, 1910 

Year 

Iotal 

Per Sq. M 

White 

tCoLORED 

Town 

Population 

- - 

Town 

Population 

1867 * 

....30,000.. . 



.20,000 





1880.. 

_33,426. . . 

.0.05.. 


Cordova.. 

. . . .1,152 


534 

1890.. 

....32,052.. . 

.0.05.. 

8 521 

23 531 

Douglas. . 

.... 1,722 


872 

1900. . 

. . ..63,592... 

.0.1 . 

. .30 507 

33 085 

Fairbanks. 

.3.541 


598 

1910. . 

. . . .64,356. . . 

.0.1 . 

36 347 

28 009 

Juneau . . . 

.1,644 


1 222 

1914 * 

. . . .66,356. . . 



27 356 

Ketchikan. 

.1,613 

Valdez 

813 

1915. . 





Nome .... 

.2,600 

Wrangell . 

. 743 


* Estimates, f Natives include Tlinkits, Aleuts, Athapascans, Esquimaux. 

t Figures here g iven do not include the workers in the fishery and other industries, who are in Alaska for the summer only. 


VALUE OF LEADING PRODUCTS. 


Year 

Land 

Furs 

Aquatic 

Furs 

Fisheries Products 


Salmon 

All Others 

1871.. 

.$ 61,012,.. 

..$2,022,541 . 

$ 6 300 

$168 968 


1881. . 

. 152,664... 

.. 2,690,377 

42 771 

125 237 . 


1891. . 

. 265,010... 

. 1,456 601 

2 475 504 

281 238 


1901.. 

. 243.784... 

. . 1,174,770 

6 247 961 

437 300 


1906.. 

. 108,900.. . 

820,358 

8 166 373 

488 272 


1911. . 






1914. . 


92,000 

14 219 000 

982 000 


1915. . 

. 564,000. . . 

115 000 

18 375 000 

850 000 


1916. . 

. 468,000. . . 

105,000.. 

... 18,857^000. . 

. . . 773',000. 



t Minerals 


Approximate Value of Products 

from Acquisition of Alaska to 
June 30, 1916 


.$ 


916,920 
7,007,398 
23,375,008 
20,072,420 
16,537,000 
20,940,000 
J43,698,000 


Land furs.$ 11,884,293 

Aquatic furs. 64,693,369 

Salmon... 216,226,911 

Other fish products. 21,063,371 

Minerals. 329,305,025 


Grand Total . 643,987,969 

Purchase Price . 7,200,000 

Credit to Alaska . 635.972,969 


i a iie vaiue oi rne mineral output trom i»»u to i»yu is estimated at JH.ooo./ it. 

| In 1916 Copper rose to first place among Alaska’s export staples, the output being 
valued at $26,488,000 


COMMERCE 


Imports 


Merchandise from the United States. 

Merchandise from foreign ports. 

Gold and silver from foreign ports. . . 
Total imports. 


Exports 


Merchandise to the United States. 

Merchandise to foreign ports. 

Domestic gold and silver to the United States 

Foreign gold to the United States. 

Total exports. 

Grand total of imports and exports. 


1911 


.$15,169,149. 

519,221. 
. 3,520,170. 

. 19,208,540. 

.$19,318,859. 
. 1,174,393. 

. 14,699,694. 
. 3,353,361. 

. 38,546,307. 
. 57,754,847. 


1912 


Calendar Years 


$21,992,761. 

925,034. 
. 3,840,546. 

. 26,758,341. 


.$24,793,886. 
. 1,452,955. 

. 16,031,705. 
. 3,704,173. 

. 45,982,719. 
. 72,741,060. 


1913 


.$21,689,690. 

751,173. 
. 4,320,985. 

. 26,761,848. 

.$22,252,942. 

1,141,660. 
. 12,959,266. 
. 4.306,591. 

. 40,660.459. 
. 67,422,307. 


1914 


.$21,610,860 
662.994 
. 3,576,090 

. 25,948,944 

$25,609,957 
1,006,518 
. 14.729,905 
. 3,450,400 

. 44,796,780 
. 70,646,724 


PRINCIPAL MOUNTAINS 


Mountain 


Alti¬ 

tude 

Feet 


Location, Range 
or Group 


Mountain 


Alti¬ 

tude 

Feet 


Location, Range 
or Group 


Mountain 


Alti¬ 
tude 
, Feet 


Range or 
Group 


Blackburn... 
Castle Peak. . 
Cook, Mount 

Crillon. 

Drum. 

Fairweather . 
Foraker. 


. 16,140 
.10,314 
. 13,788 
. 15,900. 
12 , 002 . 
15,290. 
.17,10). 


.Wrangell Group 
.Wrangell Group 
.St. Elias Range 
.Fairweather Range 
.Wrangell Group 
.Fairweather Range 
. McKinley Range 


Hayes. 

Huxley.... 
Iliamna. . . . 
La Perouse 
McKinley . 
Newton. . . 
Redoubt . . 


. 14,000 
.11,907 
12,066 
.10,470 
20,300 
13,744 
11,270 


. McKinley Range 
. St. Elias Range 
. Cook Inlet 
.Fairweather Range 
. McKinley Range 
. St. Elias Range 
. Cook Inlet 


Russell. . . 
St Elias . 
Sanford. . . 
Seattle. . . 

Spur. 

Vancouver 

Wrangell.. 


.11,350 
18,024 
14,000 
. 10,000 
.10,925 
15,666. 
.17,500 


McKinley Range 
.St. Elias Range 
.Wrangell Group 
. St Elias Range 
. McKinley Range 
. St. Elias Range 
.Wrangell Group 


PRINCIPAL RIVERS 


Name 

Length 
Outlet Miles 

Name 

Length 
Outlet Miles 

Name 

Length 
Outlet Miles 

Name 

Length 
Outlet Mii.es 

Alsek * 

Chandlar 

Chilkat 

Chinp 

Colville 

Pacific Ocean 260 
Yukon R. 250 

Lynn Canal 

Arctic Ocean 

Arctic Ocean 300 

Copper 

Kobuk 

Koyukuk 

Kuskokwim 

Meade 

Gulf of Alaska 275 

Kotzebue Sd. 237 

Yukon R. 400 

Bering Sea 1,200 

Arctic Ocean 

Noatak 
Porcupini 
Selawik 
Stikine * 
Sushitna 

Kotzebue Sd. 320 
. Yukon R. 500 

Kotzebue Sd. 200 
Portland Canal 335 
Cook Inlet 225 

Taku * 

Tanana 

Tolovana 

Turner 

Yukon* 

Lynn Canal 135 

Yukon R 575 

Tanana R. 250 

Arctic Ocean 200 

Norton Sd. 2,300 


Partly in Canada. 


INTERESTING FACTS 

Alaska is derived from Al-ay-ek-sa, meaning “The Great Land ” or “ Mainland.” 

First explored by Russians under Bering and Chirikov in 1741, and afterwards known as Russian America. 

First white settlement made at Kodiak in 1783. 

Purchased by the United States, March 30, 1867, for $7,200,000. 

Created a Territory August 24, 1912. 

Area, 590,884 square miles, one-fifth that of the United States. Three-fourths of its area lie within the North Temperate Zone. 
Coast-line. The general ocean coast-line is about 4,750 m., and including the islands, bays, inlets and rivers to the head of tide 
water, is about 26,000 m. in length. 

"I predict that Alaska, within the next century will support as large a population as does the entire Scandinavian peninsula of 
Europe. I predict that you will see Alaska, with her enormous resources of minerals, her fisheries, and her possibilities that almost 
exceed belief, produce as hardy and vigorous a race as any part of America.”—Roosevelt. 






























































































































































































































"g 

2‘ "Ss, i 


S V.5, " i S’, « 










































ALASKA 


135 


ALASKA 


temples in his destruction of many of the Greek 
and Roman cities. His victories in the western 
part of the Roman Empire paved the way for 


the conquest of the Romans in the Iberian 
peninsula and the founding of the Visigothic 
kingdom in Spain. See Visigoths. 




LAS' KA, the largest outlying pos¬ 
session of the United States, and its only con¬ 
tinental possession in North America. Its area 
is 590,884 square miles, about one-sixth of the 
area of the United States proper; this is more 
than twice the 
area of Texas 
and slightly less 
than the com¬ 
bined area of 
Alberta and 
British Colum¬ 
bia. It is a 
more or less 
regular rectan¬ 
gular mass, ap¬ 
proximately 800 
miles long and 
wide, with long, 
narrow exten- 
sions to the 
southeast and 
to the south¬ 
west. Its coast line is 8,000 miles long, more 
than that of the entire Atlantic coast of the 
United States. 

In 1867 the United States bought Alaska 
from Russia for $7,200,000. This purchase was 
bitterly opposed by many prominent men, but 
was vigorously defended by others. The region 
had formerly been called Russian America, but 
Senator Charles Sumner suggested a new name, 
Alaska. The word is an English corruption of 
the native Aleut Al-ay-ek-sa, meaning great 
land or mainland, which was applied some¬ 
what vaguely to the entire region, but more 
particularly to the long, narrow strip now 
known as the Alaska Peninsula. 

Location. Alaska is still regarded by many 
people as a land of gold, fur seals, snow and 
ice. This popular conception is true, but it is 
only part of the truth. It is no more a polar 
country than are Norway and Sweden, which 
lie in almost the same latitude. Point Bar- 


LOCATION MAP 

Showing size with respect 
to the entire continent of 
North America. 


row, the northernmost point of Alaska, is more 
than 1,200 miles from the North Pole, about 
the same distance from it as is the North 
Cape; and the southernmost point of the main¬ 
land is in the latitude of Glasgow and Moscow. 
Its location in an east-and-west line is little 
appreciated, for it lies far to the west of the 
United States. Its easternmost point is 700 
miles west of San Francisco, and the western¬ 
most point of the Aleutian Islands is in the 
longitude of New Zealand. • 

Alaska is itself a vast peninsula, but the 
name Alaska Peninsida is restricted to the ex¬ 
tension in the southwest, beyond which lie the 
Aleutian Islands. These islands, together with 
the Commander Islands, which extend seaward 
from Siberia, form the line between Bering 
Sea and the Pacific Ocean. The northern 
shores of Alaska are washed by the Arctic 
Ocean. On the southeast are the islands of 
the Alexander Archipelago and a long strip of 
the mainland, which extends southward to the 
parallel of 54° 41' N. and shuts off nearly half 
of British Columbia from the Pacific Ocean. 

Physical Characteristics. Alaska is divided 
into four parts, each of which has individuali¬ 
ties of surface and climate. These divisions are 
described below. 

(1) Pacific Coast. Practically the entire 
southern coast, from the westernmost of the 
Aleutian Islands to the Portland Canal, is 
mountainous. The coast is not unlike that of 
Norway, cut by many rocky fiords and straits, 
and its rugged beauty is the delight of thou¬ 
sands of visitors. Between the mountains and 
the sea is only a narrow ledge or shelf, and in 
many places the mountains rise abruptly from 
the water’s edge to a height of 15,000 feet or 
more. There are many islands along the coast, 
the largest of which are Kodiak, in the south¬ 
west, and Baranof, Prince of Wales, Chichagof 
and Admiralty, in the southeast. 

This remarkably picturesque region is com¬ 
posed of four connected mountain chains, 
































































ALASKA 


136 


ALASKA 



OUTLINE MAP OF ALASKA 

Principal cities, mineral deposits, rivers, international boundary and highest point of land in 
the peninsula are shown. 


which vary from 50 to 200 miles in width. The 
long strip between British Columbia and the 
sea, which is called Southeast Alaska, or the 
Panhandle, has the Coast Range. This has no 
well-defined watershed, but has many peaks 
from 5,000 to 8,000 feet high. The Alexander 
Archipelago is the remains of a separate, partly 
submerged chain of mountains, but is usually 
included in the Coast Range. North of the 
Chilkat River and Cross Sound is the Saint 
Elias Range, which has its western end in the 
Kenai Peninsula. This range has many famous 
peaks—Mount Fairweather (15,290 feet), Mount 
Vancouver (15,666 feet), Mount Wrangell, an 
active volcano (17,500 feet), and Mount Saint 
Elias (18,024 feet), whose summit is on the 
international boundary. The Panhandle and 
the Saint Elias Range have thousands of gla¬ 
ciers, which fill the upper valleys. Many of 
them reach to the sea, into which they dis¬ 
charge huge icebergs, and perhaps a hundred 
or more are separated from the coast only by 
a terminal moraine (see Glacier). The great¬ 
est of all these glaciers is the Malaspina, whose 
area is nearly one-tenth that of all Switzer¬ 
land, but the best known is probably the Muir 
Glacier (both of which see). 


The third of the Pacific ranges is the Aleu¬ 
tian, the backbone of the Alaska Peninsula. 
It ends in the partly sunken Aleutian Islands 
(which see). The Alaska Range lies a little 
farther inland, and like the Aleutian Range, 
has a number of active volcanoes. Its south¬ 
ern end is not noteworthy but in the north it 
culminates in Mount McKinley (which see), 
the loftiest peak in North America. 

2. The Central Plateau, or Continental 
Alaska. North and east of the coast mountains 
is a vast plateau, almost the whole of which is 
included in the basin of the Yukon River. 
Only a low watershed divides the Yukon basin 
from the Kuskokwim, the second river in size. 
The plateau extends practically across the ter¬ 
ritory from east to west and has an average 
width of 200 miles. Near the base of the 
mountains it has an elevation of 4,000 to 5,000 
feet, but gradually declines to 1,000 feet, near 
Bering Sea. Much of the country is a rolling 
plain, cut into many tablelands by the deep, 
broad valleys of the rivers. 

3. The Rocky Mountains. East and north 
of the central plateau are the Rocky Moun¬ 
tains. On the east they lie almost wholly in 
Canada, but near the Arctic Ocean the range 







ALASKA 


137 


ALASKA 


turns at right angles. It extends westward and 
southwestward in two parallel chains called the 
Endicott Range. As they approach the ocean 



Maps drawn to the same scale show the sur¬ 
prising extent of Alaska’s domain. 


on the west these two chains separate, the 
northern being known as the De Long Moun¬ 
tains, and the southern as the Baird Moun¬ 
tains. 

4. The Arctic Slope. North of the Endicott 
Range is the only true Arctic section of Alaska. 
Its southern part, a belt about eighty miles 
wide, is a plateau, with a maximum altitude of 
2,500 feet near the foothills of the mountains. 
In the north the plateau ends abruptly, and 
beyond lies an uninteresting coastal plain which 
extends to the Arctic Ocean. Neither the 
plateau nor the coastal plain has yet been 
fully explored. 

Climate. The great differences in the char¬ 
acter of the surface have an important influ¬ 
ence on the climate, and consequently on the 
plant and animal life. Only in the northern 
fourth or possibly third is the climate dis¬ 
tinctly Arctic. Except for about two months 
in midsummer, the Arctic Ocean is closed by 
ice, and the average annual temperature is 24° 
F. below freezing, or 8° above zero. On the 
Arctic coast rainfall is only eight to ten inches 
a year, but along Bering Sea it is from twenty 
to thirty inches. 

The interior has less rainfall and great ex¬ 
tremes of temperature. At Eagle, near the 
Canadian boundary, temperature of 90° F. in 
summer and —76° F. in winter are not rare. 
Throughout the basin of the Yukon, the first 
of October marks approximately the beginning 
of winter. The snowfall is heavy, and from 
December to March the average temperature 
is —20° F. In May the rivers thaw, and sum¬ 
mer comes quickly in June. The Alaska sum¬ 
mer is a season of almost unbroken daylight. 
The sun shines brilliantly for eighteen to 


twenty hours a day, and in the remaining hours 
there is twilight. Clouds are practically un¬ 
known. Even in summer, however, the nights 
are cool, and frosts in July are not uncom¬ 
mon. 

The climate in the coast regions is far differ¬ 
ent. Southeast Alaska has a temperate cli¬ 
mate, like that of the coast of Northwestern 
United States, and the thermometer seldom 
registers higher than 75° or lower than zero. 
The moist winds from the southwest bring 
abundant rains along the coast and heavy 
snows on the south slopes of the mountains. 
The rainfall averages more than ninety inches 
a year, and even when there is no rain there 
are heavy fogs. At the western end of the Aleu¬ 
tian Islands it rains or snows most of the time— 
according to one observer at least on five days 
in each week. The southern part of Bering 
Sea is always foggy, but to the north the 
moisture in the air rapidly decreases. 

Animal and Plant Life. The animal life of 
Alaska includes an astonishing variety of mam¬ 
mals, birds, insects and other classes. In the 
interior swarms of flies, mosquitoes and gnats 
make life miserable during the summer months. 
Moose are still seen occasionally in the forests, 
and deer are found in the southeast. Caribou 
were formerly plentiful, and before the coming 
of the white man constituted almost the sole 
support of the natives. Their meat was food; 
their skins were made into clothing, and their 
bones into needles and other simple tools. The 
destruction of the caribou herds by the white 
man finally threatened starvation for the In- 



TI-IE REINDEER 
Alaska’s most valuable animal. 

dians. To prevent this disaster the United 
States government imported large numbers of 
domestic reindeer from Siberia. These seem tq 
















ALASKA 


138 


ALASKA 


thrive and in part, at least, solve the problem 
of food and clothing; they now number about 
50,000 (see Reindeer). Among the smaller 
animals are wolves, foxes, beavers, weasels and 
minks. The ptarmigans are plentiful, and 
eagles are common along the Atlantic coast. 
Each animal here named is described elsewhere 
under its title. 

Fisheries. It is the marine animals, however, 
which are of the greatest economic importance, 
especially the fur seal and the salmon. The 
home of the fur seal (which see) is the Pribilof 
Islands, and the value of the seal skins taken 
from these islands has already reached a total 
of more than six times the price paid by the 
United States for the whole of Alaska. So 
rapidly did the sealing industry grow that the 
extinction of the herd was threatened (see 
Bering Sea Controversy). In April, 1910, the 


United States cancelled all existing leases under 
which seal fisheries were operated, and in 1912 
entirely prohibited the killing of seals for a 
period of five years after January 1, 1913. 
The sea-otter and the walrus were formerly 
plentiful, but are now nearly extinct. 

The whaling industry is no longer as impor¬ 
tant as in the early part of the nineteenth 
century, because the whales are fewer and keep 
to the north. The natives occasionally kill a 
whale for blubber, but the commercial impor¬ 
tance of the animal is due to the baleen, or 
whale bone. 

Of the fishes taken in Alaska waters the most 
important are herring, cod, halibut, and most 
valuable of all, salmon. The largest salmon 
fishery in the world is on Kodiak Island, on 
the Karluk River. The Nushagak River and 
Bristol Bay form another great salmon fishing- 
ground. The first salmon cannery in Alaska 


was built in 1878; since then the industry has 
steadily increased until the annual catch is 
worth about $20,000,000. The total value of 
the salmon catch from 1868 to 1915, inclusive, 
was about $200,000,000, nearly thirty times the 
original cost of Alaska. The catch of cod 
shows little variation from year to year, but 
the catch of herring and halibut is steadily 
increasing. The young herring are packed, 
chiefly at Juneau, as sardines. 

Plant Life. The plant life of Alaska does 
not show as great variety as the animal life. 
The Pacific coastal region, especially in the 
southeast, has rich forests of hemlock, spruce 
and red cedar, with considerable willow and 
cottonwood. Probably the most characteristic 
Alaskan tree is the tide-land, or Sitka, spruce. 
The interior has extensive areas of black and 
white spruce, poplar, white birch and alder. 


With care the stand of timber should always 
be abundant for local uses, but in the past 
lumbering has been so carelessly done that the 
government has felt it necessary to create two 
forest reserves. The Tongass National Forest 
includes Southeast Alaska, and the Chugach 
National Forest extends from Cook Inlet to 
Controller Bay. 

The remainder of Alaska has few trees. Near 
the Arctic Circle the willows become mere 
shrubs two or three feet high, and all other 
trees are gnarled and small. Grasses are 
abundant in many sections, but the most dis¬ 
tinctive features of the plant life are the 
mosses, which cover one-fourth of all Alaska. 
These vary in color from pure white to deep 
brown and green. The tundras, which include 
the coastal region from the Aleutian Islands 
northward to Point Barrow and eastward to 
the Canadian boundary, are covered with 


THE FARM 

Potatoes 
Hay, For age 
S undry Vegetables I 
Milk,Cream 


Cabbage 
Animals sold,slaughtered I 
Butter 

Berries 1 


ALASKA PRODUCTS CHART 

Figures Based on U S.Government Reports 
Millions of Dol laTs Annually 
5 10 15 


15 


lllllillllllllllllllllllllll 


llill 



r^ IIHIIHIDI.il llli 

Mill 11, III 111 

■ill 

1 

i !li ill iiil!; il !i I 



• 

i 

I 1 

i 

■ink' i".j. ■ ■' i' 

ill 

ill ■ l 

■Mill 


THE MINE 

Coal 
1 Antimony 
1 Tin 
Silver 
Copper 
Gold 

THE FACTORY 

Lumber,Timber 
Salmon canned 










































































































ALASKA 


139 


ALASKA 


brown peat moss, herbs and sedges. During 
the short summer these mosses are dotted by 
countless millions of wild flowers. 



Agriculture in Alaska is as yet in its first 
stages, but there is no longer doubt as to its 
possibilities. Near the mining camps and towns 
are a few truck farms, and hardy vegetables 
and cereals are raised with much success. 
Strawberries and other fruits are raised in the 
Sitka district, and barley and oats grow well 
throughout the larger part of the territory. 
Cattle-raising should become a flourishing in¬ 
dustry around Cook Inlet and other favored 
sections, where native grasses grow in pro¬ 
fusion. 

Mineral Wealth. Though the existence of 
mineral deposits was known to the Russians, no 
serious attempt was made to develop these 
resources until after Alaska became the prop¬ 
erty of the United States. Gold was first mined 
extensively at Juneau, after 1880, and in the 


next fifteen years was discovered and mined in 
many other sections. The coast region was 
for a long time the center of production, and 
the stamp mills near Juneau are still among 
the largest in the world. The discovery of the 
Klondike gold fields, near the boundary be¬ 
tween the United States and Canada, is really 
an event in Canadian history, but it drew 
hundreds of prospectors to Alaska proper. In 
1899 placer gold was first found at Nome, and 
in that year and the next the hundreds of pros¬ 
pectors found new bonanzas. The gold pro¬ 
duction of Alaska in 1899 was double that in 
1898. Other fields have since been discovered, 
the most important being the Fairbanks camp 
on the Tanana River, one of the tributaries of 
the Yukon. Nearly all the large gold-mining 
camps are in the Yukon basin or on Seward 
Peninsula. Placer mining is still the rule, but 
increasing attention is being given to deep 
veins. The production in recent years has 
fluctuated little, the annual average being from 
$15,000,000 to $18,000,000. The output of silver 
is usually only about $400,000 a year, and is 
almost entirely in connection with gold-mining. 

Coal. The estimated area of the Alaskan 
coal fields is 20,000 square miles. The most 
important deposits are along the Bering River, 
twenty-five miles east of Controller Bay, and 
along the Matanuska River, a small stream 
which empties into Cook Inlet. The coal in 
these regions is good bituminous and semi- 
anthracite, but in the other known fields it is 
of lower grade. The development of this re¬ 
source has been prevented by lack of trans¬ 
portation facilities and by the many changing 
restrictions which have been fixed by the 
United States government (see, below, History). 

Other Minerals. Copper is now nearly as 
important to Alaska as gold, the usual output 
of about $3,000,000 having advanced in 1916 to 
over $26,000,000. The metal was first mined in 
1901 on Prince William Sound, and the annual 
product ranged from 20,000,000 to 30,000,000 
pounds for several years before the record year 
of 1915, when it amounted to more than 
80,000,000 pounds. Most of it comes from the 
Copper River district, but about half the pro¬ 
ducing mines are in the Ketchikan region, in 
the extreme southern part of the territory. 
Tin and antimony, though still of slight im¬ 
portance, are produced in increasing quantities. 
Petroleum has been found near the Copper 
River, and gypsum and marble exist in several 
islands of the southeast, but not in large quan¬ 
tities. 













ALASKA 


140 


ALASKA 


Commerce and Communications. Alaska has 
large natural resources, as indicated in the 
preceding description, but until recently it has 



Solid line shows section constructed (1916) 
from Seward to Turnagain Arm. The dotted 
line is the route of the road to Fairbanks. 


had scarcely the beginnings of adequate trans¬ 
portation facilities. In 1899 and 1900, for 
example, when the gold fields along the Tanana 
were first being worked, it cost one cent per 
pound per mile to transport supplies from 
Circle City to the mines. As the distance was 
125 miles this meant a charge of $2,500 to trans¬ 
port one ton. The situation is less desperate 
now, as several thousand miles of sled and 
wagon roads have been built in various parts, 
but the railway mileage in 1914 was only 466. 
In that year, however, Congress authorized the 
construction of 1,000 miles of new government- 
owned railways and the purchase of the exist¬ 
ing lines. Surveys were made promptly, and in 
April, 1915, the new rail route was determined, 
from Seward, on Resurrection Bay, to Fair¬ 
banks. This new government railway includes 
the former Alaska Northern, which extended 
northward seventy-one miles from Seward. 
This is the only railroad owned and operated 
by the national government, except the Panama 
Railroad. 

In the past, the rivers have been of great 
importance, particular^ the Yukon and Kus- 
kokwim. These two, with their tributaries, 
provide navigable waterways about 5,000 miles 
long. The rivers are free from ice only for 


two to three months in the year, but this 
period is long enough for the needs of the 
valleys. Cordova, Valdez and Seward are con¬ 
nected by cable with Seattle, and military tele¬ 
graphs run from Valdez to Fairbanks and from 
Fairbanks down the Yukon to Saint Michael. 
There are also a number of wireless stations 
maintained by the government. 

Trade and commerce are confined largely to 
the exportation of raw products and the im¬ 
portation of supplies. Gold and fish are sent 
chiefly to Seattle, Tacoma and San Francisco, 
and these ports ship machinery and other man¬ 
ufactured goods in return. The exports are 
worth approximately $45,000,000 to $50,000,000 
a year, and are about double the imports. 

The People. The total population accord¬ 
ing to the census of 1910 was 64,356, which 
provided an average of but one person to nine 
square miles. This was an increase of only 764 
over the population in 1900, but it represents 
an increase of about 7,000 in the white popula¬ 
tion, as the number of natives and Chinese had 
decreased by more than 6,000. About one-third 
of the total population is foreign-born or 
native-born of foreign parents, and a little more 
than one-half is white. Swedes, Norwegians, 
Canadians, Germans ancf Irish are the leading 
foreign elements, in the order named. Five- 
sixths of the whites are males, but the propor¬ 
tion of women is slowly increasing. 

The natives of Alaska may be divided into 
four great stocks or groups—the Aleuts, Eski¬ 
mos, Thlinkits or Tlingits, and Athapascan. 
The last group, which numbers about 4,000, is 
one of the North American Indian families. 
The Aleuts, famous as boatmen and hunters 



HOW FREIGHT IS CARRIED ON THE 
YUKON 

of the sea-otter, live only on the Alaska Penin¬ 
sula and the Aleutian Islands. They have 
slowly decreased in number until only 1,500 
















ALASKA 


141 


ALASKA 


are left. The 5,000 Tlingits and the 500 Haidas, 
an allied stock, live in Southeast Alaska. The 
best known and the most numerous of these 
groups are the Eskimos (which see). They 
live chiefly along the shores of Bering Sea and 
the Arctic Ocean. 

The spiritual, moral and economic condition 
of the natives has been a burden upon the 
white people since the first days of Russian 
occupation. Many of the natives promptly 
became Christians, and the Greek or Russian 
Orthodox Church still maintains missions in 
Alaska. Since 1867 many other religious de¬ 
nominations have established missions, and 
to-day practically the entire native population 
at least professes Christianity. Schools were 
formerly maintained in connection with nearly 
all missions, but all native schools are now 
under the control of the United States Bureau 
of Education. The introduction of the Siberian 
reindeer, to take the place of the caribou, is 
also the work of this Bureau. Another factor 
which has helped the condition of the natives 
is the rigid enforcement, since 1909, of laws 
prohibiting the sale or even the gift of intoxi¬ 
cating liquors to natives. 

Most of the natives live in small settlements 
in a more or less strict tribal organization. 
Many of these settlements are near, and often 
larger than, the cities and towns built by the 
whites. Fairbanks, with 3,541 people in 1910, 
is the largest incorporated city, and the other 
important towns are Nome, Cordova, Juneau 
(the capital), Ketchikan, Treadwell, Douglas, 
Skagway and Valdez. Seward, the terminus of 
the government railway, was incorporated in 

1912, and Tanana, a mining community, in 

1913. Sitka, once the capital and most impor¬ 
tant city, now has only 500 people. All incor¬ 
porated towns have public schools, supported 
chiefly by various license fees. 

Other Points of Interest. Measured in de¬ 
grees of longitude, the difference between the 
most easterly point of Alaska and the most 
westerly point of its island chain is greater than 
that between New York and San Francisco; 
but the distance in miles, 2,650, is about 600 
less, since Alaska is much farther north, where 
the degrees are shorter. 

When Secretary Seward was asked what he 
regarded as the most important act of his 
official career he replied without hesitation, 
“The purchase of Alaska.” 

Some of the Indians of Alaska make lamps 
very simply. They use the dried body of a 
fish, merely passing a pith or bark wick through 


it. So oily is this “candlefish,” as it is called, 
that it keeps the wick burning a long time. 

Among the popular nicknames of Alaska are 
“Seward’s Folly” and “Uncle Sam’s Ice Box.” 

A traveler has written, “In Alaska a glacier 
is a wonderful torrent that seems to have been 
suddenly frozen when about to plunge into the 
sea. Down and down mountains wind these 
snow-clad serpents, extending miles inland, 
with as many arms sometimes as an octopus. 

. . . Think of Niagara Falls frozen stiff, 

add thirty-six feet to its height, and you have 
a slight idea of the terminus of Muir Glacier.” 

The “Labrador huskies,” long-legged, shaggy 
dogs, are still in many parts of Alaska the chief 
motive power for transportation, each dog pull¬ 
ing easily a load of about 150 pounds. The 
native Indian dogs are also used, but they are 
always hungry and are such thieves that they 
are not entirely satisfacto^. 

In the winter the nights are twenty-two or 
twenty-three hours long in the Arctic region, 
but the light from the aurora borealis is so 
strong that work goes on just as usual. 

When the United States purchased Alaska 
the general opinion was that it was “wasteful 
extravagance to pay 87,200,000 for 590,000 
square miles of icebergs and polar bears.” 

The United States mail sledge is drawn by 
dogs, the pick of the lot, and seem to delight 
in their work. The government has consid¬ 
ered the question of transportation of mails by 
airships in certain sections of the country; it 
has been declared entirely feasible. 

Perhaps nothing more accurately describes 
the interior of Alaska than that expression be¬ 
loved of writers—the Great White Silence. 

In ancient geologic times Alaska was the 
home of great herds of mammoths, those huge, 
hairy elephants which were so much larger than 
any animals that exist to-day. 

Salmon furnishes the chief food of the In¬ 
dians of the Pacific coast. Travelers declare 
that the dried fish are stored in such great 
quantities against the coming of winter that 
they form a floor, several feet thick, in the 
Eskimo huts. Each day parts of this “floor” 
are eaten, until by summer the snow floor 
appears. 

Scientists say that the Yukon carries to the 
sea almost as much water as does the Missis¬ 
sippi, and that its vast floods keep the sea 
water fresh several miles from the coast. 

The latitude range of Alaska is as great as 
from Duluth to New Orleans. 

In the Panhandle region there are literally 


ALASKA 


142 


ALASKA 


thousands of glaciers, over a hundred of which 
almost reach the sea. 

In November, 1916, Alaska set an example to 
older communities by voting for prohibition 
throughout the territory. 

Mail is regularly delivered beyond the Arc¬ 
tic Circle. 

In 1916 copper rose to first place among 
Alaska’s exports, supplanting gold and salmon. 
During the fiscal year ending June 30, 1916, 
there was received in the United States from 
Alaska $26,500,000 worth of copper. 

Government. From 1867 to 1912 Alaska was 
an unorganized territory; all of its officers were 
appointed by the President of the United 
States and all its laws were made for it by 
Congress. On August 24, 1912, President Taft 
approved an act of Congress organizing the 
territory and providing self-government. The 
capital was fixed at Juneau, where the legisla¬ 
ture meets in the odd-numbered years. The 
Senate is composed of eight members, chosen 

History 

Alaska is the only part of the New World 
which was discovered and first explored by 
white men who came from the West. The 
Russian Cossacks are thought to have reached 
the Alaskan coast about the last quarter of 
the sixteenth century, but it was not until 150 
years later that real explorations began. The 
most famous of the explorers is Vitus Bering 
(whose life is presented elsewhere in these vol¬ 
umes). The first settlement was made on 
Ivodiak Island in 1783, and in the next fifty 
years exploration continued with good results. 
The English and Canadians, coming from the 
east, reached the Pacific through the river val- 
lej's, the Russians continued to cross Bering 
Strait, and Frenchmen, Spaniards and English¬ 
men also sailed northward along the Pacific 
coast. 

The most important of these early exploring 
trips was that of Captain James Cook, who sur¬ 
veyed almost the entire coast line from Cross 
Sound to Cape Lisburne (see Cook, James). 
The explorations of Sir Alexander Mackenzie, 
George Vancouver and Sir John Franklin are 
also noteworthy. The Russians explored the 
lower courses of the great rivers and employees 
of the Western Union Telegraph Company did 
valuable work in 1865 and 1866. It was planned 
to connect Europe and America by telegraph 
through Alaska and Siberia, and the work of 
exploration and laying out a course was well 


for four years, and the House of Representa¬ 
tives has sixteen members, chosen for two 
years. The governor, appointed by the Presi¬ 
dent, may veto any act of the legislature. All 
laws must be approved by Congress before 
they go into effect. At its first session, in 1913, 
the legislature granted suffrage to women on 
the same terms as men; in 1915 it abolished 
capital punishment. Alaska sends one dele¬ 
gate to the House of Representatives at Wash¬ 
ington; he has few of the privileges of a Rep¬ 
resentative; he may not vote, even upon mat¬ 
ters pertaining to Alaska, and his right to speak 
is restricted to subjects relating to his terri¬ 
tory. 

Communities of more than 300 people may 
incorporate as towns and conduct their own 
local affairs. With this exception, there is no 
local government. There are four Federal 
judges appointed by the President, one for 
each of the judicial districts; the courts are 
held at Juneau, Nome, Valdez and Fairbanks. 

of Alaska 

under way when the success of the Atlantic 
cable put an end to this plan. 

Purchase by the United States. Russian 
official interests in Alaska were concerned only 
with the fur trade. .In 1788 the Russo-Ameri- 
can Company was given a monopoly of the 
trade, which it held until 1861. The vast region 
was regarded by the Russians only as a source 
of furs, and when the supply of these began to 
show signs of decreasing, the country was con¬ 
sidered less valuable. Negotiations for its sale 
to the United States were begun as early as 
1859, but it was not until 1867 that a treaty of 
sale was negotiated by William H. Seward, 
then Secretary of State. The United States 
paid Russia $7,200,000 in gold. 

There was bitter opposition to this purchase, 
for many Americans, then as now, believed 
Alaska to be a useless mass of rock, snow and 
ice. Fortunately the opposition was defeated. 
In the forty years following 1867 the United 
States government received directly, merely 
from the taxes on sealskins and other sources, 
nearly double the purchase price. The total 
exports of fish, furs and gold from Alaska to 
the United States alone exceeded $600,000,000 
in the first half century of American ownership. 
Those who know Alaska declare that its re¬ 
sources are still undeveloped, and that the 
future production of the territory will reach 
even greater totals. 


ALASKA 


143 


ALASKA 


Boundary Dispute. In 1825 Russia and Great 
Britain by treaty fixed a boundary between 
British and Russian territory in North Amer¬ 
ica. For sixty years there was no quarreling 
over the interpretation of the treaty, although 
the Russian rights had meanwhile been trans¬ 
ferred to the United States. For sixty years 
the boundary, from Mount Saint Elias south¬ 
ward, had been a line ten leagues, sixty miles, 
inland from the coast. This line followed all 
the windings of inlets and promontories. About 
1885 Canadians began to assert that the 
boundary was incorrect, and in 1888 the Cana¬ 
dian government formally called the attention 
of the United States to this difference of opin¬ 
ion. The boundary, it was asserted, should be 
ten leagues east, not of the actual winding 
shore-line, but of a line drawn from headland 
to headland. Such a line would place the heads 
of many inlets in Canadian territory and would 
leave the United States with but a few islands 
and broken strips of mainland. 

The disputed territory was at once surveyed, 
but a crisis did not come until 1896, when the 
gold discoveries in the Klondike brought thou¬ 
sands of prospectors and made a Pacific outlet 
of greater importance to Canada. The Alaska 



THE BOUNDARY DISPUTE 
Showing conflicting claims and final adjustment. 

boundary was one of the problems discussed by 
the Joint High Commission (see Canada, sub¬ 
head History), but the commission was unable 
to arrive at conclusions. Finally, in 1903 a 
special Alaska Boundary Tribunal was ap¬ 
pointed to settle the meaning of the original 
treaty between Russia and Great Britain. 


Great Britain’s representatives were Baron 
Alverstone, then Lord Chief Justice of England, 
Sir Louis A. Jette and Hon. Allen B. Ayles- 
worth, two distinguished Canadians. The 
United States was represented by Henry Cabot 
Lodge, Elihu Root and George Turner. The 
decision of this tribunal favored the United 
States, Baron Alverstone voting with the 
American commissioners. About one-third of 
the disputed section was given to Canada when 
the boundary line was surveyed, this survey 
being completed in 1914. 

Development of Coal Lands. The attempts 
to open up the great coal fields of Alaska 
aroused a bitter controversy which practically 
prevented the development of this resource. In 
1900 the public land laws, so far as they affect 
coal-bearing areas, were extended to Alaska. 
These law’s, how’ever, w r ere ineffective, because 
they applied only to surveyed land, whereas the 
Alaska coal fields were unsurveyed. A supple¬ 
mentary act of Congress in 1904 remedied this 
defect by allowing individuals to make private 
surveys as a basis for locating 160-acre claims. 
Late in 1906 an executive order, issued by 
President Roosevelt, withdrew all coal lands 
from entry, but was amended by a later order 
which exempted any claims located before 
November 12, 1906. The reason for this 
change of policy was the desire to eliminate 
fraudulent claims. In the two and a half 
years during which the Act of 1904 w T as in 
force, practically all of the Bering River coal 
field was divided into claims. These claims 
were held either by individuals, or by agents 
acting in the name of the claimants. 

One of these agents w r as Clarence Cunning¬ 
ham, w r ho represented thirty-three adjoining 
claims, probably the most valuable in the field. 
The Cunningham claims w r ere all but patented 
when rumors of fraud began to spread. Most 
of the claimants were business men w r ho could 
not be suspected of acting for corporation 
claimants, but it was rumored that they were 
planning a combination of interests, contrary 
to law. The charges were first investigated in 
1905, and in 1911 the Cunningham claims were 
cancelled as fraudulent. In the intervening six 
years the investigation had first lagged and 
then been pushed zealously. It led to con¬ 
troversy between several government officials, 
and finally required the attention of President 
Taft and Congress. The Secretary of the Inte¬ 
rior, Richard Ballinger, had been Commis¬ 
sioner of the General Land Office in 1907 and 
1908, and had been legal counsel for the Cun- 






ALASKA 


144 


ALASKA 


■■ . ■=■ .= - = ■ - - . ■=■ 

OUTLINE AND QUESTIONS ON ALASKA 


Outline 


(1) 

( 2 ) 

(3) 

II. 

( 1 ) 


I. Location 

Latitude—54° 40' to 71° 31' north 
Longitude—129° 58' west to 172° 
east (with islands) 

Distance from North Pole 


22 ' 


( 2 ) 

(3) 

(4) 


( 1 ) 


( 2 ) 


(3) 

(4) 


Size and General Characteristics 

Area 

(a) Comparative 

(b) Absolute 
Shape 
Coast line 

Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands 

III. Physical Characteristics 

Coast region 

(a) Islands 

(b) Mountain chains 

1. Coast Range 

2. Saint Elias Range 

3. Aleutian Range 

4. Alaska Range 

(c) Great peaks 
Continental Alaska 

(a) Plateau formations 

(b) Rivers 
Rocky Mountains 
Arctic slope 

(a) Plateau 

(b) Coastal plain 


IV. Climate 

(1) Dependence on surface features 

(2) Temperature and rainfall 

(a) In coast region 

(b) In interior 

(c) On Arctic slope 

V. Plant Life 

(1) Forests 

(a) Forest reserves 

(2) Grasses and mosses 

VI. Animal Life 

(1) Caribou 

(2) Reindeer 

(3) Marine animals 

VII. Industries 

(1) Agriculture 

(2) Fisheries 

(a) Seal fishery 


(b) Whaling 

(c) Salmon fishery 

(d) Other fish 
(3) Mining 

(a) Gold 

1. History 

2. Output 

(b) Coal 

(c) Copper 

VIII. Communication 

(1) Roads 

(2) Railroads 

(3) Navigable rivers 

(4) Cable«and telegraph 

IX. Commerce 

(1) Exports 

(2) Imports 

X. Population 

(1) Density 

(2) White inhabitants 

(3) Native groups 

(a) Aleuts 

(b) Athapascan 

(c) Eskimo 

(d) Tlingits 

(4) Education of natives 

(5) Cities 

XI. Government 

(1) Governor 
(2 ) Legislature 

(a) Senate 

(b) House of Representatives 

(3) Judiciary 

(4) Representation in Congress 

(5) Suffrage 

(6) Capital 

XII. History 

(1) Discovery and exploration 

(2) Settlement 

(3) Ownership 

(a) Russian 

(b) Purchase by United States 

(4) Dispute over boundaries 

(5) Discovery of gold 

(6) Development of coal lands 

(a) Fraudulent claims 

(b) Adjustment 

( 7) Cost of Alaska, and returns 

















ALASKA 


145 


ALASKA 



Outline and Questions on Alaska—Continued 

Questions 

What does the name Alaska mean? 

What are “huskies”? 

What use is made of them in Alaska? 

How far north do the United States mail routes extend? 

Why does the Eskimo eat the floor of his hut? 

How did the United States gain possession of Alaska? 

What was the general verdict regarding the transaction? 

Were those responsible for it ever justified in public opinion? 

Is any part of Alaska directly north of the United States? 

Give two nicknames commonly applied to Alaska. 

Why is fur seal fishing no longer as profitable as it once was? 

What measures has the United States taken to offset the damage that has been done 
in this direction? 

What animal, formerly the sole support of many of the natives, has been almost 
destroyed by the white man? 

Has anything been done by the government to make up for the loss? 

Which is the most picturesque region of Alaska? 

What is the narrow strip between British Columbia and the ocean called? 

How many glaciers is it estimated to have? 

Are working days in the Arctic region limited in winter to the hour or two of 
daylight? 

To what curious use do the natives put the candlefish? 

Sketch briefly the amazing development in copper production in the last few years. 
How does the Kodiak bear compare in size with other bears? 

How many miles of navigable waterway do Alaska’s two great rivers furnish? 

How does the Yukon rank as to size among the rivers of North America? 

How does Alaska compare in size with the other territorial possessions of the United 
States combined? 

What is the average density of population? 

If all the people in the United States were transferred to Alaska, would Alaska have 
a population as dense as that of New York? 

How large a population would Alaska have to have to be as thickly settled as 
Belgium? 

Could it support so large a population? 

How does the area of Alaska compare with the combined areas of Germany and 
France? 

In what way does the southern coast of Alaska resemble the coast of Norway? 
Where is the highest land in North America? 

In whose favor was the Alaskan boundary dispute settled? 

Describe briefly the largest glacier in Alaska. 

What sort of vegetation clothes one-fourth of Alaska? 

How much of Alaska has a distinctly Arctic climate? 

Why has the southern coast region such a heavy rainfall? 

Why is whaling no longer the important industry it once was? 

What is a tundra? 

If the United States had taken nothing from Alaska but salmon, would its purchase 
have been justified? 

Sketch briefly the history of the gold-mining industry. 

Has gold always been the largest annual output of Alaska? 



















ALASKA 


146 


ALBANIA 


ningham claimants before entering the Cabinet. 
A special committee of Congress exonerated 
Secretary Ballinger from knowledge of at¬ 
tempted fraud, but he resigned because he felt 
that his usefulness to the administration was 
at an end. Between 1911 and 1913 nearly 
three-fourths of the land claims w T ere cancelled 
by the government. 

In 1914 a new policy was inaugurated. By 
authority of Congress all coal lands are to be 
survejTd, and parts of them are reserved for 
the United States. This reserved area must 
not exceed 5,120 acres in the Bering River 
field, 7,680 in the Matanuska field, or one-half 
of the area of other fields. All lands not re¬ 
served may be leased to individual citizens or 
American corporations for periods of fifty 
years. The minimum area allowed under leases 
is forty acres, the maximum is 2,560 acres. The 
royalties derived from the leases are to be 
used by the government for the development 
of Alaska. For local or domestic use blocks of 
ten acres may be leased without payment of 
royalties. w.f.z. 

Consult the publications of the United States 
Bureau of Education, Washington; also, Gree¬ 
ley’s Handbook of Alaska; Balch’s The Alaskan 
Frontier. 

Related Topics. A more detailed knowledge 
of the geography of Alaska may be gained from 
the articles on the followings topics: 


CITIES AND TOWNS 

Fairbanks Nome 

Juneau Sitka 


COAST WATERS 


Arctic Ocean 
Bering Sea 
Bering Strait 

Admiralty 

Aleutian 

Bering 


Coal 

Copper 

Gold 


Cook Inlet 
Pacific Ocean 

ISLANDS 

Kodiak 

Pribilof 

Unalaska 

LEADING PRODUCTS 

Salmon 

Seal 

Whale 


ALASKA-YUKON-PACIFIC EXPOSITION, 

held in Seattle, Wash., from June 1 to October 
16, 1909. Though organized primarily to 

advertise the resources of Alaska, exhibits were 
sent from Canada, from many states of the 
Union, and even from European countries. 
The exposition grounds, which were on a nar¬ 
row peninsula between Lake Washington and 
Lake Union, included 250 acres. The main 
buildings, which were in the French Renais¬ 
sance style of architecture, were grouped on 
both sides of a beautiful terraced court, at the 
head of which stood the United States Govern¬ 
ment building. The lower end of the court, 
which was left open, afforded a magnificent 
view of snow-capped Mount Rainier. Seven 
of the buildings became the property of the 
University of Washington after the close of the 
exposition. The total attendance was 3,740,561, 
and the total expenses exceeded $10,000,000. 
The exposition closed with every debt paid. 

ALBA'NIA, the youngest country of 
Europe, situated in the western extremity of 
the Balkan Peninsula, and stretching along the 
southeastern shore of the Adriatic Sea, where 
that sea is at its narrowest. Before the Balkan 



Black area (a) is Albania. Surrounding coun¬ 
tries are (b) Italy; (c) Germany; (d) Austria- 
Hungary; (e) Montenegro; (/) Serbia; (p) Bul¬ 
garia; (h) Rumania; (i) Russia; ( j ) Greece; 
( k ) Turkey. 


NATIVE TRIBES 

Aleuts Eskimo 

Athapascan Tlingits 


Yukon 

Seal 


RIVER 

ANIMALS 

Reindeer 


SURFACE FEATURES 

McKinley, Mount Rocky Mountains 

Malaspina Glacier Saint Elias Mountains 

Muir Glacier 


Wars (which see) this region was part of 
Turkey. It is bounded by Montenegro, Serbia 
and Greece. 

Founding of the New State. Albania was 
created by a conference of ambassadors of the 
Great Powers which was held in London in 
1912 and 1913 in order to settle the problems 
arising out of the war between the Balkan 
allies and Turkey. At the insistent requests 
both of Austria and Italy, and in order to avoid 
great European complications, the ambassa- 




ALBANIA 


147 


ALBANIA 


dorial conference accepted the principle of the 
autonomy of Albania. The fixing of the boun¬ 
daries of the new state was a difficult problem, 
partly on account of the demands of Serbia 
for an outlet on the Adriatic Sea, which could 
have been accomplished only through Alba¬ 
nian territory. This question became still 
more acute after the Montenegrins, in April, 
1913, took the town of Scutari, which they 
wished to annex. Albania therefore assumed 
importance at that time on the political and 
diplomatic horizon of Europe. 

The Albanians offered the crown to Prince 
William of Wied, a nephew of the late queen 
of Rumania, well-known under her literary 
name of ‘‘Carmen Sylva.” Prince William ac¬ 
cepted the crown and arrived at Durazzo on 
March 7, 1914. His reign was short. An insur¬ 
rection broke out, and the prince abdicated 
in September, 1914, a short time after the War 
of the Nations began. A provisional govern¬ 
ment was established under Essad Pasha, an 
Albanian leader. Albania was subsequently 
invaded both by Austrian and Italian troops, 
while the southern part was occupied by 
Greece. 

Area and Population. The frontiers of the 
new state were fixed by an international com¬ 
mission. Albania covers an area of 10,500 to 
11,500 square miles, or a little more than the 
land area of Maryland. The population is 
roughly estimated at 800,000. But the state 
does not include all the territory where the 
preponderating population is Albanian. Many 
Albanians are under the rule of the neighbor¬ 
ing states of Montenegro, Serbia and Greece. 
If these are added the number of Albanians 
would reach about 1,500,000. 

The principal cities are Durazzo, the capital; 
Scutari, Elbasan, Tirana, Argyrocastro, Berat, 
Koritza and Valona. The most important of 
them are treated under their titles in these 
volumes. 

The country is very mountainous, being 
traversed by several high ranges, separated by 
long and narrow valleys. The mountains are 
clothed with extensive forests, and it is be¬ 
lieved they are rich in minerals. The chief 
rivers, the Boyana, Shkumb, Drin, Viossa and 
Arta, are too rapid to be navigable. There 
are few good roads in the country, and no rail¬ 
roads whatever. Bridle-paths are almost the 
only means of communication. There are very 
few bridges over the rivers. One of the most 
pathetic episodes during the War of the Na¬ 
tions was the retreat of the Serbian army be¬ 


fore the victorious Austrians through this wild 
country, in the fall of 1915. 

National Characteristics. The Albanians 
present a distinct national type and possess 
some remarkable qualities. Although ignorant 
and superstitious, these mountaineers are 
truthful, brave and faithful. They make ex¬ 
cellent soldiers and retainers, and they for¬ 
merly supplied the Turkish army with some 
of its best fighters; the bodyguard of the sul¬ 
tan of Turkey has often been composed of 
Albanians. Most of the attendants at the for¬ 
eign embassies and consulates in Eastern 
Europe are Albanians, and travelers in this 
part of the world are impressed with the phys¬ 
ical appearance, the picturesque native dress, 
as well as the fine array of arms they carry. 
For, when thus employed, they are heavily 
armed and display their weapons in such a 
manner that anyone can see them. 

Language. The Albanian language is inter¬ 
esting, for it is different from any other lan¬ 
guage in Europe. It belongs to the family of 
the Indo-European languages and is related to 
Latin and ancient Greek. It seems to be the 
only surviving language of what was probably 
the primitive speech of the inhabitants of the 
Balkan Peninsula. The language has two 
widely different dialects, which are spoken 
respectively by the two chief divisions of the 
nation, namely, the Ghegs in the north and 
the Tusks in the south. 

Religion. About two-thirds of the Alba¬ 
nians are Mohammedans; of the remainder 
those in the north are mostly Roman Catho¬ 
lics, while many in the south belong to the 
Greek Orthodox Church. 

Customs. Tribal Organization. The Al¬ 
banians are the oldest original inhabitants of 
the Balkan Peninsula. On account of the 
mountainous nature of the country they have 
retained their marked national individuality 
and their ancient institutions and customs. 
They are the only people in Europe who have 
preserved to the present day the organization 
in tribes. The tribe is usually composed of 
several clans, and each clan is under a chief 
who is, strictly speaking, a military leader. 
The tribal organization regulates not only the 
political but also the social relations of the 
people. Thus, a man is not allowed to marry 
a woman of his own tribe. The tribal organi¬ 
zation has been preserved more fully in the 
mountainous regions in the north, while in 
the south it has been supplanted by a sort of 
feudal system. 


ALBANIA 


148 


ALBANIA 


The Blood-Feud. One of the customs which 
plays an important part in the life of the 
Albanians is the blood-feud, or blood-ven¬ 
geance. When a man is killed it is the duty 
of his family to avenge him by the death of 
the murderer or one of his male relatives, so 
a feud involves not only individuals but also 
families. The murderer usually takes refuge 
in the mountains from the avenger of blood 
or remains for years shut up in his house. In 
the opinion of an Albanian, blood can only be 
avenged with blood. The blood-vengeance is 
not a lawless impulse of savages, but a social 
obligation which is subjected to as strict a 
code of laws as the laws of the duel, for in¬ 
stance. A feud only ends with the death of 
the murderer; but sometimes peace is made 
by the payment of a certain sum to the fam¬ 
ily of the murdered man. Women are never 
involved in a blood feud; in fact, the avenger 
must not kill his victim when the latter is 
accompanied by a woman or a child. 

Marriage. Marriage is always arranged by 
the fathers of the young people. The betrothal 
takes place when the children are quite young. 
An Albanian wife is always bought, and the 
father of the boy pays part of the purchase 
money at the time the arrangement has been 
concluded. The balance is paid on the wed¬ 
ding day. The young girl may refuse to 
marry the man selected for her, but in that 
case she must take a solemn oath to remain 
single all her life. The young man is obliged 
to marry the girl to whom he is betrothed, 
otherwise he starts a blood-feud with her 
family. 

History. This region, known in ancient 
times as Illyria, was conquered by the Romans 
during the second century before our era. 
During the Middle Ages it was invaded by 
various Slav peoples, who settled here. When 
the Turks began the conquest of the Balkan 
Peninsula the Albanians fought heroicalbr for 
their independence. Under their celebrated 
leader, George Castriota or Scanderbeg, the 
Albanians fought the Turks successfully from 
1444 to 1456. But after his death the Turks 
conquered the country in 1478 and made it a 
Turkish province. Many Albanians then em¬ 
braced Mohammedanism. 

The country was almost independent from 
1807 to 1822, when it was under the rule of 
Ali Pasha of Tepelen, surnamed the Lion of 
Janina, who is mentioned in Lord Byron’s 
poems. In 1880 the Albanians tried to gain 
their independence, but were unsuccessful. 



Outline and Questions on 
Albania 


I. Location 
II. Size 

(1) Comparative 

(2) Absolute 

(3) Population 

III. Surface Features 

(1) Mountains 

(2) Rivers 

IV. The People 

(1) Distinguishing' characteristics 

(2) Language 

(3) Religion 

(4) Education 

(5) Interesting customs 

(a) Tribal organization 

(b) Blood-feud 

(c) Marriage 

V. History 

(1) Subjection to Turkey 

(2) Attempts at independence 

(3) Independence recognized by Great 
Powers 


Questions 

What are the religions of the people? 

In what part of the country is Italy 
especially interested? 

Is it easy to travel in Albania? 

What Albanian has figured in Amer¬ 
ican literature? 

What sort of language have the 
people? 

What is the state of education? 

What are the strange marriage cus¬ 
toms of this land? 

Who is Prince William of Wied? 

What famous Italian statesman was 
an Albanian? 

When was the independence of Al¬ 
bania proclaimed? 

What was this region called when it 
was a part of the Roman Empire? 

What ancient system of organization 
have the Albanians been the only peo¬ 
ple in Europe to preserve? 


















ALBAN MOUNTAINS 


149 


ALBANY 


After the Young Turks revolution in Turkey 
in 1907, Albania was in continual revolt, with 
the aim of gaining its independence. Finally, 
during the Balkan War, the people proclaimed 
their independence at Avlona on November 18, 
1912, and this was recognized by the ambas¬ 
sadorial conference in London. The fate of 
this troubled little country after the War of 
the Nations is one of the diplomatic prob¬ 
lems of Europe. 

Further Interesting Facts. Albania is the 
only country in Europe without railways. 

Avlona, also spelled Valona, is connected 
with the Italian port of Otranto, sixty-five 
miles away, by a submarine cable. 

The Albanian title of Prince William of 
Wied was Mpret. 

One of Italy’s demands on Austria in its 
note of April 8, 1915, previous to entering the 
War of the Nations, was that Austria should 
renounce all interest in Albania and acknowl¬ 
edge Italian sovereignty over the shores of the 
bay of Avlona. In answering, Austria agreed 
to renounce all political interest in the little 
country. 

The hero of Fitz-Greene Halleck’s poem 
Marco Bozzaris was an Albanian. His story 
appears in these volumes. 

Francesco Crispi, the Italian statesman who 
created the Triple Alliance, was a descendant 
of the Albanians who fled to Italy and Sicily 
when the Turks first invaded Albania. 

Education is Albania’s greatest need. Aside 
from the church institutions, open, of course, 
only to Christians, there are practically no 
schools. A normal school at Elbasan, founded 
by native leaders, was suppressed by the Turks 
in 1910 and all persons connected with it were 
publicly beaten. o.b. 

ALBAN MOUNTAINS, a group of low 
mountains of volcanic origin, lying in the cen¬ 
tral part of Italy, thirteen miles southeast of 
Rome. They have several extinct craters, two 
of which are the beds of lakes. On the central 
crater, 3,145 feet above sea level, a temple to 
Jupiter stood in ancient times. The Romans 
made these mountains a popular resort be¬ 
cause of their agreeable climate and beautiful 
scenery. 

ALBANY CONVENTION, a representative 
assembly which met at Albany, N. Y., in June, 
1754, and drew up the first scheme for a 
political union of the American colonies. It 
was summoned by the British government, 
and was made up of delegates from Massa¬ 
chusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode 


Island, New York, Pennsylvania and Mary¬ 
land. After proposing a union with the Five 
Nations in the war with France, it drew up, 
at the instance of Benjamin Franklin, a plan 
for a government, which was to consist of a 
president-general, appointed by the Crown, 
and a Grand Council of representatives from 
the colonies. Though rejected by England 
and the colonies, the scheme is important as 
one of the first steps toward final union of 
the Americans. 

ALBANY, Ga., an active commercial city, 
popularly called The Artesian City, on account 
of an abundant supply of artesian water, 
which is used for all the requirements of its 
people. The city was founded in 1836, was 
incorporated in 1838 and named for Albany, 
New York. The population, chiefly American, 
increased from 8,190 in 1910 to 13,126 in 1915; 
the area is over three square miles. 

Albany is the county seat of Dougherty 
County, and is situated in the southwestern 
part of the state, about 188 miles south of 
Atlanta, 107 miles southwest of Macon and 
210 miles west of Savannah. The Atlantic 
Coast Line, Seaboard Air Line, Central of 
Georgia, Georgia Southwestern and Gulf, and 
Georgia Northern railways, offer railway ac¬ 
commodations, and the Flint River, which is 
navigable up to this point, affords steamer 
transportation. The principal industrial enter¬ 
prises are cotton compresses, fertilizing facto¬ 
ries, cotton-oil mills, brick plants and lumber 
manufacturing plants. A Federal building 
erected in 1911, at a cost of $125,000, a $65,000 
city hall constructed in 1909, and a $75,000 
Municipal Auditorium built in 1916, are 
structures worthy of note. One of the nine 
municipal abattoirs in the United States, and 
the only one municipally owned and controlled 
in Georgia, is located here. An excellent 
school system, a Carnegie Library and a busi¬ 
ness college offer educational advantages, and 
the city has a public hospital and six banks. 

This rapidly growing city is situated in one 
of the richest agricultural sections of Georgia, 
which produces cotton, corn, hay, oats, water¬ 
melons, wheat, muskmelons, fruits and vege¬ 
tables. The pecan-raising industry has attracted 
considerable attention to this district, about 
50,000 acres being devoted to the cultivation of 
paper-shell nuts. Albany is also a favorite 
health resort, climatic conditions being excel¬ 
lent, and there are beautiful parks, fine roads 
for motoring, and a country club. The famous 
Blue Spring is in the vicinity. j.h.m. 


ALBANY 


150 


ALBANY 



JL. jL-LBANY, N. Y., the capital of the 

state, the county seat of Albany county and 
a city of historical interest, for it is one of the 
oldest in the Union. It is located on the west 
bank of the Hudson River, in the eastern part 
of the state, about midway between its north¬ 
ern and southern borders. New York City is 
145 miles south, and Boston is 165 miles south¬ 
east. Albany is the gateway for traffic and 
travel between Boston and New York and the 
west and north. It has railway communica¬ 
tion through the Boston & Albany, Boston & 
Maine, Delaware & Hudson, New York Central 
and West Shore railways, and w T ater connec¬ 
tion to the interior of the state and to the 
north by way of the Erie and the Champlain 
canals. With the ocean it is connected by the 
Hudson River, navigable to this point by large 
steamers, smaller ones going six miles farther 
to Troy. Electric lines communicate with ad¬ 
jacent cities. The population increased from 
100,253 in 1910 to 103,580 in 1915. The area 
of the city is fifteen square miles. 

Parks and Boulevards. Albany extends for 
four miles in a narrow plain along the river, 
and in this section it is frequently flooded in 
the spring. From this ground it rises to a 
plateau 200 feet above tide-level, and presents 
an attractive appearance, with its fine buildings 
and beautiful parks. There are ninety-five 
acres of boulevards receiving park care, the 
most beautiful being Manning Boulevard, in 
the western section, with a fine driveway and 
bridle paths and walks on either side separated 
by lawns and stately trees. The city is build¬ 
ing an extensive concrete pier on the water 
front, including recreation parks, boat landings, 
walks, a driveway, etc. Of its eighteen parks, 
Washington Park is the largest. It contains 
a lake six acres in area, the massive King 
Fountain representing “Moses Smiting the 
Rock,” and a fine statue of Robert Burns, 
mounted on Aberdeen granite. Beaver Park, 
containing about eighty acres, has a charming 
driveway built through the rocky bed of an 
old stream. 


Buildings. The most conspicuous feature 
of the city is the magnificent Capitol, of solid 
Maine granite, one of the most remarkable 
structures in the United States, erected at a 
cost of $25,000,000; the great western stair¬ 
case alone cost nearly $2,000,000. The Mili¬ 
tary Museum, on the second floor, contains 
many relics of the wars of Secession and the 
Revolution. Opposite the Capitol is the new 
imposing State Education Building, which con¬ 
tains the administrative offices of the Univer¬ 
sity of the State of New York, including the 
State Library of 450,000 volumes; and the 
State Museum. Other notable structures are 
the Federal building, state hall, city hall, state 
armory, a new one-million dollar courthouse, 
and a new high school. The interior of the 
State Hall is being extensively modified to 
make this building a state judicial building, in 
which the court of appeals of the state is to 
have its office and to hold court. Albany is 
noted for its many handsome churches, the 
most imposing being the Roman Catholic 
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, a 
Gothic structure with a seating capacity of 
2,500; All Saints Episcopal Cathedral and 
Saint Peter’s Church, the latter one of the 
oldest in the United States, Temple Beth 
Emeth, Saint Joseph’s, Saint Paul’s, the First 
Presbyterian (1763), First Reformed (1642) 
and Madison Avenue Reformed churches are 
all notable. Van Rensselaer Manor House, 
erected in 1666, Schuyler Mansion, in 1760, 
and Ten Broeck Mansion, in 1798, are build¬ 
ings of historical interest. 

Educational and Benevolent Institutions. In 
addition to the public schools, Albany has a 
State College for Teachers; the Albany Med¬ 
ical College, the Albany Law School and the 
Albany College of Pharmacy, which are de¬ 
partments in Union University, at Schenec¬ 
tady; the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Al¬ 
bany Academy for Girls, Albany Academy for 
Boys, Saint Agnes School (Episcopal), Dudley 
Observatory, Albany Institute and Historical 
and Art Society, and the Y. M. C. A. apd 


































ALBANY 


151 


ALBATROSS 


Y. W. C. A. Besides the state library there 
are twelve libraries containing nearly 525,000 
volumes. The city also has Albany Orphan 
Asylum, Albany Hospital, built on the pavilion 
plan and covering sixteen acres (see Hospital), 
and the new Saint Peter’s and the Homeo¬ 
pathic hospitals. 

Commerce and Industry. The importance of 
Albany as a transfer point for traffic has been 
considerably lessened by through freight serv¬ 
ice, but it remains a prominent passenger cen¬ 
ter, distributing point and lumber port. The 
leading industrial plants of the city are iron 
and brass-works and manufactories of shirts, 
collars and cuffs, clothing, knit goods and 
tobacco products. 

History. On the site of Albany was planted 
one of the oldest permanent settlements within 
the territory of the thirteen original states. Its 
historical interest is due to its strategic location 
during the conflict between the English and 
French in America and during the Revolution¬ 
ary War. In 1824 some Huguenot refugees 
from Belgium, known as Dutch Walloons, set¬ 
tled here, and Fort Orange was built in the 
same year near the spot now occupied by the 
Capitol. In 1630 William Van Rensselaer 
bought a large tract of land around this settle¬ 
ment and sent a party from Holland as ten¬ 
ants; this settlement was annexed to Fort 
Orange in 1652. It was first named Fuyck, 
meaning hoop-net, on account of the bend in 
the river, where the settlement was made; later 
it became Beverwyck, and when New Nether¬ 
lands was transferred to the English, the name 
was changed to Albany, in honor of the Duke 
of York and Albany, afterward King James II. 
In 1686 a city charter was granted. The most 
important of four Albany Conventions met 
here in 1754 to form “a plan of a proposed 
union of the several colonies.” In 1797 the 
city was chosen for the capital of the state. 
From the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 
the growth of the city was rapid, the popula¬ 
tion increasing fivefold in less than four years. 
Albany has several times suffered heavy losses 
by fires, the most disastrous being those of 1797, 
1848 and 1911; in the last-named year the state 
library of 500,000 volumes was destroyed. 

Within recent years two city planners of 
national reputation have been employed to 
work out a general scheme for the beautifying 
of the city in building parks, boulevards and 
a water front, in modifying the electric light 
system, and in making other improvements. 
The city has either completed or has now under 


construction improvements, including repaving, 
to the value of $11,000,000. t.e.f. 

ALBANY RIVER, a Canadian stream,,one of 
the large rivers which drain the western part 
of Ontario. The river has its source in Lake 
Saint Joseph, about 180 miles north of Port 
Arthur, and flows in a general easterly direction 
for 600 miles, emptying into James Bay at 
Fort Albany, on its southwestern shore. About 
150 miles from its mouth the Albany is joined 
by the Kenogami, its largest tributary, whose 
branches extend west and south to the shores 
of Lake Superior. The drainage basin of the 
Albany covers an area of 60,000 square miles, 
about one-sixth of the entire province of 
Ontario. The lower part of the river is navig¬ 
able, but is little used. 

AL'BATROSS, al'hatraws or al'hatrahs, 
one of the largest of birds that fly, is found in 
nearly all temperate parts of the ocean, but is 
chiefly at home in the Southern seas. It is 
regarded with superstitious veneration by sail- 





Great albatross !—the meanest birds 
Spring up and flit away, 

While thou must toil to gain a flight, 

And spread those pinions grey ; 

But when they once are fairly poised, 

Far o’er each chirping thing 
Thou sailest wide to other lands, 

E’en sleeping on the wing. 

Chas. G. Leland— Perseverando. 

ors, and its destruction is supposed to be 
avenged with terrible disaster to the destroyer. 
The true albatross is a bird of great beauty, 
nearly all white on the body, with darker tail 
and wings; the latter have a spread of from ten 
to fourteen feet from tip to tip. Its power of 
flight is extraordinary. Day after day it will 
follow a ship, apparently never resting, feeding 
on refuse thrown from the vessel and on fish 
that rise to the surface of the sea. 

Its bill is heavy and powerful, more than 
four inches long, and strongly curved at the 
tip. Like most large birds, it is greedy in eat- 







ALBEMARLE 


152 


ALBERT 


ing, and is readily caught with a line and hook 
baited with a piece of meat. The albatross 
seeks Jand only to breed, selecting some lonely 
island or desolate coast. One large white egg 
is laid on the ground, no nest of any kind 
being made. The young bird, which is hatched 
in about forty days, is covered with a sooty, 
fluffy down and does not acquire its beautiful 
plumage for several months. Four species of 
albatross are found on the Pacific coast of 
North America, but they are considerably 
smaller than the true albatross of the Southern 
ocean. 

The most conspicuous reference to the alba¬ 
tross in literature occurs in Coleridge’s poem, 
The Ancient Mariner (which see). e.t.s. 

ALBEMARLE, al' be marl, SOUND, a great 
bay in the northeast lowlands of North Caro¬ 
lina, extending from the mouths of the Chowan 
and the Roanoke rivers eastward to the Atlan¬ 
tic Ocean, from which it is separated by a long 
island. Its length is about fifty-five miles, and 
its width from four to fifteen miles. The water 
is shallow and nearly fresh, and the sound is 
not greatly affected by the ocean tides. 

ALBERT, Francis Charles Augustus 
Emanuel (1819-1861), the husband of Queen 
Victoria of Great Britain, known popularly as 
the Prince Consort. His rank of nobility was 
Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. He was born 
near Coburg, in Germany, and was educated 
under private tutors and at the University of 
Bonn. In 1840 he was married to Queen Vic¬ 
toria, with whom he lived most happily until 
his death. 

ALBERT I (1875- ), king of the Belgians 

since 1909, one of the most heroic and most 
pathetic figures of the twentieth century. At 
the end of July, 1914, King Albert was ruling 
in peace over a prosperous, peaceful nation; 
two months later he was still king of the Bel¬ 
gians, but almost the whole of his country 
was in the hands of invaders, and he, with the 
remnant of the Belgian army, was defending 
the last corner of Belgium over which the Bel¬ 
gian flag still waved. The War of the Nations 
made Albert the idol of his people. He per¬ 
sonally commanded the Belgian army, resisted 
the German advance at every point, and, 
although repeatedly urged not to expose him¬ 
self to the hardships and dangers faced by his 
soldiers, refused to yield the active leadership 
to others. 

King Albert was born on April 8, 1875. He 
is the son of Philip, Count of Flanders, younger 
brother of King Leopold II, and the grandson 


of King Leopold I, the German prince who 
was elected king of the Belgians in 1831. He is 
a second cousin of King George V of Great 
Britain and Ireland and of Emperor William 
II of Germany, and is distantly related to 



King Ferdinand I of Bulgaria. At the death 
of King Leopold II, on December 17, 1909, 
Albert became king, because Leopold left no 
sons and his three daughters were excluded 
from succession by the Salic law (which see). 
As a boy Albert was carefully educated, and 
later made a special study of economics and 
social science. He traveled extensively, made 
a study of railways in the United States under 
the guidance of James J. Hill, and studied con¬ 
ditions in the Belgian Congo at first hand. 
Long before he became king his liberal and 
democratic inclinations were well known, and 
since 1909 have frequently shown themselves 
in the affectionate care he has lavished on his 
people. 

King Albert’s private life, unlike that of his 
predecessor on the throne, has been above 
reproach. On October 2, 1900, he married Prin¬ 
cess Elizabeth of Bavaria, who was conspicuous 
at the outbreak of the War of the Nations for 
her courage and her loyalty to her adopted 
country. Their eldest child and the heir to 
the throne is Prince Leopold, born in 1901. 
There are two other children, Prince Charles, 
born in 1903, and Princess Marie-Jose, born in 
1906, W.F.Z, 





ALBERTA 


153 


ALBERTA 




ALBERTA 


LBER'TA, one of the nine prov¬ 
inces of the Dominion of Canada. Like all of 
the great Canadian Northwest, it was for 200 
years, from 1670 to 1870, a part of Rupert’s 
Land, the domain of the Hudson’s Bay Com¬ 
pany. Not until 1882 was the name Alberta 
given to any part of Canada. In that year the 
Governor-General, the Marquis of Lome, and 
his wife, Princess Louise Alberta, daughter of 
Queen Victoria, paid an extended visit to 
Western Canada, and in honor of the Prin¬ 
cess the name Alberta was given to one of the 
newly-organized districts of the Northwest Ter- 


the west the 120th meridian (west) is the boun¬ 
dary to the point where it intersects the main 
divide of the Rocky Mountains, which is the 
boundary thence southward. Thus Alberta’s 
neighbors are the Northwest Territories, British 
Columbia, Saskatchewan and Montana. 

Area and Population. The area of the 
province is 255,285 square miles, which is 
about 3,500 square miles larger than Saskatch¬ 
ewan or Manitoba. Alberta is nearly 50,000 
square miles larger than either France or Ger¬ 
many, and has more than double the area of 
the British Isles. Of the states of the Union, 
only Texas, with 265,896 square miles, is larger. 
This vast province of Alberta is still sparsely 
populated. In 1901 it had only 73,000 inhabi¬ 
tants, but in 1905, when it became a province, 
the population was doubled. In the following 
decade the steady stream of immigration con¬ 
tinued until the outbreak of the War of the 
Nations in 1914. Between 1905 and 1914 ap¬ 
proximately 325,000 immigrants, from all parts 
of the world, made Alberta their new home. 
The Dominion census of 1911 gave it a popula¬ 
tion of 374,663, and estimates for 1917 placed 
the total at 550,000. This estimate gives Al¬ 
berta an average of 2.15 inhabitants per square 
mile, as compared with an average of 14.6 
for Texas, 143 for France and 225 for the 
German Empire. Thus there is yet room for 
millions of people in this inland empire. 

Of the total population, about one-fourth is 
of English birth or descent. Another fourth 
includes Scotch, Irish and other British. The 
remaining half includes Germans, Austrians, 
Scandinavians, French, and many other nation¬ 
alities and their descendants. The American- 
born population, much of which is included in 
the divisions already mentioned, totals about 
100,000. 

The urban or town population of Alberta 
is growing rapidly, but it does not yet equal 
the rural population. About forty per cent of 
the total is now found in cities or towns. The 
largest city is Calgary; Edmonton, the provin¬ 
cial capital, is next in size. Lethbridge, Medi- 



^5^/vT Ch£V\/A!> 


ALBERTA 

Part in solid black is the former district of 
Alberta; part shaded in diagonal lines shows 
portions of other districts added to original 
Alberta to form the present province. 

ritories. The original district of Alberta, as 
shown on the accompanying map, comprised 
less than half of the present province. In 1905 
the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan 
were erected from the area included in the four 
districts of Alberta, Assiniboia, Athabaska and 
Saskatchewan. 

The boundaries of Alberta, as fixed by the 
Dominion Parliament, are the 60th parallel on 
the north, the 49th parallel on the south, and 
the 110th iperidian (west) on the east; on 










































ALBERTA 


154 


ALBERTA 


cine Hat, Wetaskiwin and Red Deer rank in 
the order named. These are more fully de¬ 
scribed under their titles. 



Size of Alberta, as compared with the area 
of the entire Dominion of Canada. 


Physical Characteristics. The western boun¬ 
dary of Alberta, for part of its length, is the 
main divide of the Rocky Mountains, whose 
snowy peaks are Western Alberta’s distinctive 
feature. Many of them have altitudes of 
10,000 feet or more, and a few exceed 12,000 
feet, notably Mount Athabaska, Mount Colum¬ 
bia and Mount Alberta. Mount Assiniboine, a 
famous peak, reaches 11,830 feet. On clear days 
the mountains are visible from the plains 100 
miles to the east. 

The eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains 
is very gradual, and many foot-hills soften the 
outlines of the peaks. East of the mountains 


and their foothills Alberta is a part of the 
Great Central Plain of North America. As far 
as the eye can see, in every direction, are undu¬ 
lating prairies, with here and there a low, tree¬ 
less ridge. The only striking surface features 
are the deep-set river channels in narrow val¬ 
leys which descend to a depth of 100 to 300 
feet below the level prairie or bench land. The 
southern part of the prairie has little native 
vegetation except grasses, with light scrub 
growth in the shelter of the coulees and with 
cottonwoods along the river bottoms. The 
rainfall is not abundant, and the moisture is 
quickly evaporated by the warm, dry winds 
from the west (see Chinook). By reason of its 
mild winter climate and naturally cured grasses, 
this area was formerly devoted to ranching, 
but by special methods suited to the condi¬ 
tions the whole of the country is being brought 
under cultivation. Irrigation is practised on 
lands tributary to Calgary, Lethbridge and 
Medicine Hat. Snowfall is not heavy in any 
part of the province, and in the south seldom 
lies throughout the winter. 

In the central and northern part of the prov¬ 
ince the rainfall is slightly heavier and the 
evaporation less rapid than in the south. Vege¬ 
tation, too, is heavier and more varied. The 
central part is diversified by poplar and willow 
bluffs, and farther north there is considerable 
timber in scattered blocks, chiefly in the lower 
parts of the river valleys. 

Climate. As Alberta is 750 miles long from 
north to south, and has a maximum width 


to 

c\2 -f 3 
cO^~ 

in -+^» 



British 
i Columbia 

iooo ft. ALBERTA 

Sask. 


Sea Level" 



ELEVATION OF ALBERTA 

Lowest point shown is at Medicine Hat, 2,181 feet above sea level. The highest elevation is 
on the western boundary, 5,326 feet. (Along the line of the Canadian Pacific Railroad .\ 



















ALBERTA 


155 


ALBERTA 


more than half as great, considerable varia¬ 
tions in climate are not astonishing. From the 
northern to the southern boundary is as far 
as from New York City to Charleston, South 
Carolina, and is almost as far as from San 
Francisco to Portland, Oregon. The province 
may be divided into three climatic parts, each 
about 250 miles long from north to south, 
each possessing a characteristic climate. The 
southern third, which includes such well-known 
places as Medicine Hat, Calgary and Banff, has 
a moderate, changeable climate, with an aver¬ 
age, or mean, winter temperature of 14° to 16° 
F. This is perhaps four or five degrees lower 
than the mean winter temperature for North¬ 
ern Illinois. 

The central section of Alberta, of which 
Edmonton may be taken as a center, has an 
average annual temperature about the same as 
that of Minneapolis. The mean winter tem¬ 
perature at Edmonton is about 10° F. The 
northern third has a severe climate, with the 
temperature hovering around zero during most 
of the winter. This region is usually called 
sub-arctic, but its low altitude, only 600 feet 
above sea level, gives it an average summer 
temperature less than two degrees lower than 
that of Edmonton and Calgary. Throughout 
the province differences in altitude produce 
marked variations in temperature. 

While the climate of Alberta, in common 
with that of the other prairie provinces, is 
usually said to be extreme, the inner slope of 
the Rocky Mountains is affected by warm 
western winds along its whole length. The 
effect is not so great in Central or Northern 
Alberta as it is under the strong Chinooks of 
Southern Alberta, but it is sufficient to make 
cultivation possible far north in the valley of 
Peace River (which see), and this area is being 
rapidly settled. 

Drainage. There are three great river sys¬ 
tems represented in the drainage of the prov¬ 
ince. In the extreme south is the Milk River, a 
tributary of the Missouri-Mississippi system. 
With this exception the entire drainage may be 
divided into two parts, the Saskatchewan and 
the Mackenzie systems, both of which have 
their origin on the Alberta slope of the Rocky 
Mountains. Between these two systems is a 
height of land, or watershed, running in a 
northeasterly direction between 53 and 54 N. 
South of the watershed the land slopes grad¬ 
ually to the east and is drained by the two 
branches and numerous tributaries of the Sas¬ 
katchewan. North of Edmonton the slope is 


more to the north, and here the waters are 
carried away by the Athabaska and Peace 
rivers, the great tributaries of the Mackenzie 
(see Mackenzie River; Saskatchewan River). 

There are numerous small lakes in Alberta, 
most of them either the sources or enlarge¬ 
ments of rivers. The largest of these are 
Lesser Slave Lake, with an area of 480 square 
miles, and Lake Athabaska, of whose total area 
of 2,842 square miles about one-third is in 
Alberta and the remainder in Saskatchewan. 

Natural Resources. Nearly 190,000 square 
miles, seventy-five per cent of the total area 
of Alberta, are suitable for cultivation. The 
soil is generally fertile, and though subject to 
variations in yield on account of differences in 
rainfall, produces good crops. The best soil is 
found in the central section, and consists chiefly 
of black vegetable mould from one to three 
feet deep. 



ALBERTA 

Map indicates boundaries, chief rivers, prin¬ 
cipal towns, highest point of land in the province 
and most important coal fields. 

The dryness of the southern part and the 
sub-arctic character of the north limit the lux- 









ALBERTA 


156 


ALBERTA 


uriance and to some extent the variety of plant 
life. Nearly all sections are covered with a 
large variety of native grasses. The south is a 
short-grass country, in which the growth cures 
naturally on the stem. In the center the grow¬ 
ing period is longer and the top of vegetation 
more luxuriant. To the grasses are added the 
sedges and a great variety of legumes, shrub¬ 
bery, wild fruits, and “bluffs” or groves of 
light tree growth, commonly called pole timber. 
The prairie is studded with a rich growth and 
succession of wild flowers for more than half 
the year. The heavier timber of the north 
includes fir, poplar, birch, jackpine, spruce and 
balsam. 

Animal Life. The plains were once the 
home of countless thousands of buffaloes, or 
bisons. But wild herds were rapidly extermi¬ 
nated in the early seventies through the de¬ 
mand for buffalo skins established by white 
traders from Fort Benton. In the mountains 
and woods are grizzly, black and brown bears, 
and the co 3 mte’s howl is familiar almost every¬ 
where. Because many of their haunts are inac¬ 
cessible to man, mountain sheep and goats are 
still numerous, and elk, antelope and red deer 
are common, and even the lordly moose, mon¬ 
arch of the forests, is frequently seen. Among 
other animals are the lynx, mountain lion, por¬ 
cupine, squirrel and rabbit. 

Farther to the north the fur hunter still 
follows the traditional occupation of the north- 
land, and ermine, otter, beaver, mink and mar¬ 
ten reward his labors. The north is also the 
home of the musk-ox, and is the nesting- 
ground for ducks, geese, swans and other 
migratory birds. The eagle, crane, partridge, 
hawk, owl and crow are plentiful. The lakes 
and rivers are well stocked with fish, pike, 
pickerel and whitefish being most abundant. 
In the mountains the brook trout lures the 
sportsman. 

A policy of strict conservation is being fol¬ 
lowed with respect to the desirable wild life of 
the province. Five parks are administered by 
the Dominion Commissioner of Parks, and in 
these the animal and plant life is fully pro¬ 
tected. Rocky Mountains Park and Jasper 
Park are great national resorts as well as game 
and forest preserves. At Buffalo Park and Elk 
Island Park a herd of a thousand prairie buffalo 
and a considerable number of moose, elk, deer 
and antelope are held. See, also, Rocky Moun¬ 
tains Park. 

Mineral Wealth. Below the surface of the 
earth Alberta has resources which are perhaps 


as important, if not as varied, as those which 
it possesses above ground. A little placer gold 
has been found along the North Saskatchewan 
River, but the gold mining industry has slowly 
decreased in importance since 1896 and 1897. 
Within the city of Medicine Hat and at other 
points near, natural gas for both domestic and 
commercial purposes is plentiful. Considerable 
supplies that have not yet been set to work 
exist at Fort McMurray and at other points in 
the province. Evidences of oil are still more 
general and promising, but the province is still 
in the exploration stage so far as this product 
is concerned. 

By far the most important of all the min¬ 
erals in Alberta is coal. Practically all of the 
southern half of the province is underlaid with 
coal measures, though only a small proportion 
of the area includes high-grade coal. Even 
where the coal is not good enough to repay 
the cost of transportation to a distance, it 
supplies local demand; this is especially true 
of the lignite, or brown varieties. On the main 
line of the Canadian Pacific, near Banff, are 
the most valuable deposits of bituminous and 
semi-anthracite coal. (See Coal, for map of 
Canada’s coal deposits.) 

Industries. Farming and Ranching. These 
are the leading industries. There are about 
700,000 head of cattle in the province, besides 
200,000 milch cows. Dairying is important in 
the central part of the province, and is rather 
highly specialized in the sections tributary to 
Edmonton and Calgary. The cows are mostly 
Holsteins, Ayrshires and Jerseys; the beef 
cattle are largely Shorthorns and Herefords. 
The raising of horses is an important branch, 
and their number seldom falls below 500,000. 
The soil, grasses and climate are highly favor¬ 
able to this industry. Alberta horses are 
famous for their endurance and generally sound 
constitutions. During the War of the Nations 
large numbers of them were sent to Europe 
for the use of the allies. The raising of sheep 
is a minor industry, but hog-raising is steadily 
increasing in importance. 

The growth of farming since 1901 is remark¬ 
able. In that year Alberta had 9,486 farms, 
occupying about 2,700,000 acres. In 1911 these 
figures had risen to 61,500 and 17,751,000 re¬ 
spectively. The value of the land occupied 
by farms increased in the same decade from 
$13,156,000 to $344,759,000, an increase in the 
ratio of one to twenty-six. Hardly less aston¬ 
ishing is the increase in the value of field 
crops, including wheat, oats, corn, barley and 


□ 


]□ 



A natural qas well burning 
at night 


r-athohc 


ions 


[i , Tjw iitiJM *iiuJiy'; 


Edmonton 




□ c 


]□ 












































































































































































































































ALBERTA 


158 


ALBERTA 


hay, which was $17,000,000 in 1910 and $60,000,- 
000 only four years later. The “bumper” crops 
of 1915, the greatest on record, were valued 
at $79,400,000. 

The most valuable crop is wheat, whose 
average annual production is about 30,000,000 
bushels. The oat crop is larger, usually be¬ 
tween 60,000,000 and 70,000,000 bushels, but its 
value is slightly less than that of wheat. Bar¬ 
ley, flax, potatoes, hay and alfalfa are other 
large crops. Some attention is now being 
given to garden vegetables and to orchard 
fruits, especially apples. Sugar beets are cul¬ 
tivated chiefly near Raymond, where there is 
a factory for the extraction of the sugar. 

Irrigation. To some extent irrigation has 
been practised in Southern Alberta since this 
section was first settled, but the works were 
crude and the irrigated tracts were small. 
After the passage of the first Dominion irri¬ 
gation law in 1894, there was for a few years 
a considerable development of irrigation in 
the districts east of Calgary and east of Leth¬ 
bridge. Since 1910 there has been a large enter¬ 
prise established west of Medicine Hat. 

The greatest of all the 400 or more irriga¬ 
tion projects in the province is that under¬ 
taken by the Canadian Pacific Railway. The 
tract under irrigation consists of 3,000,000 acres 
along the company’s main line between Cal¬ 
gary and Medicine Hat. Water for this area 
is taken from the Bow River; for the western 
section it is diverted near Calgary, and for 
the eastern section at the Horse Shoe Bend, 
near Bassano. The Lethbridge enterprise now 
also belongs to the Canadian Pacific Railway. 
Irrigation, far from encouraging large one-crop 
farms, makes possible three desirable results— 
diversified farming, rotation of crops and in¬ 
tensive cultivation. Under ordinary farming 
conditions which any progressive farmer could 
duplicate, an irrigated acre on the Dominion 
experimental farm at Strathmore has yielded a 
net profit of more than $300 on strawberries. 
An adjoining acre, planted with garden peas, 
yielded a profit of $260 for the season’s crop. 

Mining. The richness of Alberta’s mineral 
deposits naturally makes mining one of the 
great industries. The production of placer 
gold, which amounted to an average of $50,000 
a year about 1895, is now insignificant. Lead 
and silver are mined in small quantities, and 
natural gas and oil are found in many parts. 
Calgary, Macleod, Lethbridge and other cities 
are supplied with natural gas piped from Bow 
Island, about thirty miles southwest of Medi¬ 


cine Hat. The large well at Bow Island pro¬ 
duces 8,000,000 cubic feet a day. Farther 
north, in the vicinity of Wetaskiwin and To- 
field, exploration and development work is 
being carried on. A number of wells have been 
drilled along the Athabaska River. Natural 
gas and petroleum were discovered in 1913 near 
Calgary, but the value of these wells is still a 
matter of speculation. 

The coal production of Alberta, if due allow¬ 
ance is made for labor troubles, is making 
steady progress. The average yearly output, 
4,000,000 tons, is about three times that in 
1905. A small quantity, not over 300,000 tons, 
is anthracite; about 900,000 tons is lignite, and 
the balance is bituminous. The annual value 
of this output is about $10,000,000. 

Manufactures. The manufacturing interests 
are rapidly growing. Slaughtering and meat 
packing is the first in importance, but a close 
second is the flour and grist mill industry. 
These two industries combined furnish about 
one-third of the total of $25,000,000 worth of 
manufactures. The industries dependent on 
lumbering form a third important group, with 
an annual output which usually reaches a total 
of $3,000,000. Minor industries include the 
making of brick and tile, butter and cheese, 
malt liquors and bakery products. 

Means of Travel and Communication. Lack 
of railway communication left the Northwest 
Territories for many years with the character¬ 
istics of a frontier community. In 1871, when 
British Columbia became a part of the Do¬ 
minion, one of the conditions on which it in¬ 
sisted before joining was the construction of 
a transcontinental railway. This railway, the 
Canadian Pacific, was complete in 1885, thus 
giving Alberta rail connection with the rest 
of the Dominion. In the following twenty 
years there was little additional construction. 
In 1905, when Alberta became a province, the 
Canadian Pacific was still the only railway; 
besides the main line there were two impor¬ 
tant branches, linking Calgary with Edmonton 
and Macleod. The total mileage was 1,060. 
There are now three great transcontinental 
railways crossing the province, with a total 
mileage, including branches, of about 4,500. 
Contracts and surveys already made by the 
railways call for the construction of an addi¬ 
tional 4,500 miles in the near future. See 
Canada, subhead Transportation. 

The telephone and telegraph systems have 
kept pace with this rapid increase in transpor¬ 
tation facilities. Wherever the railroad goes 


ALBERTA 


159 


ALBERTA 


the telegraph is sure to follow, and Alberta 
has practically an equal mileage of railways 
and telegraphs. It has about 45,000 telephones 
in use, a ratio of one telephone to every eleven 
or twelve of population. Only in the United 
States is the telephone as much used. The 
telephone system is owned and operated by the 
provincial government. 

Government. The government of Alberta, 
like that of Saskatchewan, was organized by 
authority of the Dominion Parliament in 1905. 
The formal inauguration of provincial gov¬ 
ernment took place on September 1, in the 
presence of Earl Grey, then Governor-General, 
and Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Premier of the Do¬ 
minion. 

The Legislature. Alberta is now represented 
in the Dominion Parliament by four Senators, 
and in accordance with the census of 1911, is 
entitled to twelve members in the House of 
Commons, but in the twelfth Parliament, 
which opened in 1911, had only seven mem¬ 
bers. The legislative powers of the province 
are exercised by an assembly of fifty-six mem¬ 
bers, whose enactments require the approval-of 
the Lieutenant-Governor. 

The Executive. The Lieutenant-Governor is 
the chief executive, as the representative of 
the Governor-General of Canada, and indi¬ 
rectly as the representative of the sovereign 
of the United Kingdom. He is appointed by 
the Governor-General in Council for a term 
of five years, and receives an annual salary of 
$9,000. The actual administration of depart¬ 
ments is in the hands of an executive council 
of eight members, one of whom is premier. 
Members of the council must hold seats in the 
legislative assembly, and are responsible to it 
for their acts. If the ministry loses the con¬ 
fidence of the assembly, it has no course open 
to it but resignation. 

Provincial Finance. The provincial revenue 
is derived mainly from three sources—a Do¬ 
minion subsidy, the sale of public school lands, 
and a tax on corporations. The first of these 
is by far the largest, now amounting to 
$1,500,000 a year. It includes a fixed appro¬ 
priation of $50,000, an allowance of eighty cents 
per head of population, and a number of 
other items. The sale of public school lands 
adds about $200,000 a year to the revenue, 
and the tax on banks, loan and trust com¬ 
panies, railways and other corporations about 
an equal amount. Interest, fees, and miscel¬ 
laneous sources bring the total provincial rev¬ 
enue to an average of $5,000,000 a year. 


The Courts. Besides the Dominion courts, 
which have jurisdiction in Alberta, there are 
'a number of courts established by authority 
of the province, namely, the supreme and dis¬ 
trict courts. For minor offenses of a crim¬ 
inal nature there are local justices of the 
peace^ or police magistrates. The jurisdic¬ 
tion of the district courts is practically uni¬ 
versal, except in civil suits involving more 
than $600. By mutual consent of the par¬ 
ties, however, such cases may be tried by 
the district judge. The district courts are held 
at Edmonton, Wetaskiwin, Calgary, Macleod, 
Lethbridge, Red Deer, Bassano, Taber and 
Medicine Hat. The supreme court of Alberta 
is composed of a chief justice and eight puisne, 
or associate, judges. It has practically unlim¬ 
ited original and appellate jurisdiction. The 
court sitting with three judges constitutes a 
court of appeal, which may review the decisions 
of any individual judge or any other court. 
This court also decides any legal and constitu¬ 
tional questions submitted to it by the Lieu¬ 
tenant-Governor. 

Local Government. The general superin¬ 
tendence of local government is in the hands 
of the Minister of Municipal Affairs, a member 
of the Executive Council of the province. 
Rural communities and towns are governed 
under provincial acts. The rural municipality 
has a council including a reeve and five coun¬ 
cillors, and a town has a mayor and six coun¬ 
cillors. The affairs of incorporated cities are 
regulated by special charters. 

Education. The unit of education in Al¬ 
berta is the school district, and there are over 
* 

2,000 of these. The district is usually about 
four miles square, and may be organized as 
soon as it has four taxpayers and eight children 
of school age. The local school boards, elected 
by the voters, are under the general direction 
of the provincial Department of Education. 
The schools are supported partly by local taxa¬ 
tion and partly by grants from the govern¬ 
ment. About 100,000 children are enrolled in 
the public schools. 

Technically speaking, there are no high 
schools in Alberta, but in common speech the 
name public school is given to those offer¬ 
ing instruction in grades one to eight, and 
the name high school to those offering instruc¬ 
tion in grades nine to twelve. The aim has 
been to make an almost imperceptible transi¬ 
tion between elementary and secondary schools. 
To this end, all schools in a district are under 
the control of a single school board. Two 


ALBERTA 


160 


ALBERTA 


normal schools, at Calgary and Camrose, are 
maintained by the province. 

There is a distinct tendency to supplement’ 
the older academic system by vocational and 
technical work. In agriculture, the scope of the 
work in the public schools has been suitably 
defined, a system of secondary or trade schools 
in agriculture is administered by the provincial 
department of agriculture, and a faculty of 
agriculture has been established in the pro¬ 
vincial university. In Edmonton, Calgary, 
Medicine Hat, Lethbridge and other cities tech¬ 
nical work is established. 

To cap the public school system the pro¬ 
vincial University of Alberta (which see) was 


an act of the Dominion Parliament creating the 
provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. 

The formal legal installation of the new 
provincial officers took place on September 1, 
1905, Hon. George H. V. Bulyea being the first 
Lieutenant-Governor, and Hon. Alexander 
Cameron Rutherford the first Premier. The 
first legislature met in 1906 at Edmonton, 
which was fixed as the capital. The year 1909 
marked the completion of the Grand Trunk 
Pacific Railway from Winnipeg to Edmonton, 
and also the purchase by the government of 
all the telephone lines in the province. 

In the year 1910 Premier Rutherford, who 
w’as likewise Minister of Railways, resigned on 


THE FARM 

spring wheat 
Oats 

LiveStoch Sold 
Mi IK 

Fal i Wheat 

Hay,Dover 

Barley 

Potatoes 

Butter 


ALBERTA PRODUCTS CHART 

Figures Based on Canadian Government Reports 
Millions of Dot lars Annually 
5 10 15 20 25 


Animals slaughtered 
Flav 

Tumlps.Beets.etc 

Alfalfa 

Rye 



30 the factory 


Cut Stone 
Bread .Confectionery 
El Awnings,etc 
Punting,Publish mg 
i| Butler,Cheese 
Electricity 
Log Products 
Brick,Tie 
Railroad Car Repairs 
Lu m ber 
Flour,Grist 
Meatpacking. 

THE MINE 

Coa i 


SOURCES OF ALBERTA'S WEALTH, IN AMOUNTS FOR AVERAGE YEARS 


established at Edmonton in 1910. Affiliated 
with it are Alberta College (Methodist) and 
Robertson College (Presbyterian). The other 
institutions for higher education include the 
Provincial Institute of Technology at Calgary, 
the Lutheran College at Camrose, the Presby¬ 
terian Ladies’ College at Red Deer, Mount 
Royal College (Methodist) and Western Can¬ 
ada College (Baptist), both at Calgary. 

History. As told above, the name Alberta 
was given to a district of the Northwest Terri¬ 
tories in 1882. Calgary was founded in the 
next year, and the completion of the Canadian 
Pacific Railway in 1885 gave a new impulse to 
settlement. As other communities soon dotted 
the plains, a demand arose for self-government, 
but not until 1905 was this demand granted by 


account of the criticism from members of both 
parties of the method and terms of guaran¬ 
teeing the securities of the Alberta & Great 
Waterways Railway. Arthur L. Sifton, chief 
justice of the province, was called upon to 
form a government. These were both Liberal 
governments. 

The province had advanced liberal subsidies 
to the railway company, and had guaranteed 
its bonds. The Sifton government, claiming 
that the company was not fulfulling its con¬ 
tract, attempted to withdraw 87,400,000 which 
was deposited in several Edmonton banks to 
the credit of the company. The effect of this 
act would have been to place the railway 
under provincial control, but after the case 
had been carried’ through the lower courts, the 












































ALBERTA 


161 


ALBERTA 


Judicial Committee of the Imperial Privy 

Council decided that the government could not 

> _ 

seize these funds. Thereupon the government 
contracted with a private syndicate for the 
completion of the railway, a course which was 
severely criticised by the Liberal opposition as 
being a complete reversal of the Premier’s 
policy. Premier Sifton also attempted to re¬ 
verse the policy by which the Canadian Pacific 
Railway was relieved of taxes on over $60,000,- 
000 worth of property, but the Privy Council 
again decided against the government. The 
exemption, which dates from the organization 
of the company, was still in force at the be¬ 
ginning of the year 1917. 

A startling development in 1913 and 1914 
was the great oil “boom” in the Calgary dis¬ 
trict. Oil of excellent quality was first dis¬ 
covered in the now famous Dingman Well at 
Okotoks in October, 1913, and in the next year 
other wells were bored. The suddenness of the 
discovery was equalled by the enthusiasm of 
investors and promoters. As usual under such 
circumstances a few investors made large for¬ 
tunes, and many others placed their money in 
speculative companies. By August, 1914, there 
had been incorporated over 400 companies, with 
a total capitalization of $383,000,000. At the 
height of the boom stocks rose over night from 
a price of ten cents or twenty-five cents to 
several dollars a share, and the stock of one 
company was quoted at eighteen times its par 
value. The inevitable reaction which set in 
at the end of 1914 caused the failure of most 
of the companies which had been formed on a 
speculative basis. The undoubted fact, how¬ 
ever, is the presence of petroleum of good 
grade, and in time the field should be of great 
commercial importance. 

In 1915 the people of Alberta were called 
on to decide whether or not the province should 
have prohibition. For months the issue was 
debated in the public press, at public meetings 
and in pulpits. By a vote of 50,000 to 30,000 
the voters decided for prohibition, and on June 
30,1916, every hotel bar in the province closed 
its doors. The sale of liquors is now conducted 
through government vendors under strict reg¬ 
ulations. In 1916 an act of the legislature 
placed women on an absolute equality with 
men with respect to political rights and privi¬ 
leges as well as penalties and disabilities, j,mc c. 

Additional Items of Interest. The Marquis 
of Lome wrote this sonnet to his wife, Princess 
Louise Alberta, for whom the province was 
named: 


In token of the love which thou has shown 
For this wide land of freedom, I have named 
A province vast, and for its beauty famed, 

By thy dear name to be hereafter known. 
Alberta shall it be ! Her fountains thrown 
From Alps unto three oceans, to all men 
Shall vaunt her loveliness e’en now ; and when, 
Each little hamlet to a city grown, 

And numberless as blades of prairie grass, 
Or the thick leaves in distant forest bower, 
Great peoples hear the giant currents pass. 
Still shall the waters, bringing wealth and 
power, 

Speak the loved name—land of silver springs— 
Worthy the daughter of our English kings. 

Baseball games are called after supper in 
Alberta. In the southern part from seven to 
nine or nine-thirty o’clock is the regular time, 
but at Edmonton the day is almost an hour 
longer and the games may be correspondingly 
later. 

The coulees constitute a noticeable feature 
of -the great prairie region of Alberta. These 
are steep ravines which run into all the river 
valleys at right angles. Of old, they were 
stream beds. 

The Rocky Mountains Forest Reserve has an 
area as great as that of New Hampshire and 
Vermont combined. 

Lake Louise, in Rocky Mountains Park, is 
one of the most famous beauty spots on the 
continent, and is visited annual^ by thousands 
of tourists. 

Fox-farming is one of the new industries 
which is being developed in the neighborhood 
of Edmonton. 

Four passes lead over the mountains in Al¬ 
berta. They are picturesquely named Crow’s 
Nest Pass, Kicking Horse Pass, Yellow Head 
Pass and Peace River . Pass. 

Dry-farming is being extensively practised in 
Southern Alberta, with excellent results. See 
Dry-Farming. 

Tens of thousands of bisons were killed be¬ 
tween 1879 and 1882 on the prairies of Southern 
Alberta, when the land was being prepared for 
the coming of the Canadian Pacific Railway. 

There are in Alberta over 11,000 Indians, 
largely Crees and Blackfoots. They live on res¬ 
ervations scattered throughout the province. 

The Roman Catholics surpass in number an} r 
other religious denomination, except the Pres¬ 
byterians. Methodists and the Church of 
England rank next, in that order. 

There are over 3,000 Mormons in the 
province, but they are not of the t} r pe that 
preaches or practises polygamy. 

Throughout the country drained by the 


ALBERTA 


162 


ALBERTA 



RESEARCH QUESTIONS ON ALBERTA 


(An Outline suitable for Alberta will be found with the artiele “Province.’’) 

How did Alberta get its name? 

What is a coulee f 

Why has Alberta no more great herds of bison? 

What was the percentage of increase in population between 1901 and 1911? 

How many Canadian provinces are larger than Alberta? How many states of the 
United States? 

If all the inhabitants of Canada were transferred to Alberta, would the density 
of population be greater or less than that of the United States? 

What is meant by a “muskeg”? 

Explain the statement, “The climate makes the country, and the chinook makes 
the climate.” 

Name four passes across the Rocky Mountains in Alberta. 

How large is Rocky Mountains Park? 

Of what larger reservation is it a part? 

Does the larger part of Alberta’s population live in towns or in the country? 

Give statistics to show the marvelous growth of Alberta’s largest city. 

How many provinces have fewer people to the square mile than Alberta? How 
many states of the United States? 

What part of Alberta can well be called the “Switzerland of America”? Why? 

What natural advantages has Alberta that fit it especially for the raising of cattle 
and horses? 

Which is the largest lake in the province? Which is the most beautiful? 

How many acres are suitable for cultivation? 

Why is Alberta still known as a “sportsman’s paradise”? 

About what is it estimated that the horses of Alberta are worth? 

What percentage of increase was there in the number of farms in the province 
between 1901 and 1911? 

How many children must there be in a district before it can be organized for 
school purposes? 

In what way, besides the sending of troops, was Alberta able to help Great Britain 
in the War of the Nations? 

How does the amount of wheat raised in Alberta compare with that raised in 
Iowa? 

Compare, as to value, the coal production with its production of wheat; its lum¬ 
ber with its slaughtering industry. 

What interesting new industry is growing up near Edmonton? 

How important a problem is the “divorce-evil” in Alberta? 

What is the greatest irrigation project in Alberta? 

What percentage of increase has there been in railway mileage since Alberta 
became a province? 

How do Alberta’s facilities for telephone communication rank with those of the 
other provinces? With those of other countries? 

In which direction does the watershed run? 

About how many acres of cultivable land has Alberta? 

What have been the results of irrigation? 
















ALBERTA 


163 


ALBERT EDWARD NYANZA 


Athabaska there are mossy swamps, called 
“muskegs.” These, when drained, furnish ex¬ 
cellent farming land. 

From 1906 to 1914 there were but fourteen 
divorce cases in Alberta. Divorces can be ob¬ 
tained only by special act of Parliament. 

So rapidly are towns springing up that there 
exists among them a rivalry as to which shall 
rank as “the best new town of the year.” 

Some agriculturists pronounce the soil of Al¬ 
berta the most fertile in the world. 

The Alpine Club, which has its center at, 
Banff, is doing all it can to increase interest 
in mountain climbing. It has 1,000 members. 

At Fort Vermilion, less than ten degrees from 
the Arctic Circle, farming has been carried on 
for years, and the production of wheat is on 
the average twenty-one bushels to the acre. 
This is more than is usually grown on the 
same area in North Dakota or Kansas, the 
greatest wheat states of the United States. 

Consult Thwaites’ Alberta: Its Wealth and 
Progress. 

Related Subjects. The following articles con¬ 
tain much detailed information which will sup¬ 
plement the general material given in the article 
above: 

CITIES AND TOWNS 


Athabaska 

Lacombe 

Banff 

Lethbridge 

Bassano 

Macleod 

Blairmore 

Medicine Hat 

Calgary 

Raymond 

Cararose 

Red Cliff 

Cardston 

Red Deer 

Coleman 

Stettler 

Dunvegan 

Taber 

Edmonton 

Vegreville 

Grouard 

Wetaskiwin 


HISTORY 

Athabaska 

Royal Northwest 

Hudson’s Bay 

Company Mounted Police 


Rupert’s Land 


LAKES 

Athabaska 

Louise 

Lesser Slave 



MOUNTAINS 

Assiniboine 

Hooker 

Athabaska 

Marchison 

Columbia 

Rocky Mountains 


PRODUCTS 

Cattle 

Horses 

Coal 

Petroleum 

Fur 

Wheat 


RIVERS 

Athabaska 

Saskatchewan 

Peace 



UNCLASSIFIED 


Alberta, University of Rocky Mountains Park 
Rocky Mountains 


ALBER'TA, University of, a non-sectarian, 
coeducational institution of learning. It was 
established by act of the provincial legislature 
in 1906, and the first classes were held in the 
autumn of 1908. The government of the uni¬ 
versity is divided between a board of governors, 
whose functions are those of business manage¬ 
ment and administration, and a senate, which 
is entrusted with the supervision of the edu¬ 
cational work, including the discipline of stu¬ 
dents. The president and the chancellor, to¬ 
gether with nine members appointed by the 
lieutenant-governor-in-council, constitute the 
board of governors. The governors are ex 
officio members of the senate, which also in¬ 
cludes the heads of affiliated colleges, the deans 
of the faculties, the superintendent of educa¬ 
tion for the province, and others. 

Instruction was at first provided only by the 
faculty of arts and sciences, but the law faculty 
was created in 1912, the faculties of applied 
science and of medicine in 1913, and the faculty 
of agriculture in 1915. From the beginning a 
noteworthy feature of the university’s activi¬ 
ties has been the extension work, and in 1912 it 
was recognized and organized as a department. 

The university is located in Edmonton, on 
the south banks of the Saskatchewan River, 
immediately opposite the provincial legislative 
buildings. Athabaska Hall, Assiniboia Hall, 
Pembina Hall and the main University Hall are 
noteworthy buildings. Strathcona Hospital, 
though built by the city of Edmonton, is on 
the university campus and provides clinics for 
the medical school. In affiliation with the uni¬ 
versity are Alberta College, the Methodist 
theological training school, Robertson College, 
the Presbyterian training school, and several 
other colleges arid preparatory schools. There 
are about fifty professors and instructors on the 
university’s staff and about 500 students. 

ALBERT EDWARD NYAN'ZA, a lake cover¬ 
ing an area of 820 square miles, on the boundary 
between Belgium Congo and Uganda, in Cen¬ 
tral Africa. It is one of the principal sources 
of the River Nile. It was discovered by Henry 
M. Stanley in 1876 and named in 1889 after 
the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII. 
Semliki River carries its surplus waters into 
Albert Nyanza through a valley in the Ruwen- 
zori Mountains, which were explored by the 
Duke of Abruzzi in 1906. It lies in a volcanic 
region remarkable for the number of lakes 
formed in extinct craters, and also for numer¬ 
ous geysers. Fish abound, and crocodiles and 
hippopotami are found in the surrounding 





ALBERT NYANZA 

swamps. In the dry season the lake is obscured 
by overhanging haze caused by evaporation. 
Nyanza is a Bantu word meaning lake, and is 
applied in conjunction with other names to 
many central African lakes. 

ALBERT NYAN'ZA, or Albert Lake, for 
Nyanza means lake, lies in Central Africa, 
about 2,400 feet above sea level, and is 100 
miles long and twenty miles wide. It is con¬ 
nected with Albert Edward Nyanza by the 
Semliki River, with the Victoria Nyanza by the 
Victoria Nile, and the White Nile issues from 
its northern extremity. The lake abounds with 
fish and here are found also in great numbers 
the crocodile and hippopotamus. It was dis¬ 
covered in 1864 by Sir S. Baker, and named 
after Albert, consort of Queen Victoria. 

ALBIGENSES, albijen 'seez, so-called from 
their chief stronghold, Albi, a religious sect 
which sprang up in the south of France during 
the thirteenth century. Their beliefs and prac¬ 
tices were so different from those of the Church 
of Rome that Pope Innocent III preached a 
crusade against them. This, however, did not 
win them back to the Church fold, and, after 
they had killed the Pope’s messenger, Peter 
of Castelnau, war against them began in 1209. 
Peace was made in 1229, after many thousands 
on both sides had perished. Later outbursts 
of rebellion were quelled and the sect disap¬ 
peared. 

ALBINO, alby' no, a human being or other 
animal whose skin, hair and eyes show radical 
differences from the normal because of the 
absence of pigment, that is, dark coloring mat¬ 
ter. The condition may be inherited. A human 
being who is a complete albino has pale, 
milky-white skin, white hair and pinkish eye¬ 
balls. The latter condition is due to the fact 
that the red blood of the capillaries shows 
through the transparent cornea, iris and retina 
(see eye) ; in normal beings it is concealed by 
the coloring. Also in normal eyeballs the col¬ 
oring matter diminshes the intensity of the 
light which falls on the retina, but an albino 
is not thus favored and must keep his eyes 
nearly closed in the sunlight. Albinism may 
be partial or complete, and though prevalent 
among Indians and negroes, may occur in any 
race. Among the lower animals, white mice, 
white rabbits and white poultry are examples 
of albinism that is fixed by heredity. This 
condition is often noticed in the flowers of 
plants. 

It is popularly supposed that an albino is 
weaker in constitution than a normal being, 


164 ALBUQUERQUE 

but experiments have failed to show positive 
proof of this. 

ALBU'MEN, or ALBU'MIN, a substance 
which has its purest and best known form in the 
white of an egg. Scientists make a distinction 
between the two spellings, albumen being ac¬ 
tually the white of an egg, and albumin, the 
general term for the chemical compound which 
has its purest form in the white of an egg. 
Albumin is a combination of carbon, hydrogen, 
nitrogen and oxygen, with a little sulphur; it 
is typical of the class of foods called proteins 
(which see). It is found in the blood of man 
and of most animals, in the humors of the 
eye (see Eye), and in many plants. The al¬ 
bumen, or white, of an average hen’s egg is 
composed of 86.2 per cent water, 12.3 protein 
and a small proportion of fat and minerals. A 
dozen eggs yield about three-fourths of a pint 
of albumen. 

Its Uses. When heated, albumin hardens 
and finally becomes a solid mass. If it is 
mixed with any liquid and then heated, it 
either settles to the bottom or forms a scum 
at the top which can easily be removed. In 
this process it takes up any substances which 
may be suspended in the liquid. For this rea¬ 
son many cooks drop an egg into coffee to 
‘‘settle” it. Albumin is used in sugar refining, 
and to some extent in other industries. 

Albumin hardens not only when it is heated 
but also when exposed to certain salts, prac¬ 
tically all of which are poisonous. Thus, cor¬ 
rosive sublimate, or bichloride of mercury, 
turns the white of an egg to a solid. If no 
other remedy is at hand, the white of an egg 
is the best antidote for many cases of poison¬ 
ing, as the albumen surrounds the poison with 
a solid coating which nothing in the diges¬ 
tive system can dissolve. 

ALBUQUERQUE, ahlboo ker' ka, N. M., the 
largest city in the state and the county seat 
of Bernalillo County. It is sixt}-' miles directly 
southwest of Santa Fe, the state capital, and 
530 miles southwest of Denver, on the Rio 
Grande River, and at the junction of the At¬ 
chison, Topeka & Santa Fe and the Santa 
Fe & New Mexico Central railroads. In 1910 
the population was 11,020; in 1914 it was 
13,057. 

Albuquerque is situated at an altitude of 
4,950 feet in a broad valley of the Rocky 
Mountains. Its climate and the beauty of its 
unique desert and mountain scenery are un¬ 
surpassed. Just west of the city are the lands 
where the Navajo and Hopi Indians still lead 


ALBURNUM 


165 


ALCHEMY 


their primitive, picturesque existence. The 
first village, an old Spanish town founded in 
1706 and named in honor of the Duke of Al¬ 
buquerque, viceroy of New Mexico from 1702 
to 1710, is a neat Mexican village near the 
northeastern boundary of the newer city. The 
older place is characterized by prim adobe 
houses and contains a very old Roman Catholic 
church, San Felipe de Neri, established in 1658. 

The newer town of Albuquerque was founded 
in 1880 and became a city in 1892. It has 
wide streets and many attractive private resi¬ 
dences. Among the notable public buildings 
are the Carnegie Library, the Federal build¬ 
ing and a fine high school. Albuquerque is 
the seat of the University of New Mexico, 
which occupies buildings of characteristic Indian 
architecture on a fine campus south and east 
of the city. There is also a large government 
school for Indians and eight denominational 
and mission schools. In the handsome Santa 
Fe depot is the Harvey Indian Museum, which 
has a very complete collection of baskets and 
blankets. In the southeastern part of the city 
are a number of sanitariums for the treatment 
of tuberculosis, where several thousand pa¬ 
tients are cared for annually. 

The city has an important trade in live 
stock, hides and wool, and has extensive lumber 
and mining interests. One large lumber com¬ 
pany, which uses principally the white pine 
from the Zuni Mountains, operates a saw mill, 
sash, door and blind factory and a box factory. 
The mining of lead, zinc, gold and copper ore 
and coal, truck farming and fruit growing are 
important industries. The city has a large 
Indian trading company, foundries and ma¬ 
chine shops, tie-preserving plant, woolen mill 
and flour mills. The growth of Albuquerque 
is largely due to the constant enlargement of 
the Santa Fe railroad shops, located there. 

ALBUR'NUM, another name for sapivood, 
the soft white substance which is found in trees 
between the inner bark and the wood. In 
course of time the alburnum itself hardens into 
wood, adding rings or layers and increasing the 
circumference of the tree. The age of trees 
may be judged by the number of such rings 
shown when the tree is felled, the time for 
the formation of the rings varying according 
to the fast or slow growing nature of the tree. 
In most cases, however, a ring of hardened 
alburnum is added every year. In some of 
California’s giant sequoias (which see), over 
2,000 rings have been counted, proving their 
existence at a time prior to the birth of Christ, 


ALCESTIS, dices' tis, in Greek mythology, 
the wife of Admetus, king of Thessaly, and 
one of the most attractive characters which 
have been handed down by legend. An oracle 
had declared that her husband, whom she loved 
devotedly, was to die unless someone could be 
found who would meet Death in his place. His 
aged father and mother were asked to sacrifice 
themselves for him, but they refused, and 
Alcestis finally took upon herself the task of 
saving him. He plead with her not to insist 
upon her unselfish act, but she was firm, and 
as Admetus recovered Alcestis died. Hercules, 
however, having pity upon Admetus, met 
Death at the tomb, vanquished him and 
brought 'Alcestis back to life. The Alcestis of 
Euripides is one of the greatest ancient dramas 
which have been preserved. Browning’s 
Balaustion’s Adventure is a free translation 
of it. 

ALCHEMY, al'kemy, a so-called science of 
the ancients, which arose with the beginning 
of speculation as to the constitution of mat¬ 
ter and the visible universe. Its roots go back 
to the ideas underlying primitive magic and 
the earliest philosophies. Its search was for 
the elements and elemental forces from which 
the earth, and all upon it, was formed; it in¬ 
vestigated the processes of change to which 
matter could be subjected, by fire, by solution, 
by evaporation, by condensation. Such in¬ 
quiry led to the discovery of what are now 
familiar chemical and physical reactions. 

Following the clue of human affairs, alchemy 
assigned value and dignity and virtues and a 
scale of relation to the several elements; it 
developed a system of affinities and corre¬ 
spondences between the metals, the stars, the 
functions of the body and the forces that sus¬ 
tain life. Each part of the body was related 
to some one element (metal) and some one 
planet. The ingredients of medicines, the time 
of taking them, were alchemistically related 
to the part affected. The application to medi¬ 
cine led to the study of the curative virtues 
of things. 

At the height of its career, alchemy was 
almost encyclopedic in scope. The Arabs spoke 
of it as the key that unlocked the mysteries 
of creation; a more elaborate notion appears 
in “the philosopher’s stone,” the discovery of 
which would enable one to penetrate the re¬ 
actions of matter, or in such fulfillment of 
wishes as the “elixir of life,” the “fountain of 
youth” or the panacea for all ills. Alchemy 
aimed to be science and art in one. 


ALCHEMY 


166 


ALCIBIADES 


As the practical motive dominated, alchemy 
became largely a search for the transmutation 
of the metals, particularly of the baser metals, 
into gold; for to gold by its attraction and its 
associated value was assigned the virtue of 
purity and superiority. In this pursuit there 
was abundant opportunity for fraud and im¬ 
posture as well as for misguided experiment 
and self-delusion; these pursuits gave rise to 
the accusation of necromancy against many of 
the alchemists. This was true of Paracelsus 
(1490-1541), one of the best known of the 
later practitioners, who made substantial con¬ 
tributions to chemistry and medicine, yet 
worked dominantly under alchemistic concep¬ 
tions; he gave special prominence to sulphur 
and mercury as potent in transformation and 
medicinal action. Even so late as the end 
of the eighteenth century, Caglistro—an arch¬ 
impostor—played upon the belief in the possi¬ 
bility of making gold, to practise his versatile 
frauds, and presented his wife, who was twenty, 
as a woman of sixty who had partaken of the 
elixir of life. 

Alchemy is much more than the search for 
a process of transmutation to turn baser metals 
into gold; that became the central aim of its 
later pursuit. An alchemistic philosophy un- 
derlajr its practices. The Greeks recognized 
earth, air, fire and water as the four elements; 
these interacted and were responsible for the 
many forms of matter, also for the human 
body. Hippocrates, the “father of medicine,” 
thought that if the human body were formed 
of but one element, man would never be ill. 
He is composed of many elements which con¬ 
flict; hence the complexity of medical treat¬ 
ment, balancing the dry and light (fire), the 
dry and heavy (earth), the moist and light 
(air), and the moist and heavy (water). The 
four elements and the four humors of the 
bod t y were closely related. Yet the Greeks were 
not alchemists, but sought explanations in na¬ 
ture forms. However, they reasoned similarly 
to the alchemists, who sought it in mystic 
bonds. The latter dealt in analogies and cor¬ 
respondences. The celestial world gave the clue 
to the things of earth. The sun represented 
heat or fire or sulphur, and then gold; the 
moon corresponded to silver; to complete the 
system Venus corresponded to copper; Mercury 
is still the name of a planet and a metal; 
Mars “became” iron; Jupiter, tin, and Saturn, 
lead. The alchemistic search was originally 
like that of the Greeks, for the quintessence 
(fifth or ultimate essence) of things; they 


wished to repeat in their alembics the process 
by which the world was made. Two other 
ideas accompanied this search; the one the ap¬ 
plication to the healing of the body, for dis¬ 
ease was a disproportion of the elements (hence 
the preparation of tinctures, extracts, “spirits,” 
elixirs to restore health); the other was the 
rather mystical notion of separating the spirit 
from the form, the true essence from the ma¬ 
terial shell. 

More and more the “chemical” side dom¬ 
inated through the notion of transmutation, 
presumably introduced by Albertus Magnus 
(1193-1280). This implied a scale of evolution 
or value through which matter passed on its 
way to its more perfect form. The perfection 
of the heavenly bodies, of gold, of true health 
(immortality), moral perfection—purity of ele¬ 
ments and purity of spirit—were assimilated, 
and affinities in one world found for substances 
and qualities in another. Such learning was 
maintained in an atmosphere of secrecy and 
mystery. Alchemy became more cumbersome, 
elaborate and fanciful, while the temptation to 
pretense and fraud increased as the test of the 
system was concentrated upon the making of 
gold. At the beginning of the seventeenth cen¬ 
tury, already markedly on the decline, it gave 
way to the growth of modern science, which 
was then well launched upon its career of 
natural explanation and proof. See Science, 
subhead Pseudo-Sciences. j.j. 

Relating to Wrong Beliefs. The articles on 

the following topics, while not bearing on 
alchemy, are of interest in this connection be¬ 
cause they too deal with pseudo-sciences or 
superstitions: 

Astrology 
Clairvoyance 
Conjuring 
Demonology 
Divination 
Faith-cure 
Hypnotism 
Magic 
Medium 
Mesmerism 
Mind Reading 
Necromancy 
Occult 

Other closely related topics are mentioned in 
the above article, and will be found in their 
alphabetical order in these volumes. 

ALCIBIADES, alsibi' adeez, (about 450-404 
b. c.), a famous Athenian of noble birth, hand¬ 
some in person and of remarkable ability, who 
for many years bore a leading part in the af¬ 
fairs of Athens. He was the nephew of Pericles 
(which see), whose talents he shared, but he 


Palmistry 

Phrenology 

Psychical Research 

Psycho-Analysis 

Physiognomy 

Spiritualism 

Suggestion 

Superstition 

Telepathy 

Theosophy 

Trance 

Witchcraft 


ALCOHOL 


167 


ALCOHOL 


lacked the same high moral character. Alci- 
biades was a lawless, impulsive youth, and not 
even the influence of his good teacher, Socrates, 
could turn him from acts of violence and dis¬ 
sipation. 

He rose rapidly in political power and set 
himself up against Nicias as leader of the war 
party. Alcibiades took an active part in the 
Peloponnesian War, which began in 431 b. c., 
and when Nicias was defeated in Thrace in 
418-417 b. c., he strongly urged that an at¬ 
tack be made against Sicily. Alcibiades was 
chosen one of the leaders of this expedition, 
but just before it sailed he was accused of 
mutilating the busts of Hermes in one of his 
midnight revels, and was recalled home for the 
trial almost as soon as he reached Sicily. Fear¬ 
ing to face his trial, he escaped to Sparta. 
There he basely betrayed the secrets of his 
own countrymen, and by advising the Spartans 
to send help to the people of Syracuse and 
to fortify Decelea, in Attica, he became the 
direct cause of the downfall of Athens. The 
Spartan generals soon turned against him, and, 
fleeing to Asia Minor, he allied himself with 
the Persian leader Tissaphernes. Alcibiades, 
however, was determined to return to Athens, 
and succeeded in having his banishment can¬ 
celled. 

Before he returned home he took charge of 
the Athenian fleet near the Hellespont and won 
several victories over the Spartans. The 
Athenians joyfully welcomed him home in 
407 b. c., and made him a general with full 
powers, but he soon lost their favor by reason 
of a defeat at Notium. In 405 b. c. came the 
final crushing defeat of Athens at Aegospotami, 
and Alcibiades took refuge in Asia Minor, hop¬ 
ing to secure the aid of the Persian king against 
Sparta. There he was killed by hired assas¬ 
sins. 

AL'COHOL, a clear, colorless liquid having 
the appearance of water, with an agreeable 
fruity smell and a burning taste. It is the 
alcohol in beer, wine, whisky, brandy and 
other spirituous and fermented liquors that 
makes them intoxicating. 

Composition and Manufacture. Alcohol is 
composed of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen in 
proportions of two atoms of carbon to six of 
hydrogen to one of oxygen. It can be made 
by distilling wine, brandy, whisky and other 
liquors, and for this reason it is sometimes 
called the spirits of wine, and sometimes simply 
spirits. It is manufactured from grains (chiefly 
Indian corn), from potatoes and from molasses. 


These arc fermented as in the manufacture of 
beer or wine and then distilled. A process of 
making alcohol from waste wood has been dis¬ 
covered, but up to the present has been little 
used. 

Properties. Alcohol is lighter than water, 
and in the open air at sea level it boils at a 
temperature of 173° F., while water must reach 
212° before it boils. It will withstand intense 
cold without freezing and is used in ther¬ 
mometers designed to measure temperatures 
lower than —40°, at which point mercury 
freezes. It burns with a light blue flame and 
intense heat, and is used in alcohol lamps in 
laboratories, and with chafing dishes and other 
devices in the home. 

Uses. Alcohol dissolves essential oils, gums, 
resins and many other substances that cannot 
be dissolved in water; consequently it is ex¬ 
tensively used in the manufacture of varnishes, 
perfumes and medicines. Ether and chloroform 
are made from it and it is also employed for 
many other purposes in the arts. Some vinegar 
is made from alcohol, and in museums speci¬ 
mens are preserved by placing them in sealed 
vessels containing alcohol. The benefits de¬ 
rived from alcohol are many. Without it the 
world would be deprived of the valuable anes¬ 
thetics, ether and chloroform, as well as some 
of the most effective medicines which are 
prepared as tinctures. Spirits of camphor con¬ 
sists of camphor dissolved in alcohol. 

Denatured Alcohol. Denatured alcohol is 
alcohol to which something has been added to 
give it a disagreeable taste. The most common 
kind of denatured alcohol is methylated spirits. 
This is a mixture of 100 parts of alcohol, ten 
parts wood alcohol and a small quantity of 
benzine or some other substance which renders 
the mixture unfit for drinking. In 1907 the 
United States government removed the revenue 
tax on denatured alcohol, and it is now used 
extensively for manufacturing purposes, except 
in those cases where pure alcohol is necessary. 
In Canada the manufacture of denatured al¬ 
cohol (methylated spirits) is a government 
monopoly. j.f.s. 

Alcohol and the Human System. See the 
article below, Alcoholic Drinks, which reflects 
the deepest scientific investigation. 

Related Topics. For fuller inquiry into the 
story of alcohol and the various movements di¬ 
rected against it, see the following articles in 
these volumes: 

Alcoholic Drinks Prohibition 

Anti-Saloon League Temperance 

Local Option 


ALCOHOLIC DRINKS 


168 


ALCOHOLIC DRINKS 


ALCOHOL' IC DRINKS. Of all substances in 
common use by mankind alcohol has proved 
the most deceptive. Taken ordinarily to “stim¬ 
ulate” and to “strengthen,” its main effect is 
always to slow and depress activity and to 
weaken. The brief, temporary, deceptive effect 
of small and moderate doses, with many people, 
is to cheer and exhilarate, but this condition 
soon gives way to more prolonged phases of 
dullness and misery, ill temper and irritability. 

The Truth Setting Men Free. Science is 
slowly analyzing and explaining all these con¬ 
tradictory effects, and as the truth is growing 
clearer, alcohol is being more and more ban¬ 
ished from use. Its last stronghold, in medical 
practice, is fast breaking up. Staff physicians 
of leading hospitals are abandoning alcohol 
entirely and are using in its stead milk and 
other nutrients and other drugs of known 
physiological effect. The reputable physicians 
of cities are publicly pledging themselves not 
to prescribe it in any form, and drug stores 
are meeting this action of the physicians by 
refusing to keep in stock any kind of alcohol 
suitable to drink. The deceptive effect of al¬ 
cohol has long been the basis for all liquid 
patent medicines, but here the deception is so 
palpable and disastrous that those who can be 
deceived in this way must ere long die off, 
and with them patent-medicine alcoholism 
must disappear. 

The whole trend for the past century, from 
the almost universal use of alcoholic beverages 
as necessaries of life to the now common 
view that everybody would be better off with¬ 
out any of them, must be regarded as an 
example of the truth gradually setting us free. 
About the year 1900 the Committee of Fifty 
enlisted the help of many of the university 
laboratories of the world in carrying out most 
searching investigations on every phase of the 
alcohol problem. Before that time university 
workers had been active, and now the Car¬ 
negie Institution (which see) has projected the 
most complete scheme for a re-investigation of 
the whole subject that probably has ever been 
devised for the study of a scientific problem. 
Young people especially should know that these 
expensive investigations are being made for 
them, and they should take pains to keep 
abreast of discoveries in this field. The truth 
in such matters is very precious. Truth is 
defined as “that which the mind is compelled 
to approve as a basis of conduct.” Or, as Sir 
John Herschel stated it, “Truth is that which 
has the capability of enduring the test of uni¬ 


versal experience, and of coming unchanged 
out of every possible form of fair discussion.” 

The fact that men have not yet come to a 
universal basis for conduct may mean that we 
have not discovered truth enough about al¬ 
cohol, or that some have not taken the pains 
to learn the truth, or that many are still en¬ 
tangled in customs, habits, appetites and preju¬ 
dices, and are as men convinced against their 
wills. But science must yield all benefits of 
doubt, and she is never lazy. She will continue 
to gather the evidence, and we are likely to 
see more real progress won in the reasonable 
solution of the alcohol problem before 1930 
than has been made in the past century. 

Some Incorrect Beliefs. University re¬ 
searches in recent years have thrown a flood of 
light upon the fundamental reasons in human 
nature that underlie the use of alcoholic drinks. 
They have all conspired to prove that alcohol 
is not a “stimulant,” but a sedative, a quieter 
of overtaxed nerves, a depressant of normal 
activity, a retarder of growth and a deadener 
of mental and emotional processes. Hence al¬ 
cohol is taken to allay pain and misery, re¬ 
lieve the sense of fatigue, weakness and inef¬ 
ficiency and to drown grief and sorrow. When 
we study the problem from this point of view, 
we begin to see what is before us. We can 
do away with the use of alcohol when we 
mitigate the wrongs and miseries of our social 
order, and hardly before. No one who is ef¬ 
ficient, successful and feels keenly that life is 
worth living to the full could knowingly wish 
to chloroform himself. Van Dyke has summed 
up this side of the case as follows: 

Drunkenness ruins more homes and wrecks 
more lives than war. How shall we oppose 
it? I do not say that we shall not pass reso¬ 
lutions and make laws against it. But I do 
say that we can never really conquer the 
evil in this way. The stronghold of intem¬ 
perance lies in the vacancy and despair of 
men's minds. The way to attack it is to make 
the sober life beautiful and happy and full of 
interest. Teach your boys how to work, how 
to read, how to play, you fathers, before you 
send them to college, if you want to guard 
them against the temptations of strong drink 
and the many shames and sorrows that go 
with it. Make the life of your community 
cheerful and pleasant and interesting, you re¬ 
formers. Provide them with recreation that 
will not harm them, if you want to take away 
the power of the gilded saloon and the grimy 
boozing-den. Parks and playgrounds, libraries 
and music rooms, clean homes and cheerful 
churches are the efficient foes of intemperance. 

It is a long step toward a solution of the 
problem thus to gain an insight into its essential 


ALCOHOLIC DRINKS 


169 


ALCOHOLIC DRINKS 


character. As long as there are “minds” that 
have nothing higher and better in them than 
vacancy and despair” the craving for drink 
will possess them. Recent studies, notably 
those of Goddard, have thrown doubt upon 
the commonly-accepted theory that alcoholism 
is a prominent factor in causation of mental 
defects, but these same researches emphasize 
the fact that feeble-mindedness is a marked 
factor in causation of alcoholism. For the 
normal-minded it would seem as if the re¬ 
sources of modern life, in art, science, litera¬ 
ture, education, and even sport and athletics, 
ought to be able to supply something better 
than “vacancy and despair.” 

Effects upon Labor. Laboratory experiments 
have analyzed all manner of condition in con¬ 
nection with work, both bodily and mental, 
and have drawn aside the masks of deception 
under which alcohol has been used. In set¬ 
ting type; sending and receiving telegrams; 
adding figures; memorizing words; shooting or 
throwing at marks; performing feats of skill, 
strength or endurance, or in doing fine me¬ 
chanical work, the man under the influence of 
even small doses of alcohol is slower, fatigues 
more rapidly and does work poorer in quality 
than when no alcohol is taken. The man him¬ 
self feels that he is working more rapidly and 
easily and doing better work than usual, but 
this is because his judgment is dulled and his 
sense of effort and feelings of fatigue are 
paralyzed. The scientific tests and measure¬ 
ments leave no room for doubt as to his self- 
deception. 

Harrington Emerson has well said that “one 
single idea may have greater value than all 
the labor of all the men, animals and engines 
for a century.” So the best part of life con¬ 
sists in the flow, or “association,” of thoughts 
or ideas. The influence of alcohol upon this 
process has been studied carefully and it has 
been found that even slight indulgence tends 
to lessen the deeper, more important or rational 
associations, and at the same time greatly in¬ 
creases the superficial, trifling or nonsense as¬ 
sociations. Men are thus again deceived, and 
feel that they are thinking brilliantly and 
rapidly, but when they view the results soberly, 
they find that their thinking was illogical and 
trifling. The great Von Helmholz left testi¬ 
mony that ought to be studied by every young 
person. The world owes to Von Helmholz 
many of its most brilliant discoveries and 
greatest ideas. He spent his life hunting for 
hard problems and for ways of solving them, 


and such hunting is much more arduous than 
any other; big ideas are the most elusive of 
any kind of “big game.” He says in describ¬ 
ing his methods of work that even the slight¬ 
est indulgence in alcohol completely banished 
from his mind all traces of the ideas he was 
seeking. 

Cause of Heat Prostrations. The man who 

drinks, even in moderation, destroys safeguards 
to health in heated summer weather. The 
records of one hospital proved that ninety- 
eight per cent of heat prostrations treated in 
a week in its city were due to habitual in¬ 
dulgence in alcoholic stimulants, and of those 
forty-four per cent died. Following is an ex¬ 
tract from a report of two physicians of that 
hospital after a remarkable study of the effects 
of drink on the patients: 

Beer and booze have two effects: They in¬ 
crease the bodily supply of heat and they 
lower the powers of resistance. The heat- 
regulating center in the brain becomes de¬ 
ranged and the almost inevitable result is pros¬ 
tration. 

The normal temperature of the body is 98.6. 
In cases of heat prostration it rises to 110, 112, 
and even 114, considerably beyond the register 
of our thermometers. We have had patients 
whose skins felt like hot roast. 

It was hardly necessary to question many of 
them because the external evidence of the use 
of alcohol was so plain. A case of heat pros¬ 
tration without an alcoholic breath seemed a 
rarity. In fatal cases the use of a stomach 
pump commonly revealed the fact that the vic¬ 
tim had been drinking. 

And if it weren’t for alcohol they probably 

wouldn’t have been here. If alcohol was taken 

* 

out of the world, I believe the number of cases 
of all kinds at this hospital would be reduced 
by half. 

Crowding Out the Drinkers. On account of 
their now well-known impaired reliability and 
lessened efficiency, habitual users of alcohol are 
being rapidly crowded out of many of the 
higher fields of employment. In fact, the keen 
competition of modern business and increase of 
powerful, high-speed machinery is rapidly 
“scrapping” everything alcoholic and throwing 
everyone addicted to its use upon the rubbish 
heap of humanity. It would seem that our 
huge armies of the unemployed (and unem¬ 
ployable) indicate this process going forward 
with volcanic rapidity. This new “industrial 
prohibition” may speedily bring about results 
•that social reformers, with the best of argu¬ 
ments, have striven for in vain. Alcohol is 
definitely a habit-forming drug, which requires 
progressively larger and larger doses to pro¬ 
duce the desired effects. The old deception 


ALCOHOLIC DRINKS 


170 


ALCOHOLIC DRINKS 


which prompted men to boast that they had 
“will power” enough to avoid excess ought no 
longer to mislead anyone, and no young per¬ 
son of normal intelligence and ambition has 
any right to risk his chances for social and 
industrial promotion. 

Its Effect upon Posterity. Finally, what 
effect has alcohol on the offspring and on the 
race? From comparatively trifling questions 
of personal liberty or indulgence we are rapidl}' 
coming to see that the answer to this funda¬ 
mental question must determine the use of 
alcoholic drinks by man. The human problem 
being too complex for sure interpretation, ex¬ 
haustive laboratory experiments have been 
made upon animals. These have confirmed 
observations upon men and now present most 
convincing evidence that alcohol weakens the 
germinal cells and tends to cause stillbirth and 
early mortality, deformation of the brain and 
sense organs, and weakening and degeneration 
of offspring in both animals and man. 

Experiments upon Animals. Carefully-bal¬ 
anced experiments were made with dogs, the 
females being sisters from the same litter and 
the males brothers from an unrelated strain. 
To one pair chemically pure alcohol was given 
daily, diluted and with the food, in amounts 
too small to cause perceptible intoxication. 
The growth of the dogs was not interfered 
with, and their general health remained normal, 
except that an epidemic of distemper affected 
all the alcoholic dogs in the kennel much more 
severely than it did the normal animals. This 
also confirms considerable evidence gathered 


from observations upon man that infections 
are more likely to be serious or fatal in case 
of alcoholics. 

The sedative effect of alcohol, mentioned 
above, was clearly demonstrated in the al¬ 
coholic dogs. They showed only about half 
the play and spontaneous activity of their 
normal brother and sister. In tests of strength 
and endurance, too, the normal dogs showed 
more than thrice the ability and less than 
fifteen per cent of the fatigue of the alcoholics. 
There are many similar experiments on men, 
and they all point to the same conclusion, viz., 
that alcohol must be excluded from the diet 
of men likely to be called on for feats of skill, 
strength and endurance. The British official 
report on the Boer War—in which it took 
300,000 veteran English soldiers to overpower 
25,000 abstaining Boer ranchmen—leaves no 
doubt as to the bad influence of alcohol on 
the stamina, vigor and general physical and 
mental efficiency of men. 

Returning to the experiments, the alcoholic 
dogs developed marked timidity, a trembling, 
cringing nervousness, totally absent from the 
behavior of their normal fellows. This, again, 
substantiates the human experiment, in which 
delirium tremens is the most terrible fear; 
alcoholic insanities commonly take the form 
of phobias, or irrational fears. 

This series of experiments extended over 
more than five years; its most important re¬ 
sults are seen in the reproductive history of 
the two pairs of dogs. This is given statistically 
in the table below: 


ALCOHOLIC PAIR NORMAL PAIR 


\ 


Litters 


Total 




Litters 




Total 

Number of whelps 

7 

7 

6 

3 

23 

5 

3 

8 

8 

5 

6 

3 

7 

J/5 

Deformed 

2 

3 

3 

0 

8 

i 

0 

0 

2 

0 

0 

0 

1 

4 

Born dead 

2 

2 

2 

2 

9 

0 

0 

0 

0 

0 

0 

0 

0 

0 

Lived 

4 

0 

0 

0 

4 

4 

3 

8 

6 

5 

6 

3 

6 

41 


Demme, in Switzerland, compared the chil- over a long period of years, with the following 
dren in ten alcoholic and ten normal families results: 


TEN ALCOHOLIC FAMILIES 


TEN NORMAL FAMILIES 


Number of children 

Deformed . 

Idiotic . 

Epileptic, choreic. . 

Did not live. 

Lived (1 epileptic) 


57 
10 - 
6 
6 
25 
10 


61 

2 

0 

0 (2 backward) 
3 
54 











































ALCOTT 


171 


ALDEN 


The recent findings of Pearson and Goddard, 
the latter in tracing especially the causes of 
idiocy and feeble-mindedness, would seem to 
suggest that Demme’s alcoholic families con¬ 
tained some defective stock, the alcoholism 
being a result rather than the cause of at 
least some of the defective offspring. c.f.h. 

ALCOTT, awl'kut, Louisa May (1832-1888), 
an American storywriter, the author of prob¬ 
ably the best-loved book in literature for young 
girls, entitled Little Women. She was born in 
Germantown, Pa., the daughter of Amos Bron¬ 
son Alcott. Most of her life was passed in 
Concord, Mass., 
whither the fam¬ 
ily removed in 
18-10, and Little 
Women is large¬ 
ly a record of 
the experiences 
of herself and 
her three sisters 
in the Orchard 
House, their 
Concord home. 

This house has 
been bought by 
the Alcott Me¬ 
morial Associa¬ 
tion as a perma¬ 
nent memorial 
of the author. 

Miss Alcott, like “Jo” in Little Women, be¬ 
gan to write short stories for publication at 
the age of sixteen. She taught school for ten 
years, and had her first book, Flower Fables, 
published in 1855. In 1863 she wrote IIos- 



LOUISA MAY ALCOTT 

She possessed the secret of 
laughter as well as of tears. 
Her charm for girlhood is 
less in the story that she 
wrote than in the tenderness 
with which she wrote it. 



pital Sketches, an account of her life as a 
nurse in a Washington military hospital, but 
she found her real field in 1868, when Little 
Women appeared. This was the first oi a se¬ 


ries of books for boys and girls, all of which 
have been enthusiastically received by young 
American readers. Little Men and Jo's Boys 
continue the fortunes of the family described 
in Little Women. In Old Fashioned Girl and 
Eight Cousins the author makes known some 
of her views on the bringing up of girls. All 
of these children’s stories show the influence 
of her father, who was her chief teacher. They 
are written in a humorous, entertaining style, 
and show how interesting the commonplace 
scenes of every-day life can be made. Others 
of the series are Rose in Bloom, Under the 
Lilacs and Jack and Jill. 

Amos Bronson Alcott, her father, was also a 
writer of note and a leader in the Transcen¬ 
dental school of philosophy, and in the com¬ 
munity known as Brook ‘Farm. His best- 
known work is possibb r Concord Days, whose 
theme centers about Transcendentalism. See 
Brook Farm; Transcendentalism. 

ALDEN, awl' den, Isabella McDonald 
1841- ), an American author whose books 

for girls, written under the pen name of Pansy, 
have been among the most popular of Ameri¬ 
can productions. She was born in Rochester, 
N. Y., was editor of several religious papers, 
including the Christian Endeavor World, and 
wrote some serious books for adults, among 
which is a life of Christ. Her Pansy books 
have an exceedingly high moral tone. 

ALDEN, awl' den, John (1599-1687). In the 
records of the old colony of Plymouth, planted 
on the rock-bound coast of New England in 
the year 1620, there is mention of one John 
Alden who was hired “for a cooper at 
Southampton, where the ship ( Mayflower ) was 
victualled.” The narrative goes on to say—“Be¬ 
ing a hopeful young man, he was much de¬ 
sired, but left to his own liking to go or stay 
when he came here, but he stayed and mar¬ 
ried here.” One would scarce know from these 
brief lines that a romantic interest attaches 
to the name of John Alden, but tradition has 
preserved his story for us, and it has been im¬ 
mortalized by Longfellow, though its hero rests 
in an unmarked and unknown grave. 

In the division of the land into homesteads, 
John Alden was assigned to the house of the 
famous Captain Miles Standish (which see), 
and the two became close friends. The Cap¬ 
tain’s wife died during the first winter, and 
the lonely husband, seeking someone to fill 
her place, turned his thoughts to Priscilla Mul¬ 
lins, “loveliest maiden of Plymouth.” Though 
not afraid of shot from the mouth of a cannon, 



















ALDER 


172 


ALDERNEY 


the sturdy Captain was not brave enough to 
face a possible “No” from the mouth of a 
woman, and so he commissioned his friend 
Alden to plead his cause. How John faith¬ 
fully carried out the Captain’s request, though 
he had dreamed of winning Priscilla for him¬ 
self, and how the maiden interrupted his suit 
with the unexpected question—“Why don’t you 
speak for yourself, John?”—may be read in 
Longfellow’s well-loved epic of Plymouth 
colony, The Courtship of Miles Standish, an 
account of which appears in its place in these 
volumes, with an illustration. 

Of the personal appearance, character and 
abilities of the first American Alden, colonial 
records have considerable to say. He was tall 
and handsome, and though only twenty-one 
when he embarked on that perilous journey 
to the New World, he eventually became one 
of the leading men in the colony. Of the 
company that signed the famous Compact in 
the cabin of the Mayflower, he was the 
youngest, and he outlived all of the other 
signers. Thrift and enterprise marked his en¬ 
tire career. A few years after his marriage 
to Priscilla, which probably took place early in 
1622, he purchased a farmstead in Duxbury, 
consisting of about 169 acres of well-watered 
fertile land. This became his permanent home, 
and the site of the first house in which he 
lived is marked by a marble slab. Eleven 
sons and daughters were born to John and 
Priscilla, and in the list of their descendants 
we find the names of Henry W. Longfellow, 
William Cullen Bryant, John Adams and 
Charles Francis Adams. 

The public career of John Alden was honor¬ 
able. He was one of the financial backers of 
the colony until its debt was wiped out in 1646; 
he acted as its business agent, and was several 
times surveyor of highways. In 1632 he was 
appointed a member of the board of assistants 
to the governor, holding that office again in 
1634-1639, and from 1650 until his death in 
1687. Nearly all of the original farmstead at 
Duxbury has passed from the Aldens, but a 
house built by the founder of the family in 
1653 is still preserved, and is owned by one of 
his descendants. b.m.w. 

ALDER, awl' dur. These plants, of which 
some are shrubs and some large trees, are re¬ 
lated to the birches, and like them are useful 
to man in many ways. The common alder, 
which thrives in wet places in the temperate 
and colder regions of the United States, Canada 
and Europe, is often of great importance while 


growing, for its spreading roots hold in place 
soil along the river banks which might other¬ 
wise be washed away by floods. The wood, 
light and soft and of a reddish color, is used 
for a variety of purposes, and is especially 
good for making such things as are kept con¬ 
stantly in water, since it does not rot. The 
roots and knots furnish a beautifully-grained 
wood, well suited for cabinet work, while the 
charcoal made from the burned wood is used 
in the making of gunpowder. The bark is used 
for tanning and leather-dressing, and it also 
furnishes a good dye of various shades of red 
and yellow. This common alder, though some¬ 
what stiff, is a handsome tree, with large, 
roundish, deeply-notched leaves and long red¬ 
dish-yellow catkins. 

ALDERMAN, awl' dur man, a member of a 
city council, or board of aldermen, and conse¬ 
quently a legislator for his city. In most cities 
aldermen are elected by wards, each ward being 
entitled to one or two members, according to 
the provisions of the city charter, or plan of 
government. Aldermen are usually chosen for 
two years, and in cities having two aldermen 
for each ward it is customary to elect one 
every j^ear. The city council has power to 
make such rules and regulations for the gov¬ 
ernment of the city as the laws of the state 
permit. In discharging his duties as legislator, 
each alderman is expected to look after the 
special interests of his own ward. He is nearly 
always a member of one or more standing com¬ 
mittees of the board of aldermen, and thus his 
influence reaches over the entire city. Only in 
large cities are aldermen paid salaries; in 
smaller towns they usually serve without com¬ 
pensation. 

ALDERMAN, Edwin Anderson (1861- ), 

an American educator, who has been president 
of several important institutions. He was born 
at Wilmington, N. C., was graduated at the 
state university and entered the teaching pro¬ 
fession, becoming successively superintendent 
of city schools at Goldsboro, assistant state 
superintendent of instruction in North Carolina 
and professor in the state normal college. From 
1892 to 1896 he was professor of pedagogy in 
the University of North Carolina, and from 
the latter year to 1900 was president of that 
institution. After serving for four years as 
president of Tulane University he was, in 1904, 
elected president of the University of Virginia. 

ALDERNEY, awl' durny, one of the Chan¬ 
nel Islands belonging to Great Britain, sixty 
miles from the English coast and separated 


ALDERSHOT 


173 


ALEPPO 


from France by the Race of Alderney, a chan¬ 
nel seven miles wide. It is chiefly noted as 
the original home of tlie distinctive breed of 
cattle named after the island (sec Cattle). It 
has an area of only three square miles, one- 
third of which is occupied by grass lands. 
Agriculture and cattle raising are the only in¬ 
dustries. The chief town is Saint Anne, in the 
center of the island. The climate is mild and 
healthy. Many tourists visit the island in sum¬ 
mer, for whom a line of steamers maintain a 
daily service between Jersey, Guernsey and 
Alderney and the mainland. Population in 
1911, 2,561. See Channel Islands. 

ALDERSHOT, awl' dur shot, a military sta¬ 
tion in northeast Hampshire, England, thirty- 
five miles southwest of London. The great 
military camp there was originated in 1854, 
when the government purchased a tract of 
moorland known as Aldershot Heath, within 
the limits of Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire. 
A permanent garrison is maintained and Aider- 
shot is the principal base for training and 
summer manoeuvres of troops. At the begin- 
ginning of the War of the Nations in 1914 the 
accommodations of the camp were greatly in¬ 
creased. Population, in peace time, about 35,- 
000, including military forces. 

ALDRICH, Nelson Wilmarth (1841-1915), 
an American political leader, for thirty years 
Rhode Island’s representative in the United 
States Senate, and for the last decade or more 
of that time its acknowledged leader. His 
knowledge of tariff and financial problems was 
probably not exceeded by that of any other 
man in Congress, and he was a master of 
parliamentary practice. He was wealthy and 
intimately connected with large financial in¬ 
terests, a combination which caused popular 
distruct of his views on banking; but to him 
belongs a large share of the credit for creating 
a demand for banking reform and for pro¬ 
viding a solution, the Federal Reserve system 
(see Banks and Banking). 

ALDRICH, Thomas Bailey (1836-1907), an 
American editor, story-writer and poet, for 
years a favorite of youthful readers as the 
author of a charming juvenile narrative of his 
own boyhood, called The Story of a Bad Boy. 
He was born in Portsmouth, N. H., lived in 
New England and Louisiana, and began a lit¬ 
erary career in New York at the age of twenty- 
one. He wrote for several newspapers and pe¬ 
riodicals, and in 1881, when William Dean 
Howells resigned from the editorship of the 
Atlantic Monthly, he succeeded to that posi¬ 


tion. After 1890 he devoted his time to writing 
and travel. 

The house in Portsmouth where Aldrich lived 
as a boy, the scene of his Story of a Bad Boy, 
is now a museum containing interesting relics 
of the author. Aldrich’s poetry is light, grace¬ 
ful and musical, and shows careful workman¬ 
ship, though it is not remarkable for depth 
or power. In artistic merit it has been com¬ 
pared to the poetry of Tennyson. His prose 
style is likewise delicate and polished. Im¬ 
portant among his poetic writings are The 
Bells, The Ballad of Babie Bell, Cloth of Gold 
and Unguarded Gates. His prose works in¬ 
clude Marjorie Daw, Prudehce Palfrey, The 
Stillwater Tragedy and The Queen of Sheba. 
He also published a tragedy in blank verse en¬ 
titled Judith of Bethulia. 

ALE, a liquor much like beer. Indeed, any 
light-colored beer is commonly called ale, but 
there is some difference in the process of manu¬ 
facture. In making ale, the fermentation is 
stopped before all the sugar is changed to other 
compounds, and is allowed to continue longer 
in the barrels. This makes ale stronger than 
beer. The pale color is due to the fact that 
the malt which is used is dried at a low heat, 
and consequently remains light-colored. As ale 
contains from two to three times as much al¬ 
cohol as does lager beer, it is correspondingly 
more harmful to the system if taken in large 
quantities. Water is often called Adam’s ale. 

ALENCON, alen' sone, or in French 
a lahN' soN, is one of the most beautiful towns 
of France, capital of the Department of Orne, 
and long famed for the manufacture of point 
lace, called point d’Alencon (see Lace). It is 
situated on the right bank of the Sarthe, 105 
miles west of Paris. Fine rock-crystal, yielding 
so-called Alencon diamonds, is found in the 
neighboring granite quarries. Population in 
1911, 17,378. 

ALEP'PO, the capital of Aleppo province, a 
division of Turkey in Asia, is an important and 
historic trade center, eighty miles east of the 
Mediterranean Sea, in Northern Syria. The 
city is of ancient origin. It was repeatedly 
taken from the Turks, once by the Crusaders in 
1170, but was finally recaptured in 1516 by the 
Turkish Sultan Selim. It has suffered severely 
from earthquake and plague, but is now a pic¬ 
turesque, prosperous and fairly healthful city. 
Once on the principal caravan route between 
Asia and Europe, Aleppo stilLhas an important 
trade in manufactured articles, which include 
costly silks brocaded with gold and silver 


ALEUTIAN ISLANDS 


174 


ALEXANDER 


breads. The population is about 200,000, three- 
fourths of whom are Moslems. 

ALEUTIAN cilu'shan, ISLANDS, a group 
of small islands extending southwest for over 
800 miles in a graceful curve from the Alaska 
Peninsula, separating Bering Sea from the Pa¬ 
cific Ocean. There are about 150 islands in the 
group, which was formerly known as the Cath¬ 
erine Archipelago, in honor of the Russian 



ALEUTIAN ISLANDS 

From Alaska Peninsula to the westernmost 
island is nearly as great a distance as from New 
York to Chicago. 

empress of that name. The present name refers 
to the Aleuts, the natives of the region. The 
area is 6,391 square miles. Most of the islands 
are small, all have rugged or mountainous sur¬ 
faces, nearly all show the marks of volcanic 
origin, and on a number of them are extinct 
volcanoes. Hot springs are common, but some 
of the larger islands contain cool springs and 
rapid streams. Those containing soil are cov¬ 
ered with growths of shrubbery, grass, moss 
and lichens, but there are no large trees. 

Until recently it was supposed that these 
islands were unsuited to any form of agricul¬ 
ture, but the largest have been found well 
adapted to the raising of live stock, and since 
1900 several ranches owned by Americans have 
been established upon them. The native 
Aleuts are a branch of the Eskimo stock. 
Population in 1910, about 3,000. See Alaska; 
Eskimo; Aleuts. 

ALEUTS, al' iyuies, a branch of the Eskimo 
family, native in the Aleutian Islands, the 
latter having been named for them. The 
origin of the word is unknown, unless the con¬ 
jecture is correct that it is derived from the 
Indian aliat, which means island. The Aleuts 
are said to be more intelligent than their rela¬ 
tives, the Eskimos, and a little more sanitary 


in their customs, but lack some of the initiative 
and independence that the Eskimo possess. 

They occupy most of the Aleutian Islands, 
and are scattered along the adjoining Alaska 
Peninsula and the northwest coast of the con¬ 
tinent. When the Russians first occupied 
Alaska the Aleuts numbered 25,000; now there 
are only about 2,000. At various times small¬ 
pox has killed hundreds in a single visitation. 
See Eskimo. 

ALEWIFE, one of the most important 
North American food fishes, found in vast 
numbers on the eastern coast. It closely re¬ 
sembles the herring and the shad, but is slightly 
inferior in quality and flavor. The name maj' 
be derived from the Indian aloofe, or from 
the supposed resemblance of the fish in general 
contour to a corpulent woman. It attains an 
average length of eight to ten inches, with a 
weight of from one to two pounds. Vast shoals 
enter Chesapeake Bay and many eastern rivers 
to spawn, each female depositing from 60,000 
to 100,000 eggs. 

ALEXAN'DER, the name of eight Popes, 
whose names and dates may be found in the 
article Pope. The most famous of the eight is 
Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia, 1431-1503), who 
was born at Valencia, in Spain. He was in his 
early youth a handsome and gallant courtier, 
but he soon developed remarkable executive 
ability and at the age of twenty-five was ap¬ 
pointed a cardinal by his uncle, Pope Calixtus 
III. At the death of Innocent VIII in 1492 
he became Pope. He set himself the task of 
reducing the power of the Italian princes and 
increasing the papal revenues. Endowed with 
sagacity and fearlessness, he accomplished all 
he undertook. Among the events of his reign 
are the introduction of the index of prohibited 
books (see Index Expurgatorius), the division 
of the New World between Portugal and Spain, 
and the burning of Savonarola. Two of Al¬ 
exander’s children, Caesar and Lucretia Borgia, 
were very prominent in the life of their day 
(see Borgia). 

ALEXANDER, the name of three important 
emperors of Russia. 

Alexander I (1777-1825) came to the throne 
in 1801 on the assassination of his father, Paul 
I. He joined the union of the powers against 
Napoleon in 1805, but after severe defeats 
signed the Treaty of Tilsit (1807), in which 
he and Napoleon agreed to divide the world 
between them. Alexander deserted Napoleon 
in 1812, which led to the latter’s invasion of 
Russia and the famous retreat from Moscow. 








ALEXANDER 


175 


ALEXANDER THE GREAT 


After the Battle of Waterloo the Russian em¬ 
peror joined with the emperor of Austria and 
the king of Prussia in the agreement known 
as the Holy Alliance (see Holy Alliance). Al¬ 
exander’s policy in home affairs was at first 
one of progress and reform. He tried to im¬ 
prove the condition of the serfs, created eight 
new departments in the government, founded a 
national bank, and encouraged education, art 
and literature. Later in his reign, however, he 
followed the policy of the Austrian statesman 
Metternich, the foe of popular liberty. See 
Metternich. 

Alexander II (1818-1881) succeeded his 
father, Nicholas I, in 1855, before the end of the 
Crimean War. After signing the peace treaty 
at the end of that conflict, he set himself the 
task of bringing about national reforms. His 
greatest act was the setting free, under certain 
conditions, of over 22,000,000 Russian serfs 
(1861). He also founded a regular system of 
courts and public and scientific schools. During 
his reign the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 
took place (see Berlin, Congress of). After 
1863 Alexander became more and nlore 
despotic, which led to his assassination in 1881 
by a Nihilist (see Nihilists). 

Alexander III (1845-1894) succeeded his 
father Alexander II in 1881, but was not 
crowned until 1883. Fear of attacks from 
Nihilists kept him a prisoner in his palace 
during his reign, and prevented him from 
adopting a liberal course. The people of the 
Baltic province and of Finland were given less 
liberty, the Jews were oppressed, and the 
Nihilists sternly held in check. In the affairs 
of Europe Alexander was an advocate of peace 
and without war succeeded in extending the 
Russian frontier in Asia. Though his reign was 
not eventful, his country made considerable 
progress through his encouragement of rail¬ 
roads and manufacturing. He was succeeded 
in 1894 by his eldest son, Nicholas II, the 
present czar. 

ALEXANDER, John White (1856-1915), 

one of the greatest of American artists, who 
with Whistler, Abbey and Sargent made up 
the so-called “big four” of their day. He 
was born in Allegheny City, Pa., became a 
telegraph boy, but showed such decided artistic 
talent that an employer enabled him to gain 
the art education he so much desired. After 
studying in Bavaria, in Italy, in Holland and 
in Paris he returned to the United States, 
where his fame soon became great. Many dis¬ 
tinguished men, including Oliver Wendell 


Holmes, John Burroughs, Robert Louis Steven¬ 
son, Roden and Walt Whitman, sat to him for 
their portraits, and his portrait of the last 
named ranks as one of his greatest works. 
Particularly noteworthy are his mural paintings 
on The Evolution of the Book in the Con¬ 
gressional Library and his Apotheosis of Pitts¬ 
burgh series in the Carnegie Institute of that 
city. 

ALEXANDER SEVE'RUS (205-235), a Ro¬ 
man emperor who, in a corrupt age, sought 
to improve the moral condition of his people. 
He was made emperor in 222 by the praetorian 
guards, and governed ably both in peace and 
war. When on an expedition into Gaul to 
repress an invasion of the Germans, he was 
murdered with his mother in an uprising of 
his troops, headed by the brutal Maximin, who 
succeeded him as emperor. 

ALEXANDER THE GREAT (356-323 b.c.), 
the most impressive figure of his age, and one 
of the most remarkable characters in all his¬ 
tory. Among the mighty warriors of the past, 
he ranks with those whose genius has been 
effective in alter¬ 
ing the current of 
the world’s his¬ 
tory—Julius Cae¬ 
sar, Charlemagne, 

Napoleon. Alex¬ 
ander was the 
son of Philip of 
M a c e d o n (see 
Philip II), him¬ 
self an able gen¬ 
eral and organ¬ 
izer. It is said 
that the young 
prince, even more 
ambitious and en¬ 
ergetic than the 
king, wept bit¬ 
terly to hear of 
his father’s con¬ 
quests, for he 
feared there 
would be no 



worlds for him to From a bust in the Royal 
» , ,, Museum, Berlin, 

conquer. At the 

age of thirteen the youth became the pupil of 
Aristotle, who inspired the talented boy with 
an eager love for literature and philosophy, 
wielding an influence that was permanent and 
far-reaching. 

When Alexander came to the throne of 
Macedon, at the age of twenty, he was con- 




ALEXANDER THE GREAT 


176 


ALEXANDER THE GREAT 


fronted by conditions that would have dis¬ 
heartened a less resolute prince. The Greek 
states, restless under Macedonian authority, 
were but waiting for an opportunity to revolt, 
and when the new king was away campaigning 
against some barbarian tribes on the northern 
border of Macedon, the Thebans rose in rebel¬ 
lion and persuaded the Athenians to become 
their allies. To this appeal the Athenians were 
not slow in responding, for the report had been 
circulated that Alexander was dead. But before 
the Greek cities had an opportunity to work 
out a plan of action, the king and his army 
appeared before Thebes. The city was stormed 
and every building within it destroyed, save 


turned southward to Phoenicia, and after a 
memorable siege of seven months he captured 
the island-city of Tyre—perhaps his greatest 
military achievement. To accomplish this he 
was forced to build a causeway through the sea 
to the city, and the ancient structure may still 
be seen. A terrible punishment was meted out 
to the brave Tj'rians, for 8,000 of the people 
were slain, and the survivors, to the number 
of 30,000, were sold into slavery. All of the 
cities of Palestine and Philistia then submitted 
to the conqueror, except the city of Gaza. 
After resisting a siege for three months, its 
people, too, were obliged to yield, and they 
suffered the same cruel fate as the Tyrians. 



ALEXANDER’S EMPIRE 
His possessions at the height of his career. 


only the house of Pindar, while the inhabitants, 
30,000 in number, were sold into slavery. This 
summary action quelled the spirit of rebellion, 
and all Greece submitted to the new ruler. 

Conquest of the World. The next great 
project of the ambitious young monarch was 
the conquest of the Persian Empire. In the 
spring of 334 b. c., he crossed the Hellespont 
(see Dardanelles) with an army of 35,000, and 
on the River Granicus won a victory over the 
Persians that opened the gate to all Asia 
Minor. The following year, 333 b. c., he was 
opposed on the plain of Issus, on the north¬ 
eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, by a 
huge army of 600,000 commanded by Darius 
III, and again he was victorious. He then 


Alexander now T was free to turn his attention 
to Egypt. In that country, however, he met 
with no resistance, for the Egyptians welcomed 
him as one who would deliver them from 
Persian tryanny. At one of the mouths of 
the Nile he founded a city which he named 
Alexandria, and which was destined to become 
a world center of commerce and of learning 
(see Alexandria). While in Egypt he visited 
the famous temple and oracle of Jupiter Am¬ 
mon, in the Libyan desert. There he heard 
from the oracle that he w T as the son of Jupiter 
and was destined to be the conqueror of the 
world. » 

In 331 b. c. Alexander began his march 
toward the heart of the Persian Empire. 



ALEXANDER THE GREAT 


177 


ALEXANDRA 


Darius, meantime, had collected another vast 
army, numbering, it is said, over a million men. 
On the plains of Arbela, near the city of 
Nineveh, the two armies met in battle. The 
Macedonians, though consisting of not more 
than 47,000 infantry and cavalry, were highly 
disciplined, and they drove the Persian hordes 
from the field with terrible slaughter. Arbela, 
one of the fifteen decisive battles of history, 
marked the end of the struggle between Orien¬ 
tal and Western civilizations. The triumphant 
Macedonian ruler next led his army to the 
city of Babylon, which submitted to him with¬ 
out striking a blow. Susa and Persepolis, each 
of which yielded him vast treasures of gold 
and silver, were his next prizes of war; the 
inhabitants of the latter city were either mas¬ 
sacred or sold into slavery. 

Alexander had come by this time to regard 
himself as the successor of Darius, who had 
been slain by one of his own generals after his 
flight from the field of Arbela. In carrying out 
his plans as a world-conqueror he led his army 
to remote regions, subduing tribes that dwelt 
along the southern shore of the Caspian Sea, 
and the peoples of Bactria and Sogdiana, be¬ 
yond the towering Hindu-Kush range. Many 
cities, some bearing his own name, were 
founded along his victorious march. In Sog¬ 
diana he killed his dearest friend Clitus, during 
a drunken quarrel—an act that overwhelmed 
him with remorse and showed him that though 
he was a conqueror of cities, he could not rule 
his own spirit. 

The next country to acknowledge his prowess 
was India. Its fertile and populous plains were 
reached in 327 b. c. Nearly all of its native 
rulers submitted to him, and only the com¬ 
plaints of his toil-worn soldiers kept him from 
extending his conquests as far east as the 
River Ganges. It was therefore an opportune 
time for him to carry out a project that 
savored of peace rather than of war—to redis¬ 
cover a lost water route between the Indus 
and the Euphrates rivers. Sailing down the 
Indus, he founded another Alexandria at the 
head of the delta, and then proceeded to the 
mouth of the river, which he discovered had its 
outlet in a great sea, the Indian Ocean. With 
the greater part of his army he now followed 
the coast westward, while his trusted admiral, 
Nearchus, was commissioned to explore the 
sea with a fleet. Two months later the two 
joined each other in Carmania, in Southeastern 
Persia, and Alexander learned with joy that 
the lost route had been successfully navigated. 


Alexander was now the sole ruler of a vast 
realm stretching from the Ionian Sea to the 
Indus River, and his ambitious spirit projected 
brilliant schemes for the consolidation of what 
was practically the civilized world. He con¬ 
templated nothing less than the union of all 
the nations into one great family, with one 
language and a common civilization. Not only 
did he himself marry an Asiatic wife—the 
daughter of Darius—but he persuaded thou¬ 
sands of his soldiers to follow his example. 
He hoped even to make the continents of 
Europe and Asia correspond in their natural 
wealth, by transplanting the vegetation of one 
to the other. Babylon was chosen as the capi¬ 
tal city of the great Empire. Unfortunately 
for the outcome of these plans, Alexander, 
whom Themistocles correctly judged to be 
“greater in genius than in character,” was given 
to debauchery and shameful excesses, and in 
323 b. c., when he was but thirty-three years 
of age, he died of a fever brought on by self- 
indulgence. His body was conveyed to the 
Egyptian city of Alexandria, and over his coffin 
was erected a magnificent mausoleum. After 
his death his great Empire was divided among 
several rulers. 

His Character. Because of his military 
genius, his interest in art, literature and science, 
his ability as an organizer, and his far-reaching 
plans for the blending of the nations, Alex¬ 
ander deserves truly to bear his title “the 
Great.” The extraordinary talents of the man 
overshadow the defects that marred his char¬ 
acter—his lack of self-control, his occasional 
outbursts of vindictive cruelty, his inordinate 
vanity. Yet he could be most kind and gen¬ 
erous, and there was not one hardship suf¬ 
fered by his soldiers which he himself did not 
endure. Whatever be the final estimate of his 
character, the achievements of Alexander the 
Great will stand out in bold outline so long as 
history is read. To him the world owes the 
preservation of Greek culture at a time when 
there was danger that Oriental ideals would 
dominate both the East and the West. By 
introducing the spirit of Greek civilization to 
the peoples of Egypt and Western Asia, he 
laid the foundations for the spread of Christian 
teachings, three centuries later. w. e. l. 

Consult Mahaffy’s The Story of Alexander’s 
Empire; Grote’s History of Greece. 

ALEXAN'DRA (1844- ), daughter of 

Christian IX of Denmark and wife of Edward 
VII of England. Since the death of the latter, 
in 1910, she has been honored as the queen- 


ALEXANDRIA 


178 


ALEXANDRIA 


mother of England. Alexandra was born at 
Copenhagen. When nineteen years old she 
was married to the Prince of Wales, and her 
first public act, as the Princess of Wales, was 
the opening of the Cambridge School of Art 
(1865). A year later she was present at 
the opening of Parliament. The death of the 
Prince Consort in 1861 was followed by the 
practical retirement of Queen Victoria from 
active social duties, and this talented daughter 
of King Christian, after her marriage to the 
Prince of Wales, took the queen’s place in 
society, carrying out her task with dignity and 
grace. Alexandra was crowned with Edward 
VII on August 9, 1902, and reigned with him 
as queen until his death. She is an accom¬ 
plished musician and is everywhere respected 
and loved by the English people. In 1913 she 
celebrated her fiftieth wedding anniversary. 

ALEXANDRIA, al ex an' dree ah, an ancient 
city and seaport in Egj^pt, long the center of 
Greek learning and civilization. It was 
founded by Alexander the Great in 332 b. c., 
and lay at the northwest angle of the Nile 



(a) Canal 

(b) City walls 

(c) City dockyards and quays 
id) Amphitheater 

(e) Gymnasium 
(7) Library and museum 
(g) Hall of justice 
ih) Stadium 

(i) Aqueduct from the Nile 
O') Hippodrome 

delta, on a ridge of land between the sea and 
Lake Mareotis. Its growth was rapid and it 
speedily became a center of commerce between 
the East and West, with a population at one 
time of perhaps 1,000,000. It was especially 
celebrated for its great library and also for 
its famous lighthouse, one of the wonders of 
the world (see Lighthouse). Under Roman 
rule it was the second city of the Empire, and 
when Constantinople became the capital of 
the East it still remained the chief center of 
trade; but it received a blow from which it 


never recovered when captured by Amru, gen¬ 
eral of Caliph Omar, in 641, after a siege of 
fourteen months. Its ruin was finally com¬ 
pleted by the discovery of the passage to 
India by the Cape of Good Hope, which 
opened up a new route for the Asiatic trade. 

Modern Alexandria is built on a peninsula 
which was formerly the island of Pharos. It is 
divided into two parts, one of which is inhab¬ 
ited by Mohammedans and the other by Euro¬ 
peans. The former portion is crowded and 
squalid, while the latter is better built, and 
is supplied with gas, and with water brought 
by the Mahmudieh Canal from the western 
branch of the Nile. Its two ports, with fine 
docks and other accommodations, make it one 
of the chief commercial ports on the Mediter¬ 
ranean and the great emporium of Egypt. Its 
trade is large and varied, the exports being 
cotton, beans, peas, rice, wheat; the imports, 
chiefly manufactured goods. At the beginning 
of the nineteenth century Alexandria was an 
insignificant place of 5000 or 6000 inhabitants, 
but under Mohammed Ali renewed prosperity 
began for it. In 1882 the insurrection of Arabi 
Pasha and the massacre of Europeans led to 
the intervention of the British and the bom¬ 
bardment of the forts by the British fleet, in 
July. When the British entered the city they 
found the finest parts of it sacked and in 
flames, but the damage was repaired. Popula¬ 
tion in 1907, 332,246, of whom only about 
50,000 were Europeans. 

Alexandrian Library, the largest and most 
famous of all the ancient collections of books, 
planned by Ptolemy Soter, king of Egypt, who 
died about 283 b. c. Succeeding rulers devel¬ 
oped and enlarged the library, which at its most 
flourishing period is said to have numbered 
700,000 volumes. Most of these were burned 
at the invasion of Alexandria by the Romans, 
and the remainder were destroyed by the 
Christians in 391 a. d. a.mc c. 

ALEXANDRIA, La., a manufacturing and 
commercial center, with a population of 13,583 
in 1914, an increase of 2,369 since 1910. It is 
the seat of government for Rapides parish, 
situated in about the center of the state, on 
the right of the Red River, about 200 miles 
from its confluence with the Mississippi River. 
New Orleans is about 170 miles southeast, in a 
direct line, and 360 miles by water; Baton 
Rouge is about 113 miles southeast, and 
Shreveport is 123 miles northwest. The city 
is served by seven railroads and a river naviga¬ 
tion company. The Red River is navigable 






ALEXANDRIA 


179 


ALFALFA 


throughout the year as far as Alexandria. The 
town was founded in 1819, received its city 
charter in 1882 and was named for Alexander 
Fulton, on whose property the first settlement 
was made. The commission form of govern¬ 
ment has been in operation since 1913. The 
area of the city is two and a quarter square 
miles. 

Alexandria is located in the heart of one of 
the greatest yellow pine timber belts in the 
world; forests extend on all sides for a dis¬ 
tance of seventy-five miles, and the lumber 
industry has largely contributed to the growth 
of the city. About 1,500 people are engaged 
in this industry, and the output is valued at 
several millions of dollars annually. Other 
enterprises are iron foundries, railroad shops 
and cotton-seed products, and the cultivation 
of agricultural products is extensive. A num¬ 
ber of Belgian and Bohemian farmers have 
successfully raised rice, cotton, cane, alfalfa, 
vegetables and grains, and these are among 
the chief shipments. Among the public build¬ 
ings worthy of note are the Federal building, 
which cost $100,000; a $90,000 city hall, a $120,- 
000 courthouse, a $125,000 high school, a bank 
building costing $125,000, and a $1,000,000 hotel. 
Besides these is a Carnegie library and a hos¬ 
pital. A business college, Roman Catholic and 
Baptist colleges and a high school serve the 
educational interests. 

The city was almost totally destroyed by 
fire in 1864, and its subsequent development 
was due to the construction of the Texas and 
Pacific Railway to this poiht in 1882. 

ALEXANDRIA, Va., a quaint old city of 
historic interest in Alexandria County, on the 
northeastern border of the state and on the 
Potomac River, six miles south of Washington, 
D. C. It is a port of entry and a railroad 
center of importance, on the lines of the Penn¬ 
sylvania; Atlantic Coast Line; Southern; Sea¬ 
board Air Line; Baltimore & Ohio, and Chesa¬ 
peake & Ohio. Electric lines operate north 
and south from the city. In 1914 the popula¬ 
tion was 15,670, an increase of 341 since 1910. 
The area is a little more than one square mile. 

Although the city is located 100 miles from 
the mouth of the Potomac River, it has an 
excellent harbor a mile wide, which admits the 
largest vessels. Through its water and railway 
shipping facilities it controls a large, growing 
trade, and it is a manufacturing center. There 
are glass, shoe and broom factories, a thread 
mill, fertilizer plants, breweries, chemical 
works and silk mills. Educational advantages 


are offered by Mount Vernon and Saint Mary’s 
academies and the Theological Seminary and 
High School of the Diocese of Virginia (Epis¬ 
copal), in addition to the public schools. 

In Old Christ Church George Washington 
and Robert E. Lee worshipped, and their re¬ 
spective pews are objects of interest to visitors; 
Marshall House, where Ellsworth, an officer in 
McDowell’s army, was shot after tearing down 
the Confederate flag; the Town Hall; Carlyle 
House, General Braddock’s headquarters in 
1755, the Lord Fairfax House and a Confed¬ 
erate monument are features of interest. Near¬ 
by is Mount Vernon, the home of Washington. 

The first settlement was made here in 1695, 
under the name of Belhaven. In 1749 the 
town was organized, and it was incorporated 
in 1779. Alexandria belonged to the territory 
ceded to the United States for the nation’s 
capital by Virginia in 1789, but it again became 
part of Virginia in 1847. In 1814, on the 
approach of the British fleet, the inhabitants, 
to prevent attack, paid the equivalent of 
$100,000. It was occupied by Federal troops 
during the War of Secession and from 1863 

until the close of the war was the seat of what 

* 

is known as the Alexandria Government (see 
Virginia). 

ALEXANDRIAN, al ex an' dree an, AGE, 
the name given to that period during which 
the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, in 
Egypt, was the center of Greek learning and 
culture. It began under the Ptolemies and 
lasted throughout their rule and into the time 
of Roman supremacy, thus covering approxi¬ 
mately the period from 300 b. c. to 600 a. d. 
Ptolemy Soter founded the famous library of 
Alexandria, and his son, Philadelphus, estab¬ 
lished a sort of academy of sciences and arts 
to which many scholars and men of genius were 
attracted. Among the greatest of the men 
who made Alexandria world famous were 
Euclid, the father of scientific geometry; Archi¬ 
medes, great in physics and mechanics; Apol¬ 
lonius of Perga, whose work on conic sections 
still exists, and the astronomer and geographer 
Ptolemy, whose system of astronomy was in 
general use until the middle of the seventeenth 
century. There were also several poets and 
philosophers of note. 

ALFAL'FA, or LUCERNE, lusern', is a 
clover-like plant, one of the most important 
among the world’s forage, or fodder, crops 
ever since it was named al-facfacah, “the best 
crop,” by the Persians more than twenty cen¬ 
turies ago. While it is one of the oldest crops 


ALFALFA 


180 


ALFALFA 


known to mankind, it was strangely the last to 
be introduced into the United States and Can¬ 
ada; alfalfa reached the American continent 
not by way of Europe, as did nearly every 
other agricultural product of North America, 
but through California from Chile, in 1854, 
in the hands of people who were attracted 
north by the wonderful gold discoveries. A 
variation of the Persian name has held through 
the centuries. The name lucerne developed 
from its introduction into the Eastern United 
States from Lucerne, Switzerland; indeed, in 
one section of New York state a variety of 
alfalfa was said to have been introduced as 
early as 1800, but it was purely a local crop, 


in irrigated districts, where the quantity of 
moisture is easily regulated; therefore it will 
thrive under irrigation in the Arizona deserts, 
which are among the hottest in the world. It 
grows as well with little moisture, because of 
the great length of its roots; fifteen inches a 
year has been found sufficient, but it also does 
well in the Gulf states, which have sixty-five 
inches of rain yearly. The plant dies where the 
soil is too moist, however, and it will not 
grow well in a soil with a high per cent of 
acids. 

Alfalfa requires a well-drained and deep soil, 
rich in lime and quite free from weeds. No 
other fodder crop requires as much lime as 



ALFALFA MAP, UNITED STATES 
Heavily-dotted areas indicate sections of greatest production. 


not important enough to affect California’s 
claim, from which state its growth spread 
rapidly. Other local names are French clover, 
purple medic, Spanish trefoil and Chilean 
clover. 

Conditions of Growth. Almost any crop, if 
it is to thrive well, requires practically one 
general variety of soil, a certain average quan¬ 
tity of rainfall and the same average elevation 
above sea level. Alfalfa is an exception to 
these conditions; it grows in California below 
sea level, in a semi-arid region, and it flour¬ 
ishes on the highlands of the mountain states 
at an elevation of 8,000 feet. So far as climate 
is concerned it will grow in every state in the 
American Union. It is a much-favored crop 


does alfalfa; its presence neutralizes the acidity 
of the soil. Weeds, being shallow-rooted, rob 
the plant of the sustenance the surface soil 
provides, and makes it dependent upon the 
deep root system to draw its support from far 
below. Its roots can penetrate a considerable 
layer of clay, to reach moisture and rich soil 
beneath it. This characteristic is referred to 
again, below. 

Description of the Plant. Alfalfa grows to a 
height of eighteen to twenty-four inches, and 
is much like clover. It belongs to the same 
botanical family as the clover and beans, len¬ 
tils, peas and other plants called leguminous, 
for the reason that they bear legumes, or pods, 
as seed vessels (see Leguminous Plants). All 
























ALFALFA 


181 


ALFALFA 


legumes are of special value to agriculture, 
because they draw free nitrogen from the air 
and store it in the soil. No other group of 
plants can do this; it is accomplished by cer¬ 
tain bacteria found in nodules, or little rounded 
lumps or knots, on the roots of the plants. 
The leaves have three-toothed leaflets; the 
flowers are purplish, with petals like the flow¬ 
ers of the pea; the small seed pods are coiled 
or twisted into two or three spirals, and the 
seeds are kidney-shaped, about one-twelfth of 
an inch long. 

The plant is a strong, deep-rooted peren¬ 
nial. In no other farm crop do the roots pene¬ 
trate so far into the earth; ten to twenty feet 
is not an uncommon depth, therefore it can 
resist severe drought. Up to the present time 
it has been most extensively grown in semi¬ 


land, due probably to the large storage of 
organic matter in the soil. The very deep 
roots also bring up mineral matter from depths 
below the roots of ordinary plants. However, 
it is to be remembered that the alfalfa hay also 
contains large amounts of minerals, and when 
the hay crop is constantly removed, exhaustion 
of the soil results, though temporarily the land 
will be improved in productivity. 

Comparative Value as Fodder. Not only is 
alfalfa very productive, but ton for ton is more 
valuable in feeding qualities than any other 
common hay plants. This is illustrated by 
comparing the digestible nutrients in 100 
pounds of the common hays and wheat bran; 
the figures were prepared by the United States 
Department of Agriculture and published in 
Farmers’ Bulletin No. 339, p. 28: 


Kind of Forage 

Dry Matter 
in 100 Lbs. 

Digestible 

Nutrients in 100 Lbs. 

Protein 

Carbo¬ 

hydrates 

Ether 

Extract 

Alfalfa hay. 

91.6 

11.0 

39.6 

1.2 

Clover hay. 

84.7 

6.8 

35.8 

1.7 

Timothy hay. 

86.8 

2.8 

43.4 

1.4 

Wheat bran. 

88.1 

12.2 

39.2 

2.7 


arid regions, where ordinary forage grasses do 
not succeed, but it will grow even better in 
humid regions. It grows with remarkable rapid¬ 
ity, and will produce a crop about every 40 days 
during the growing season; it can be cut from 
three to seven times a year, dependent upon 
the length of the season. The usual time for 
cutting is just as the plant is coming into 
bloom, when not more than one-fifth of the 
flowers have appeared. 

Effects on the Soil. Alfalfa will not grow 
unless the bacteria which live in the nodules 
on its roots are present. In most soils these 
bacteria must be introduced in some way when 
alfalfa is sown for the first time. Usually this 
is done by scattering over the new field soil 
from a field in which alfalfa has been growing. 
This is called artificial inoculation. Since 
alfalfa requires a soil rich in lime, when not 
of natural limestone formation soils must be 
artificially limed in order to secure a successful 
growth. When well established under favor¬ 
able conditions, alfalfa will continue to produce 
good crops for a long time; fields have been 
productive for as long as fifty years. 

Alfalfa also improves the productivity of the 


It will be noted that alfalfa is almost as 
valuable a feed for the same weight as wheat 
bran, and more valuable than timothy and 
clover. 

Other Uses. The yield of honey is largest 
where bees have the range of alfalfa fields, and, 
because the plant blossoms several times a year, 
bees can gather from this source several crops 
of honey. For poultry alfalfa is valuable; 
fowls may be given access to the field or the 
plant may be cut and fed to them. In Okla¬ 
homa a manufacturer has used alfalfa in a 
finely ground state to make candy, and his 
success has inspired others to still further ex¬ 
periments along unheard-of lines. 

Growth in the United States. About ninety- 
five per cent of the alfalfa crop of the United 
States is grown west of the Missouri River, 
but at present the acreage is rapidly increasing 
in the eastern half of the country, also. Its 
slow development in the eastern states is prob¬ 
ably due partly to the fact that the crop was 
not readily grown, requiring inoculation of 
the soil, while it grew quite readily in most 
soils west of the Missouri River. The eastern 
states already had good forage crops in timothy 




















ALFALFA 


182 


ALFONSO XIII 


and red clover, while the western states have 
found no other forage plant that can compete 
with alfalfa. 

Alfalfa yields more hay than any other 
standard hay plant, as shown by the average 
yields; alfalfa averages 2.52, timothy, 1.22 tons 
and clover 1.29 tons of cured hay per acre. 
In the United States close to 5,000,000 acres are 
in alfalfa. The average market prices to the 
growers, in normal times, is $8 per ton, com¬ 
pared to $10.50 for timothy or timothy and 
clover combined, or $9.25 for clover alone. 
Among the states Kansas is first in acreage. 
The first eight states in rank are the follow¬ 
ing; the figures indicate the number of acres 
in alfalfa in average years: 

Kansas .960,000 Idaho .310,000 

Nebraska .690,000 Utah .284,000 

Colorado .510,000 Montana .224,000 

California ....485,000 Oklahoma ....210,000 

The rank of alfalfa among the forage crops 
of the United States is indicated in the follow¬ 
ing table of comparisons; the figures are based 
upon a ten-year average: 


ALFIERI, aljyci're, Vittori, Count (1749- 
1803), the greatest dramatic poet that Italy has 
produced. His dramas seem to some modern 
critics stilted and artificial, and their lofty 
sentiments are frequently expressed in some¬ 
what monotonous language; but his high pur¬ 
pose is evident throughout, and his work has 
moments of real beauty. The Italian people 
have cause for reverencing him which is beyond 
mere literary fame. Certain of his plays, as 
Virginia, Brutus and Timoleone pla} r ed a large 
part in awakening that feeling of Italian unity 
which was the first step towards a united Italy. 

Alfieri was born at Asti, in Piedmont. He 
traveled much, not always spending his time 
in a creditable manner, and in 1775 produced 
his first tragedy, Cleopatra. His first taste of 
fame inspired him, and from that time on he 
worked with great singleness of purpose. His 
resting place is worthy of the awakener of 
Italian patriotism, for he lies in the Church 
of Santa Croce, between Michelangelo and 
Machiavelli, and a monument by Canova 
stands above his tomb. 


Crop 

Acreage 

Tons 

Annually 

Tons 
Per Acre 

Value 

Value 
Per Ton 

Alfalfa. 

4,707,000 

11,860,000 

2.52 

$ 93,104,000 

7.85 

Timothy. 

14,686,000 

17,985,000 

1.22 

188,085,000 

10.46 

Clover. 

2,243,000 

3,158,000 

1.29 

29,335,000 

9.29 

Timothy and Clover. 

19,542,000 

24,750,000 

1.27 

257,280,000 

10.40 

Millet. 

1,118,000 

1,547,000 

1.38 

11,145,000 

7.21 


Canada’s Crop. In the Dominion of Canada 
there is little alfalfa, compared with its growth 
in the United States. Only about 86,000 acres 
are employed in raising it, but the market price 
is higher, being between $11 and $12 per ton 
in normal times. The total production is about 
210,000 tons, an average yield of 2.42 tons per 
acre, worth a total of $2,500,000 yearly. 

Ontario was first in alfalfa production in 
1914, with an average total of 66,000 acres 
under cultivation. Alberta is second, with 
7,000 acres; British Columbia, third, with 5,500 
acres, and Quebec fourth, with 4,000 acres. No 
other provinces have as yet 3,000 acres, and in 
some, notably the Atlantic seaboard provinces, 
not as many as 100 acres are devoted to it. 
However, the area in alfalfa is rapidly increas¬ 
ing. E.G.M. 

Consult various bulletins of the United States 
Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C., 
and of the Canadian Department of Agriculture, 
Ottawa. These may be had upon request. 


ALFON'SO XIII, (1886- ), king of 

Spain, son of Alfonso XII and Maria Christina, 
Archduchess of Austria. Alfonso was long one 
of the interesting child monarchs of Europe, 
as his father died before his birth, and he 
ruled under the direction of his mother until 
sixteen years of age. Throughout his boyhood 
his kingdom was in a state of violent disorder, 
and in 1898 he saw practically the last of 
Spain’s colonies lost in the Spanish-American 
War. 

He took personal charge of the government 
in 1902, and soon w T on the affection and confi¬ 
dence of the nation by his sincerity and cour¬ 
age. In 1906 he married Princess Ena of 
Battenberg, granddaughter of Queen Victoria. 
He has been on the whole a liberal king, and 
has used his influence to extend religious free¬ 
dom in his kingdom. Social and political 
unrest have continued, however, and the young 
king has several times been threatened with 




























ALFRED THE GREAT 


183 


ALGAE 


assassination, the first attack taking place on 
his wedding day. Alfonso is a patron of sports 



ALFONSO, KING OF SPAIN 


of all kinds, and often has to be dissuaded 
from participating in dangerous pastimes. 

ALFRED THE GREAT (849-901), one of 
the greatest popular heroes the world has ever 
produced, of whom it has been said that of all 
the monarchs to whom the title Great has been 
given, no other deserves it in point of char¬ 
acter as does Alfred. Much legend has gath¬ 
ered about his name, but the outlines of his 
real history are well known. He was the 
youngest son of Ethelwulf, who reigned over 
the West Saxons from 836 to 858. Alfred came 
to the throne in 871, and found the country 
in a desperate state, owing to the inroads of 
the Danes. He made a truce with them and 
induced them to turn their attention to the 
other provinces of Britain, but it was not long 
before they renewed hostilities, and so suc¬ 
cessful were their attacks that Alfred fled to 
the hills and woods for safety. One familiar 
legend tells how, during this period of hiding, 
he took refuge in a peasant’s hut. No one 
recognized the king in this ragged and hungry 
traveler, and the peasant’s wife asked him 
to tend the cakes which were baking before 
the fire. Wrapped in thoughts of his kingdom, 
Alfred forgot the cakes, which were burned to 
a crisp; and the peasant’s wife, returning, 
scolded the king severely and struck him over 
the head. 

Finally, having been joined by a band of 
trusty followers, Alfred prepared, in May, S78, 
to attack the Danish army under Guthrum at 
Edingdon. It is said that two or three days 
before the battle he entered the Danish camp 


disguised as a harper and gained all the infor¬ 
mation desired respecting the strength and 
position of the enemy, but this legend is gener¬ 
ally discredited. In the battle that followed, 
the Danes were utterly defeated; Guthrum and 
his followers accepted Christianity and were 
assigned territory north of Wessex. Alfred 
afterward ceded to them the eastern portion 
or Mercia, which became known as the Dane¬ 
lagh. Alfred was now the ruler of nearly all 
England, though never recognized by title as 
such. 

Years of Peace. During the period of peace 
which followed, he rebuilt cities and fortresses 
and improved his fleet. Ships were stationed 
at intervals along the coast to guard against 
invasion, and were often useful in repelling the 
renewed attacks of the Danes. Alfred also 
established a regular militia, which was able 
to protect the several parts of the kingdom 
without leaving any district defenseless. He 
made a code of laws which served as the basis 
of later codes, and promoted trade and com¬ 
merce. His last years were passed in peace. 
He was succeeded by his son, Edward the 
Elder. 

The selfish ambition and cruelty which have 
stained the characters of other great rulers are 
not recorded in the life of Alfred the Great. 
In the making and administration of laws, in 
his careful oversight of the courts of justice, 
in his promotion of the arts of peace, he had 
the welfare of his subjects ever in view. Of 
his military genius, the record of obstacles 
overcome is sufficient witness. He was in be¬ 
lief and in practice a devout Christian. Alfred 
is conspicuous for the patronage he gave to 
letters, and his own learning and industrious 
scholarship are most remarkable. To bring 
knowledge within reach of his subjects he 
translated Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of Eng¬ 
land, Gregory’s Pastoral Rule and Boethius’s 
Consolations of Philosophy, from Latin into 
Anglo-Saxon, adding much of his own com¬ 
position. Alfred represents all that is greatest 
and best in the early Christian civilization of 
the West, and was the herald of centuries far 
removed from him in point of time, a.mc c. 

For map of the dominions of Alfred the Great, 
see England. For a more extended account of 
him, see Snell’s Age of Alfred. 

ALGAE, al' je, a Latin word which means 
seaweed, and which has been adopted without 
change as the name for such water-dwellers 
among plants as do not derive any nourish¬ 
ment through their roots. Some of them live 






ALGEBRA 


184 


ALGEBRA 



ALGAE 


(a) Deep-sea “devil’s apron’’ 

(' b ) Deep purple coralline algae 

(c) Bladder wrack 

( d ) A branching red variety 


teaching is the recognition of continuity of 
subject-matter. Let us find the continuity be¬ 
tween arithmetic and algebra, the points com¬ 
mon to the two subjects, where algebra touches 
arithmetic and belongs with it, and where the 
two subjects are distinct. Insight into these 
points makes clear the relation and interde¬ 
pendence of elementary school mathematics 
and early high school mathematics. 

Very early in the elementary school the 
child is solving such problems as these: 
7+8=15, 9+7=16; out of this grows 7 and 


in fresh water and some in salt, and they vary 
in size from the microscopic forms to those 
whose stems resemble the trunks of forest 
trees, and whose fronds rival the leaves of the 
palm. The higher species have stems bearing 
the leaf-like expansions and are often attached 
to the rocks by roots, but in many species the 
stems are absent, the whole plant being a 
mere shapeless, jelly-like mass. As the algae 
are entirely composed of cellular tissue, many 
are edible and nutritious, as carrageen, or 
Irish moss, dulse, etc. Kelp, iodine and bro¬ 
mine are products of various species and the 
algae are also valuable as manure. About 
twelve thousand species are known and these 
are classified in groups according to their color, 
being recognized as green, brown or red. Most 
green algae are fresh-water plants, while the 
brown and red forms are usually confined to 
salt water. 

ALGARDI, Alessandro (1602-1654), an Ital¬ 
ian architect and sculptor, born at Bologna. 
His chief work was done in Rome, where he 
followed the style of his great contemporary, 
Giovanni Bernini. Algardi made the tomb of 
Pope Leo XI, in Saint Peter’s, and for the 
same church a representation of Attila’s retreat 
from Rome. The latter is the largest figure in 
high-relief in the world. His work as an archi¬ 
tect is represented by the facade of the Church 
of Sant’ Ignazio. It is as a sculptor that 
Algardi will be best remembered. 


make 16, and so on. Following the form 
above, the teacher writes 7+(a number) = 15, 
thus translating the problem into good form. 
This is algebraic in thought and form, as well 
as arithmetical. It very readily becomes 
7 +tz= 15. It should be read freely, as follows: 

“A number has been added to 7 and the 
answ.er is 15.” Then follows the question, 
“What is the number?” The problem looks 
like this when completed: 

7+n=15 
n— 8 


































ALGEBRA 


185 


ALGEBRA 


Most arithmetics write it 7+?=15. This is 
algebra, but the authors fail to use good alge¬ 
braic expression. The “?” is not good here. 
The word number or some symbol to stand for 
the word number, as n, the first letter of the 
word, is desirable. 

In multiplication the child says 6X4=24; 
8X9=72. The teacher says, “I multiplied 7 
by some number and got 56,” and writes as she 
says it: 

7Xnumber=56, or, 

7 X?i =56, 

then asks “What is the number?” The prob¬ 
lem appears: 

7Xn=56 
n— 8 

This is algebra in thought and expression, ap¬ 
pearing early in arithmetic. 

The area of a rectangle is 63; the length is 9. 
What is the width? The mathematics of the 
problem is this: 63 is the product of 9 and 
some number, and its best expression is, 
63=9 Xiv. Again this is algebra in thought and 
in expression, although found in the middle 
grades of the elementary school. The expres¬ 
sion soon takes this form: 

9w=63 
w— 7 

I need $18 to buy a coat. I have $12. How 
much more must I get? Such problems come 
early to the child. It is arithmetic, and it is 
also algebra, and when given its best expres¬ 
sion appears as 12+n=18; when solved it is: 

12+n=18 
n— 6 

In all the above illustrations the child meets 
the algebraic thought in his arithmetic, and 
should be taught the best expression for it, 
such as given above, which is the so-called 
algebraic expression. Indeed, it is the only 
mathematical expression for such conditions. 

The solution of each of these problems is 
arithmetical. It is reached directly by logic; 
it is not reached by the manipulation of an 
equation, which latter method belongs to alge¬ 
bra. The child says in arithmetic, “If 9w=63, 
w equals % of 63, or 7, or he writes: 

9w=63 

w—% of 63, or 7. 

In algebra he says, “9iy=63.” Then he 
divides each member of the equation by 9 
and finds w— 7. He uses the equation as a 
machine. He has 9w—63 as a balance; he 
knows that if he divides both sides of the 


balance by 9, the quotients form a balance. 
Thus it is seen that in the solutions of the 
problem lies the great distinction between 
arithmetic and algebra. 

Farther on in the grades the student finds 
such problems as this: 

An agent working at 13% commission earned 
$117. What was the amount of his sale? 

The mathematics of the problem is this; 

$117=SaleX.13 


The solution is: 

.\Sale=?y™? 

.13 

• Sale=$900 


This is arithmetic or algebra, as you please, in 
thought and form, but arithmetic in solution. 

Another illustration, from seventh or eighth 
grade: 

The area of a circle is 850 (square units, feet, 
yards, etc.). What is its radius? 


Area=7rR 2 
• 850=7rR 2 


• p2_ 850 

_ 3.1416 



Here we have the best arithmetical thought 
and form, and so have we excellent algebraic 
thought and form. Indeed, again we say this 
thought and form belong not alone to algebra 
but to arithmetic and to mathematics in gen¬ 
eral. 

This has not been recognized because the 
old “rule method” has been followed through 
the centuries in arithmetic—the telling how to 
do the problem, setting forth rules and classify¬ 
ing all problems under these rules. This 
method calls for no expression of the relations 
in a problem, but rather shows and calls for 
processes. Under it, the student begins by 
adding or dividing or finding square root or 
whatever the rule dictates. Under the method 
suggested above (but not common enough 
to-day) the student attacks the conditions 
that create his problem, and translates them 
into mathematical language, which is the lan¬ 
guage we have so long called algebraic. With 
it as his tools, the student uses the equation — 
the mathematical sentence —and the signs and 
symbols that serve the purpose of placing be¬ 
fore the eye the relations that exist in the 
problem. He does not hesitate to use a 
letter to stand for a number' any more than 
he does to use +, —. X, =, and so forth 






ALGEBRA 


186 


ALGEBRA 


to stand for words. This mathematical ex¬ 
pression is coming into use in the elementary 
schools through the earnest endeavor of a 
few of the best teachers of arithmetic. 
One of the weakest points in the course of 
mathematics is the lack of a recognized 
language of arithmetic such as is common 
to all mathematics beyond arithmetic. This 
lack is one of the big obstacles to the stu¬ 
dent beginning algebra. 

The high school teacher must take cogni¬ 
zance of this. The translating into mathe¬ 
matical language of the relations existing in a 
problem is new to the beginning student in 
algebra, and the teacher must guide him slowly 
and clearly through his own clumsy product 
into concise, accurate and refined method and 
language of the science. The steps are as 
follows: 

First, he must learn to find the mathematical 
relations in the problem he reads; second, he 
must, by means of mathematical symbols, set 
forth those relations in the form of an equa¬ 
tion; third, he must learn to use this equation 
as a machine which he must manipulate prop¬ 
erly to solve his problem. This is a new view 
to him and so vital that if he fails to compre¬ 
hend it he must stumble through stubble fields 
in his algebra career, while if he gains com¬ 
mand of it he will fly as in a finely-constructed 
machine. The early days or weeks in algebra 
determine his control of the new method of 
thinking, and so these early days are vital. 

The simple problems in arithmetic given 
above make good work for the beginning high 
school student. Below are many further sug¬ 
gestions as to how the student passes on from 
arithmetic to algebra. 

1. He indicates the perimeter of a room 
which is 17 ft. by 12 ft., thus: 17+12+17+12, 
or (2X17) + (2X12) or 2X (17+12). 

2. He indicates the perimeter of a room 20 
ft. long whose width he does not know, thus: 

20+ wi d t h +20+ widt h 
20+w+20+w 
(20+w) + (20+w) 

2X(20 +w) 

The suggestion is given by the teacher that 
he may drop the sign X and he writes 
2(20+w>). Tell him that mathematicians have 
agreed to drop multiplication signs in such 
cases as this, and between letters and between 
a digit and a letter, but expect to repeat it 
many times, for he has years of background 
to the contrary. The new form should come 
gradually, not be imposed suddenly. 


The teacher says, “Show me the area of the 
floor of the first room,” and the student writes, 
“17X12.” 

“Show me the area of floor and ceiling.” 
The student writes, “(17X12) + (17X12), or 
2(17X12).” 

“Show the area of the second floor.” 
“20 Xw or 20w” 

“Area of floor and ceiling.” “(20Xw) + 
(20 Xw) or 2X (20Xw;) or 2(20Xw) or 2(20u>).” 

“I paid 45c for melons this morning. I paid 
c cents apiece. How many did I buy?” 
“45 -f-c.” 

Teacher tells him the A- is dropped and the 
fraction form is used from now on to show 

division. The student writes — 

c ' 

“A dealer sold 1,200 tons of coal for which 
he received d dollars. For what did he sell it 

per ton?” The student writes — . 

1200 

“It is m miles from the coal mines to the 
city of Peoria. I traveled the distance in 16 

hours. At what rate did I travel? Ans. —. 

16 

“I sold 7000 bushels of corn at n cents per 
bushel and spent $320. What had I left?” 
“7000ft—32000.” 

“I worked a number of years at a salary of 
$140 per month and my expenses were $117 
per month. What did I save?” 

(140—117)X12Xw 
(140—117) X 12ft 
(140—117)12ft 

Perhaps by this time many of the class will 
write the last form immediately, but do not 
fear to go back and forth from the algebraic 
to the arithmetical form. It does much to 
clarify and give real and lasting meaning to 
the new form. ) 

Below are suggestions for making situations 
that would give rise to certain mathematical 
expressions: 


77 

ft+3=6500 



900— (600+ft) 

The teacher directs: “Give a situation that 
would be expressed by each of the above.” 
Students will give widely different problems: 

1. A man collected a certain sum of money 
Aug. 1 and 3 + as much on Aug. 2, and col¬ 
lected both days $6500. 

2. A man spent % of his month’s salary and 
had $64 left. 



ALGEBRA 


187 


ALGEBRA 


3. A farmer had 900 bushels of grain and 
sold 600 bushels at one market and n bushels 
at another. How many bushels had he left? 

The teacher and children should express for 
each other algebraically situations they have 
in mind, and each try to fit situations to the 
other’s expressions. Then each one should tell 
what situation he had in mind when he set 
down the expression. 

When the student has learned to translate 
a problem into an equation, he has accom¬ 
plished the first big step in algebra. The sec¬ 
ond step is a study of the meaning, use and 
control of the equation, the algebraic machine. 
The equation as a machine is a new thought 
to the student. Indeed, in arithmetic he has 
violated with impunity the law of balance in 
the expression of his problems, and he may do 
so as long as he keeps awake to the relations 
in his problem regardless of the form; but in 
algebra he places himself at the mercy of the 
equation; having once made it, he surrenders 
to it to take him where it will. This is all new 
to the beginning algebra student; indeed, this 
subject is a veritable fairy land; the magic 
wand is no greater wonder than this same 
equation which takes up his burden, releases 
his mental energy and carries him through to 
the end if he but manipulates each crank and 
button skilfully. 

The solution of an equation depends upon 

(1) changing the equation to desirable form 
to find the value of the unknown quantity, and 

(2) keeping the balance through all changes 
made in form. 

The Negative Quantity. Another element 
in algebra new to the student beginning algebra 
is the negative quantity; the idea that number 
extends on both sides of zero above and below 
is indeed new to him. The idea of the negative 
quantity can be illustrated in various simple 
ways: 

1. A force acting’ in opposition to a force which 
is having a desired effect. 

2. A debt. 

3. Money spent when one desires to save. 

4. Being carried west when one desires to 
travel east. 

5. Game—“tug of war.” The force exerted by 
each side is negative considered from point of 
view of opposing side. 

6. Friction as opposed to moving force. 

The combination or so-called addition of 
positive and negative quantities presents only 
a simple problem. 

1. A group of boys are playing at moving a 
small wagon some distance north. Three boys 
pull north, one with a force of 12 pounds, an¬ 


other 16 pounds, another 20 pounds; another 
pulls south 18 pounds, another pulls south 14 
pounds. Combine the forces and the result 
shows +12+ + 16+ + 20+-18+-14- + 16. The 
wagon moves with a force of 16 pounds in the 
desired direction. Many algebras do not use 
the small sign, and in these the problem would 
appear 12+16+20—18—14=16. 

2. Four brothers go into partnership to as¬ 
sume the debts of all and use the money of 
all. A has $7,000 and owes $9,000. B has 
$20,000 and owes nothing. C has no money 
and is in debt $2,000. D has $30,000 and his 
debts are $4,000. What is the result of the 
combination? Using small signs it appears: 
+ 7000 + -9000 + +20000 + -2000 + +30000 + 
—4000, or: 

+ 7000 
—9000 
+ 20000 
—2000 
+ 30000 
—4000 

A negative quantity will cancel or destroy an 
equal positive quantity and vice versa. 

3. The thermometer was at 12° above zero 
at 10 a.m. It rose 17°, and then fell 9°. Indi¬ 
cate the changes and result, or combine the 
forces. +12+ + 17H—9=+ 20. 

Subtraction of 
negative num¬ 
bers may be 
made clear. 

(1) John has 
$16 and Mary 
has no money,* 
but owes $8. 

What must hap¬ 
pen to John that 
he may reach the 
same state as 
Mary? What 
must happen to 
Mary to reach 
John’s state? 

(1) —24 shows 
John went down, 
or lost 24. 

(2) +24 shows 
Mary gained 24. 

(1) — S 
+ 16 

—24 

(2) +16 

— 8 

+24 Mary’s moneys -8 


John's money = +16 



Marys 
increase 
+ 24 

John's 

decrease 


-24 

J 











ALGEBRA 


188 


ALGEBRA 


Ques.- How far apart are they? Ans. 24 
points. 

Qucs. What direction does John go? Ans. 
Negative. 

Ques. How far? Ans. 24. 

Then answer showing distance and direction. 
What is the difference between John’s and 
Mary’s financial standing? Ans. —24. 

Between Mary’s and John’s? Ans. +24. 

The first means that John must lose or get 
rid of in some way, 24. The second means 
that Mary must gain 24. 

These would appear when set down in 
ordinary subtraction— 

(1) — 8 (2) +16 
+ 16 — 8 

—24 +24 

Show difference between —7 and +20. 


< - 



- => 

-7 

O 


+ 20 

<- 


+27 

- ? 


(1) Go from +20 to —7. Ans. —27. 

(2) Go from —7 to +20. Ans. +27. 
The thermom¬ 
eter was at 85° 

at noon, and at 

70° at 6 p.m. ~ 15 

Change? —15. 

Thermom¬ 
eter was at 10 
below at mid¬ 
night and at 30 
above at 10 a. m. 

What was the 
change ? 

There was a 

/ \ 

rise of 40: 


+80 

+70 


+30 


+30 

—10 

+40 A-AO 

Such problems 
may have infinite 
variety. a.h. 


0 


-10 


The Foundations of Algebra 


In this treatment of the subject it is possible 
merely to explain fundamental principles, and 
to show how simple and reasonable the boy 
or girl can find this hitherto unknown science. 
There are many new things to be learned that 
were not treated in arithmetic; the reason for 
the existence of every new principle is not at 
all difficult to understand, and if the young 
student masters each principle in turn the 
entire subject may become a delightful recre¬ 
ation. 

Signs and Symbols. The signs used in arith¬ 
metic are carried into algebra without change 
of form and with meaning changed only in one 
particular: 

+ (plus) indicates addition; 

— (minus) indicates subtraction, and it has 
also a new significance, for it designates nega¬ 
tive number; 

X (times) indicates multiplication; 

-T- (divided by) indicates division, and 

= (equals) is the sign of equality. Whatever 
appears on one side of this sign in an algebraic 
problem is exactly equal in quantity, number 
or amount to that which appears on the other 
side of it. See Simple Equations , below. 

In algebra, parentheses, braces and brackets 
are called signs of aggregation, because every¬ 
thing within a pair of any of them is to be 
treated as a single quantity, which is to be sim¬ 


plified (reduced to its simplest expression) be¬ 
fore being incorporated into other parts of a 
problem. Their treatment may thus be ex¬ 
plained : 

[12+{4+5—(5—3)+4]—4] =what number? 

We must first simplify the inside group (5—3); 
after doing so the problem is stated in new 
form: 

[12+{4+5—2+4}—4] = ? 

Again simplifying the term within the inside 
signs, the problem becomes: 

[12+11—4] = ? Ans. 19. 

This problem is purely arithmetical. When 
applied to algebra there is no change in prin¬ 
ciple. Having observed the solution above, 
solve the following, which is purely algebraic: 

[5a+6a+ {5a—a+ (3a+4a) j—a] = ? 

If a=4, what is the numerical value of the 
series? 

Coefficient. The beginner in algebra at once 
finds a much-used term not employed in arith- 
ment—the word coefficient. As usually under¬ 
stood it means any number or letter placed be¬ 
fore another letter, and it indicates multiplica¬ 
tion; a coefficient, then, is a multiplier. Thus, 
in the term 5a, 5 is the coefficient of a, and 
indicates that the value of a is to be taken 5 
times. After becoming a little more familiar 











ALGEBRA 


189 


ALGEBRA 


with the principle it will be seen that a as well 
as 5 is a coefficient—that 5 may be taken a 
times. So, really, 5 is the coefficient of a, and 
a is the coefficient of 5. To apply the principle 
further, in a(x+y), a is the coefficient of 
(a:-f-z/) and (.r+z/) is the coefficient of a. 

Signs of Parentheses. In the above para¬ 
graph we have learned that if several numbers 
or letters are to be treated as a single expres¬ 
sion they are joined together by being enclosed 
in parentheses. There are two rules laid down 
for guidance in treating such aggregations. The 
first is usually stated in this form: 

If an expression within parentheses is pre¬ 
ceded by the sign + , the parentheses can be 
removed without making any change in the signs 
of the expression, and without altering values. 

It is a simple matter to prove this to be 
true. Let us do it in this way: 

If a man has 40 dollars and later collects 8 
dollars and then 2 dollars, it is immaterial 
whether he adds the 8 dollars to his 40 dollars, 
and afterwards adds the 2 dollars, or whether 
he adds to his 40 dollars the sum of 8 dollars 
and 2 dollars. 

The first process may be represented thus: 
40 + 8 + 2. 

The second process may be represented thus: 
40+ (8 + 2). 

Hence, 40+(8 + 2) =40 + 8 + 2. 

Again, if the same man has 40 dollars and 
later collects 8 dollars and pays a debt of 2 
dollars, it is immaterial whether the 8 dollars 
be added to the 40 and the debt be paid out 
of the sum, or whether the 2 dollars be paid 
out of the 8 dollars and the remainder be added 
to the 40 dollars. 

In the first case the process is represented by 
40 + 8—2. 

In the second it is represented by 40+(8—2). 

Hence, 40+(8—2) =40 + 8—2. 

Prove that you understand the principle by 
simplifying the following: 

5+ (8—4) =5+8—4. 

The simple form is 9=9. 

4+(8—2) + (6+l)=4+8—2+6+1. 

There should not be the slightest difficulty in 
employing the above rule. The second needs a 
little deeper study: 

If an expression within parentheses is pre¬ 
ceded by the sign —, the parentheses can be 
removed, provided the sign before each term 
within the parentheses is changed, the sign + 
to —, and the sign — to +. 

The first illustration, now that we are famil¬ 
iar with it, may be used with one variation, in 
explaining this second rule: 

If a man has 40 dollars and has two bills to 
pay, one of 8 dollars and one of 2 dollars, it is 


immaterial whether he takes the 8 dollars and 
2 dollars one after the other, or whether he 
takes the 8 dollars and the 2 dollars at one 
time from the 40 dollars. 

We may represent the first process by 40—8—2. 

We may represent the second by 40—(8 + 2). 

Hence, 40—(8 + 2) =40—8—2. 

If this man has his 40 dollars in the form 
of five-dollar bills, and has a debt of 8 dollars 
to pay, he can do so by giving two bills (10 
dollars) and receiving 2 dollars in return. 

We may represent this process by 40—10 + 2. 

If the bill paid is 8 dollars, that is, (10—2) 
dollars, the number of dollars remaining may 
be represented by 40—(10—2). 

Hence, 40—(10—2) =40—10 + 2. 

To make sure your understanding of the 
above, solve the following: 

6—(4—2) = ? 

9—(4 + 3) = ? 

(6—2) — (5—2) = ? 

12—(8—3—2) = ? 

15— (6—2 + 3) = ? 

(14a — 2a) — (6a-2a) = ? 

Numerical Values of Letters. Referring again 
to the term coefficient , we recall that a coeffi¬ 
cient is a multiplier. Thus, in the expression 
8a, a, no matter what its value may be, is to 
be taken 8 times. It follows then that if a=3, 
the expression 2a+3a=6+9, or 15; or, 2a+3a 
=5a, or 15. When no coefficient is expressed 
it is understood to be 1; a=la, 6=16, etc. 
Apply these facts in the solution of the follow¬ 
ing problems. In a few instances results are 
stated to make the mastery of the principles 
easier. 

If a=4, 6=3, c=2, find the value of: 

1. 8a—36c. ( Ans ., 14; in this case 6 and c 

are to be multiplied together, and 3 is their 
coefficient). 

2. 4ac+5a. 

3. 2(a—6+c). 

4. 6+3(a—c). Ans., 9. 

5. 46—2(a+c). 

6. 8c—6(a—6). 

The last problem is here solved step by step. 
Compare with your own solutions and see if 
your methods are correct: 

(1) 8c—6(a—6). 

(2) Removing parentheses, we have 8c—a6+ 
6 2 ; 6 times 6 is not 26, but 6 2 , because 6 is 
multiplied by itself. 

(3) Assigning values to the letters, 

16— 12+9. 

Adding the terms with plus signs, and sub¬ 
tracting from their sum the term having a 
minus sign, 

(4) 25—12=13. 


ALGEBRA 


190 


ALGEBRA 


Addition. The processes by which problems 
in addition are solved algebraically are much 
like those employed in arithmetical addition. 
When in arithmetic we add 4 and 6 we get a 
term expressing the result of this addition; it 
is 10. In algebra if w T e add a and a we obtain 
the term 2a for a sum. If, however, we add a 
and 6, we obtain no single term which will 
express this sum. To express the addition of 
algebraic quantities which are unlike we con¬ 
nect the quantities with the sign +. To ex¬ 
press the addition of algebraic quantities which 
are like , or similar, w r e add their coefficients. 
For example, 2.r plus 3x plus 4.r= (2+3+4) x 
=9x. But x plus y plus z—x-\-y-\-z. When¬ 
ever two or more unlike quantities are added 
the operation is algebraically complete when 
the quantities are connected by the sign +. 

Add 3 a, 4 b, 6a and b. In this problem like 
terms are used twice. We must combine these 
before completing our addition that we may 
have the expression in its simplest form. Com¬ 
bining similar terms: 

3a+6a=9a. 

46+ 6=56. 

The addition completed is expressed: 

3a+46+6a+6=9a+56. 

The problem may be given this form: 

3a+46 

6a+ 6 

9a+56 

In the illustrative problems given above, all 
the terms have the plus sign expressed or un¬ 
derstood. (When no sign is expressed the sign 
+ is always understood.) In the following 
problems note that some of the terms have 
minus signs. In each case arrange like terms 
under each other in columns. Add like terms 
having plus and minus signs separately, then 
subtract the quantity representing the larger 
sum from that representing the lesser. 

Add: 2a 3 —6 2 c+66d 2 +2d 3 ; 4a 3 +36 2 c—46d 2 
—3 d 3 ; 3a 3 +26 2 c+26d 2 —4 d 3 ;—2a 3 —86 2 c+66d 2 
+6 d 3 . 

Arranging the terms in columns and adding: 

2a 3 — 6 2 c+ Qbd 2J r2d 3 
4a 3 +36 2 c— 46d 2 —3 d 3 
3a 3 +26 2 c+ 2bd 2 — id 3 
—2a 3 —86 2 c+ 66d 2 +6d 3 

7 a 3 —46 2 c+106d 2 + d 3 

An explanation of any column will make 
these operations clear. Suppose we take the 
second, which contains the term 6 2 c. Adding 
the terms having the plus sign, we have 36 2 c 


plus 26 2 c; their sum is equal to 56 2 c. Adding 
—6 2 c and —86 2 c, we obtain —96 2 c; —96 2 c 
plus 56 2 c equals —46 2 c. The quantity obtained 
in adding two like terms having unlike signs 
always takes the sign of the greater. 

Solve the following: 

1. Add: 4:r 3 +3y+5z; — 2x 3 +2y—iz; 3x 3 ~8y 
— z. 

2. Add: —3a—26— c; a+36—2c; 3a—66+c. 

3. Add: 3a+46+7y; 26—3a+2y; 2a 56 
7 y ; 2a+26+2y. 

Subtraction. It is sometimes difficult for the 
beginner in algebra to understand the reason 
for the rule for algebraic subtraction. We will 
state it here as it is usually given, and then 
explain it step by step, using practical problems 
for illustration. The rule is: 

Set the like terms one under the other in the 
minuend and subtrahend, then change all the 
signs of the subtrahend and proceed as in ad¬ 
dition. 

We have learned the principles underlying 
addition, and know that the algebraic sum of 
8a and —4a equals 4a. 

8a first quantity 

—4a second quantity 

4a sum. 

In adding in arithmetic we know that if 
either of two numbers be subtracted from their 
sum, the difference must be the other number. 
Here, then, if —4a is subtracted from 4a, the 
remainder must equal the first number, which 
is 8a. This is simpljr an application of an 
arithmetical truth, that in addition, if either of 
two terms is subtracted from their sum, the 
result, or remainder, is the other term; though 
the result may look unreal, it must be correct 
because the above rule is correct. 

Let us show further proof: If we add —8a 
and 4a the sum is —4a: 

—8a first number 

4a second number 

—4a sum. 

Subtract 4a from —4a, and the remainder, if 
the rule of arithmetic is correct, must be —8a, 
for —8a is the other number. 

Again, the sum of —8 a and —4a is —12a, 
and the remainder must be the first term, —8a. 

This will be made clearer if these last three 
problems in subtraction are placed side by 
side: 


Minuend 

4a 

—4a 

—12a 

Subtrahend 

—4a 

4a 

— 4a 

Remainder 

8a 

—8a 

8a 








ALGEBRA 


191 


ALGEBRA 


It should be borne in mind that in these 
problems in subtraction the algebraic sum of 
each subtrahend and remainder equals its min¬ 
uend. These are therefore the correct solutions 
of the problems given above. 

It is advisable to learn the shortest method 
to use in subtraction and to know the simplest 
rule to be applied. By examining the above 
problems we see that in each case we could 
have found the same remainder if we had 
imagined the signs in the subtrahends to have 
been changed and the minuends and subtra¬ 
hends then added. Apply the following rule to 
each of the three solutions: 

Arrange the problem so that like terms in the 
minuend and subtrahend will be one above the 
other; change all the signs in the subtrahend 
from + to — and from — to + and proceed 
as in addition. The result will be the remainder 
sought. 

Multiplication. We have already learned 
that when we write down any number of alge¬ 
braic quantities together without joining them 
by the plus and minus signs we indicate mul¬ 
tiplication. That is, a times b—ab. When we 
set down graphically the product of abed, and 
bc 2 dy we find that b is taken twice as a factor, 
c three times, a once, y once and d twice. The 
result of our multiplication, in expanded form, 
is abbcccddy, or, simplified, ab 2 c 3 d 2 y. 

The small figures at the right of and slightly 
above the letters are known as exponents; each 
indicates the number of times the letter is to 
be used as a factor; b 2 means the square of b, 
that is, b multiplied b}^ itself or raised to the 
second power. When a letter is written with¬ 
out any exponent, as b, we understand that 
the first power of the letter is meant. That is, 
b—b 1 . It is clear, then, that when like quan- 
ties are multiplied, their exponents are added. 
Thus, b 2 Xb—b 2 + 1 =b 3 . But a 2 Xb 2 =a 2 b 2 . We 
can combine exponents of like quantities only. 

Now let us take a more complicated problem 
for solution: 

5b 2 c +2 d 
3bd 

lbb 3 cd+6bd 2 

It happens that the signs in this problem are 
all +. Let us see what steps to take when 
minus signs occur. Find the product of —5 a 2 b 
and 3a. Since — 5a 2 b indicates that 5a 2 b is to 
be subtracted, then multiplying —5a 2 6 by 3a 
is the same as subtracting 5 a 2 b 3 a times, or sub¬ 
tracting the product of 5 a 2 b and 3a once. The 
product, therefore, is —15a 3 6. 


Let us analyze another problem. Multiply 
—5 a 2 b by —3a. Multiplying these quantities is 
equivalent to subtracting —barb 3 a times. It 
must be remembered, however, that in sub¬ 
traction the sign of the subtrahend is always 
changed; so, in subtracting — ba 2 b 3 a times, we 
have the equivalent of adding ba 2 b 3 a times, or 
of adding the product of barb and 3a once. 
Therefore the product is 1 5a 3 6. 

Note the results in the following, where the 
operations are placed side by side: 

ba 2 b — ba 2 b ba 2 b —barb 

3 a 3a —3a —3a 

15a 3 6 —1 ba ?j b —15a 3 6 15a 3 6 

It is evident, from the above, that when the 
signs in the multiplier and multiplicand are 
alike the product is a positive quantity and has 
the sign +; when the signs in the multiplier 
and multiplicand are unlike the product is a 
negative quantity and has the sign —. 

The following solution indicates the steps 
taken when the multiplier and multiplicand 
have more than one term: 

a 2 —2a6+6 2 

a — b 

a 3 — 2a 2 b J rab 2 
— a 2 6+2a6 2 —6 3 

a 3 —3a 2 6~r3a6 2 — b 3 

The following problems may be solved for 
practice: 

1. Multiply 4a—36 by 3a+46. 

2. Multiply a 2 —a6+6 by 3a+6. 

3. Multiply £ 2 +2 .t ~\~y by x — y. 

4. Multiply x iJ r2x 2 y 2J ry i by x 2 — y 2 . 

Division. We learned that in multiplying, 
exponents of like terms in the multiplier and 
multiplicand are added; in division, which is 
the reverse of multiplication, the quotient is 
obtained by subtracting the exponents of like 
terms in dividend and divisor. 

Divide 6 3 by 6. 

b\b 3 \b 2 
~ b 3 

Proof: b 2 Xb=b 3 . Also, 6 3 ^6=6 3 - 1 =6 2 . 

This division may also be shown thus: 

Divide b 3 by 6. 
b 3 —bbb. 

Divide 666 b}' 6. 


666 



bb—b 2 . 











ALGEBRA 


192 


ALGEBRA 


Divide 3 x i y 2 z —9 x 2 yz 2 —6 x 2 y 2 by 2>x 2 y, 
Solution: 

3 x A y 2 z 9 x z yz 2 6 x 2 y^ 

3x?y 3 x 2 y 3 x 2 y 

x 2 yz —3.rz 2 —2 y 2 

In long division, for convenience in multiply¬ 
ing, it is customary to write the divisor at the 
right of the dividend. The following is an 
acceptable form: 

12a 2 +18a6+66 2 | 4a+26 

12a 2 + 6a6 3a+36 

12a6+66 2 

12a6+66 2 

We find by inspection that 4a, the first term 
of the divisor, is contained in 12a 2 , the first 
term of the dividend, 3a times. Multipljdng 
this partial quotient 3a by the entire divisor, 
placing the product under the first two terms 
of the dividend and subtracting, we obtain 
12a6. We bring down and add to this re¬ 
mainder the next unused term (66 2 ) in the 
dividend. By inspection we find that the first 
term of the divisor is contained in the first 
term of the new dividend 36 times. We mul¬ 
tiply the entire divisor by 36 and obtain 12a6 
+66 2 . Subtracting this product from the new 
dividend, we obtain no remainder and know 
that our division is complete. 

The signs in the above problem are all plus. 

Note the solution of the following problem, 
in which minus signs occur: 

a 2 —2a6+6 2 | a—6 

a 2 — a 6 a—6 

—a6+6 2 
—a6+6 2 

Note that when we divided the first term in 
the new dividend, — ab, by the first term in 
the divisor, a, we obtained as a quotient —6. 
Whenever a negative term is divided by a posi¬ 
tive term, or a positive by a negative, the sign 
of the quotient will be minus. But a minus 
term divided by a minus term gives a positive 
quotient. Briefly stated, like signs produce 
plus, and unlike signs produce minus quanti¬ 
ties. 

Solve for practice the following: 

1. Divide 9.r 2 —18a*?/+9?y 2 by 3a:—3 y. 

2. Divide a 2 —12a+35 by a—5. 

3. Divide 3a; 4 —10a: 3 2/+22a: 2 y 2 — 22xy 3 ~hl5y A by 
x 2 — 2xy~b3y 2 . 

4. Divide a 5 2a 4 —4fcs 3 +19a 2 —31a+15 by a 3 
—7a+5. 


Simple Equations. Two or more terms con¬ 
nected by the sign of equality (=) form what 
is known as an equation. The principles upon 
which the solutions of equations are based may 
be readily understood by using the familiar 



THE BALANCE SCALE' 


balance scale as an illustration. Suppose we 
have such a scale as is shown in the accom¬ 
panying picture. In one pan we place a ten- 
pound weight; in the other we place a six- 
pound and a four-pound weight. The first 
weight, we know, balances the other two, and 
this fact may be indicated by the following 
statement: 

10=6+4. 

Suppose we add 5 pounds to each pan. Then 
our statement is modified to read, 

10+5=6+4+5. 

If we now remove 3 pounds from each pan 
we have: 

10+5—3=6+4+5—3. 

from these statements, or equations, we may 
see that the following principles are true: 

1. The same quantity may be added to both 
sides of an equation, or be subtracted from both 
sides, without changing the value of the equa¬ 
tion. 

2. We may multiply or divide each side of an 
equation by the same quantity without changing 
the value of the equation. 

By the application of these rules we may 
find the numerical values of unknown quanti¬ 
ties. In the equation 10a+2=32 we have 
stated that 32 is 2 more than 10a, or that to 
10a we must add 2 to equal 32. If we wish 
to ascertain the number to which 10a is equal 
we must subtract 2 from 32. Since we may 
subtract the same number from both sides of 









































ALGEBRA 


193 


ALGEBRA 


an equation and still preserve its equality, we 
may write: 

10a+2—2=32—2. 

This is equivalent to 10a=32—2. 

Simplifying, 10a=30. 

Dividing both sides by 10, a— 3. 

These operations are fundamental in what 
is known as transposition. When we change 
the form 10ad~2=32 to the form 10a=32—2, 
we transpose a known quantity from one side 
of the equation to the other, and in doing so 
we change its sign. In the solution of simple 
equations by transposition we work with two 
principles: known quantities are placed on one 
side of the equality sign and unknown quanti¬ 
ties on the other; any quantity may be trans¬ 
posed from one side to the other if its sign is 
changed. As we learned above, when we trans¬ 
pose a quantity we are really adding it to both 
sides, of the equation or subtracting it from 
both sides. Let us see how these facts are ap¬ 
plied in the solution of practical problems: 

1. A ditch 8 0 feet long is divided into two 
parts in such a way that one part is three 
times as long as the other. What is the length 
of each part? 

As the length of neither part is known, we 
may represent the number of feet in the shorter 
part by x. The solution is stated thus: 

Let x = number of feet in shorter part. 

3x = number of feet in longer part. 

37 + 3 37, or 4x, = number of feet in total 
length. 

437 = S0. 

37=20, number of feet in shorter part. 

337 = 60, number of feet in longer part. 

Proof: 60 = 3X20. 60 + 20 = 80. 


2. Find a number such that when 14 is added 
to twice the number the sum will be 64. 

If we represent the number to be found by x, 
we know that twice the number must be 2x. 
Since 14 added to double the number equals 
64, our next statement must read, 

2.r+14=64. 

Applying the rules we have just learned, we 
have, 

2x=64—14, 

2x=50, 

£=25, required number. 

Solve the following problems, using the above 
explanations as your guide: c 

1. The sum of two numbers is 60, and the 
greater is five times the less. What is each? 

2. A man divided 75 dollars between two 
sons. To A he gave twice as much as to B. 
How much did each receive? 

3. Four times a certain number is equal to 
the number increased by 36. What is the 
number? 

4. John bought a certain number of apples. 
Had he bought three times as many he would 
have had 20 more than the original number. 
How many did he buy? 

5. An orchard yields 140 bushels of fruit. 
Four times the number of bushels of peaches 
is 15 more than the number of bushels of pears. 
Find the number of bushels of each. 

Hint: Let x = number of bushels of peaches, 
and 140— x = the number of bushels of pears. 

6. A farm of 160 acres was divided into three 
sections. The first was twice the size of the 
second, and the second three times the size of 
the third. What was the acreage of each? 

7. A 45-acre farm was divided into three 
garden plots. The first was half the size of the 
third and the second half the size of the first 
and third combined. How many acres in each? 


Problems Dealing with Two Unknown Quantities 

As the next step in our work we take up By Addition or Subtraction. Let us examine 
equations in which two unknown quantities step by step the process of finding the value 
occur. Though such problems are more com- of two unknown quantities by the first method, 
plex than the ones given above, their solution This method is usually the simpler and easier 
is not difficult if the philosophy of the simple of the two. 
equation is clearly understood. 

Usual Methods. In solving problems involv- Solve 
ing two unknown quantities several methods 
may be used to eliminate the unknowns. To It is clear that if the first equation is multi- 
eliminate an unknown quantity is to find its plied by 2, it will be in such form that the first 
numerical value; the new value is then placed term will equal the first term of the second 
in the original equation as a substitute for the equation. The entire product will read: Gad- 

original unknown quantity. The methods most 86=68. If we subtract the second equation 

commonly used are elimination by addition or from the first as it now stands, we will have a 

subtraction , and elimination by substitution. remainder of 56=35. The value of 6 is then 

There are other methods, but they are less fre- easily found. The various steps of the process 

quently employed than the ones explained here, are shown in the following statements; 


(3ad-46=34 

|6ad~36=33 


ALGEBRA 


194 ALGEBRA 


(1) . 3a+4b=34 

(2) . 6a+3b=33 


(3) Multiplying (1) by 2. 6a+8b—68 

(4) Bringing down (2). 6a+36=33 

(5) Subtracting . 5b —35 

(6) . b= 7 


Having found the numerical value of b, it is 
an easy matter to apply that value in either 
of the original equations; in other words, to 
substitute in equation (1) or equation (2) the 
value of b. 

Since we know that b equals 7 we use the 
value of 4 b, or 28, in the first equation, so that 
our statement now reads: 3a+28=34. In or¬ 
der to get both known quantities on the same 
side of the equality sign we must transpose the 
28. Then we have, 3a=34—28; 3a=6, and 
a— 2. The formal statement for the comple¬ 
tion of the problem is: 

(7) Applying the value of b in (1) 3a+28=34 

(8) Transposing . 3a=34—28 

(9) Then . 3a=6 

(10) And . a =2 

(11) Proof.3a, or 6, +4 b, or 28, =34 


For practice, solve the problems given below, 
using either addition or subtraction to elimi¬ 
nate unknowns. The beginner will find it 
helpful to write out each solution fully, put¬ 
ting down the steps in order and thus making 
himself familiar with the principles involved. 


1. Solve 


(4z+ 3y=25 
[ z+12?/=40 


2. Solve 

3. Solve 


j3z+ y -16 
[2x+ 2z/—20 

^ :r+ 5?/=34 
l±x+ 3y=51 


I 


Elimination by Substitution. By this is 
meant the process of clearing an equation of 
one of its unknown terms by substituting in 
either equation the value of one of its unknown 
terms, as in the following solution: 


Solve 


(2a+5b=31 

|3a+4?/=29 


We will first transpose 2a in the first equa¬ 


tion and thus get a statement for the value 
of b. 

Transposing 2a, we have 55=31 2a, and b— 

31—2a 


Now we write the second equation of the 
problem, placing the new value of b in it. We 
thus have: 


3a+4 


(31—2a) 


5 


: 29 


Before this equation can be simplified it must 
be cleared of fractions, as follows: 

(31—2a) 

3a+4-=29 

5 

(124—8a) 

3a+ -=29 


15a+124—8a=145. 

Transposing the known quantities to the 
right of the equality sign, we have: 

15a—8a= 145—124, or 7a=21. 

The following statements show the entire 
process step by step: 


(1) 

( 2 ) 

(3) 


Transposing 2 a in (1) 
and dividing by 5. . 


2a + 5b = 31 
3a+ 4?) = 29 
31—2a 


(4) Substituting the value (31 —2a) 

of b in (2) .3a+ 4--- =29 

o 

(5) Clearing of fractions... 15a + 124—8a = 145 

( 6 ) Transposing.15a—8a=145—124 

(7) . a — 3 


( 8 ) Substituting the value 


of a in (3). 5 

(9) . & = 5 


For practice, solve the following problems, 
using the method of eliminating by substitu¬ 
tion: 


1. Solve 

2. Solve 


1 

f 

1 


3.c+6i/=24 
5.x—3 y— 1 

5.r—3 y— 8 
2x+2y=32 


3. Solve 


5x — y —14 
llx+2y=77 


Problems Involving Three Unknown Quantities 


Problems involving three unknown quanti¬ 
ties, though a little more complicated, present 
no special difficulties, for they may be solved 
by applying the rules for elimination to two 
of the given equations, and when the values 
pf two unknown quantities are found, these may 


be substituted in connection with the third 
unknown quantity. The full solution of such 
a problem is given below: 

x -\- yh 2=10 
Solved 3 .tT'2z/ 4-42=33 
10.r—3 y —32= 9 






























ALGEBRA 


195 


ALGERIA 


(1) . £+ ?/+ 2=10 

(2) .3x+2 y-\- 40=33 

(3) .9x+3 y— 30=18 

(4) Bring down (2).3x+2 y+ 40=33 

(5) Multiply (1) by 3.3x+3 y+ 30=30 

(6) Subtract (5) from (4).... — y-\- z— 3 

(7) Multiply (2) by 3.9x+6y+ 120=99 

(8) Bring down (3).9x+3?/— 30=18 

(9) Subtract (8) from (7).... 3t/+150=81 

(10) Multiply (6) by 3. —3 y+ 3 0 = 9 

(11) Add (9) and (10). 180=90 

(12) Therefore . 0 = 5 

(13) Substituting the value of 

0 in (6). — y+ 5= 3 

(14) .— y—~2, or y— 2 

(15) Substituting in (1). x+2+5=10 

(16) . z=10—7, or 3 

(17) Proof . 3+2+5=10 

Solve the following problems, testing in each 

instance the correctness of your work: 


1. Solve . 


x-\-2 y — £ = 10 
Zx+Ay — 5z= 4 
5#+ y- f £=38 


2. Solve 


' 2a?+ y— £ = 10 
< Qx — 3j/ + 4£=63 
9x— y — Qz= 4 


3. A merchant sold to a customer 8 yards of 
silk and 4 yards of gingham for 18 dollars; at 
the same rate he sold to another customer 5 
yards of silk and 10 yards of gingham- for 15 
dollars. What was the price of each per yard? 


The conditions of this problem may be 
stated algebraically as follows: % 

Let x = number of dollars one yard of silk 
costs, 

and 2 / = number of dollars one yard of ging¬ 
ham costs. 

Then 8#+ 42/ = 18 
5a;+ 102/ = 15 

These equations are solved according to the 
rules that have been given in the preceding 
paragraphs. 

4. Three numbers have the following relations: 
three times the first plus the second plus twice 
the third equals 38 ; four times the first minus 
the second plus three times the third equals 40 ; 
and the first plus three times the second minus 
the third equals 12. What are the numbers? 


Advanced Algebra. The basic principles of 
algebra have been covered in the preceding 
paragraphs, and if you have mastered the 
explanations therein given you will be able to 
take up more advanced work. The subjects of 
fractions, factoring, highest common divisor 
and least common multiple can be mastered 
by anyone who has an intelligent understand¬ 
ing of those subjects from the view-point of 
arithmetic, and from them the student may 


work through the subject of quadratic equa¬ 
tions. 

The study of algebra can be made as absorb¬ 
ing as that of astronomy or literature, and it 
also offers exceptional opportunities for mental 
discipline, since it can be mastered only with 
persistent attention to detail and demands 
accuracy and concentration in the highest de¬ 
gree. B.M.W. 

Nearly all school-book publishing houses have 
several good texts on algebra for beginners, spe¬ 
cializing in these as well as in more advanced 
text-books. Any such publisher (names can be 
secured from teachers or county superintendent) 
will be glad to give advice upon the subject. 

ALGER, ahl' jur or awl' jur, Horatio (1834- 
1899), an American author of books for boys, 
whose Ragged Dick, Tattered Tom and Luck 
and Pluck series have been sold by the hun¬ 
dreds of thousands. As the names suggest, 
they deal with penniless heroes who, by good¬ 
ness, as well as “luck and pluck,” reach suc¬ 
cess. Alger was for a time a Unitarian 
preacher, but becoming especially interested in 
the lives of self-supporting boys gave up his 
pastorate to help such boys, as well as to write 
about and for them. 

ALGERIA, alje'ria, a country of about 
343,500 square miles, in Northern Africa, with 
650 miles of Mediterranean seacoast oh the 
north, and with Morocco and Tunis on the 
west and east. It is nearly as large as the 
combined states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wis¬ 
consin and Michigan. The southern boundary 
is indefinite and unimportant, merging into the 



ALGERIA 

The country has no definite southern boundary, 
nor does it need one, for French influence pre¬ 
vails throughout the region. 


arid lands of the great Sahara Desert. The 
country has a population of over 5,230,000. It 
has belonged to France since 1830, but has 
always been a liability rather than an asset to 






















ALGERIA 


196 


ALGERIA 


the French, except that the position of France 
among the powers of Europe is strengthened by 
its ownership. It gives present indication of 
developing into a profitable colony. 

The Country and the People. The Atlas 
Mountains traverse the country in irregular 
lines from east to west, with a few elevations 
which reach 7,000 feet, but which average half 
that height. In the northern and central sec¬ 
tions the valleys and low plateaus are fertile 
and contain the homes of most of the people. 
Close to the coast, in a belt 100 miles wide, is 
the most fertile and populous region, called the 
Tell. The southern section merges into the 
vastness of the desert, where the population is 
limited to possibly 100,000 wandering, clannish 
people. 

The natives are Berbers (which see); they 
are often regarded as descendants of the Nu- 
midians, a theory which is probably correct, as 
present-day Algeria was a part of ancient Nu- 
midia. More numerous than these are the 
Arabs, and there are also a considerable num¬ 
ber of Jews, who are more influential in the 
country’s affairs than their numbers would in¬ 
dicate. All except the latter are of the Mo¬ 
hammedan faith. 

Attractive Features. The average tourist 
seldom goes to Algeria, but the visitor there 
may enjoy a wide range of experience. As a 
winter resort the country is not excelled, so far 
as climate is concerned; snow remains on the 
mountain peaks until May, but on the pla¬ 
teaus, along parallels of latitude with Atlanta 
and Los Angeles, the temperature is delightful 
most of the year. Lower down intense heat is 
experienced. Those who wish to see desert 
conditions may do so, under circumstances as 
favorable as in most sections, by caravan routes 
to the very numerous oases (see Oasis). The 
people are worth studying; only a few hours 
from highly-developed Europe are native cus¬ 
toms and characteristics which have changed 
little with the passing of time. 

Resources. The usual minerals of mountain¬ 
ous regions are abundant. Iron is extensively 
mined, and large capital finds profitable invest¬ 
ment in this industry. Lead, copper, zinc, mar¬ 
ble and mercury add to the mineral wealth. 
The Mediterranean fisheries are important, in¬ 
cluding profitable sponge and coral industries. 

The raising of figs, dates, oranges, lemons and 
olives is increasing at a remarkable rate, and 
this, with added activity in mining, explains 
why Algeria is sure to be within a brief time a 
profitable colony for France. The country pro¬ 


duces more to-day than at any time since the 
Romans owned it before the Christian Era, 
when it was one of the famous granaries of the 
ancient world. To-day the production of wheat, 
barley and oats is important, but the tropical 
products excel all others. Europeans manage 
nearly all the enterprises of the colony; they 
number over 750,000, or one in seven of the 
total population. 

Government. France keeps in very close 
touch with the government of its colony. The 
Governor-General, the ruler of Algeria, is ap¬ 
pointed in Paris, and the three departments 
into which the colony is divided send repre¬ 
sentatives to the French National Assembly. 
This body makes the laws for Algeria. The 
Arab inhabitants have chiefs of their own, but 
the government takes no account of these and 
exacts the same obedience from its Arab as 
from its French subjects. 

History. Modern Algeria was the Numidia 
of the Romans, and, as a colony of the Empire, 
prospered and developed a high state of civili¬ 
zation. The Vandals, however, put an end to 
its prosperity in a. d. 440, and little was then 
heard of it until the Mohammedan conquest in 
the eighth century. Arabs migrated to the 
country, and the Mohammedan religion be¬ 
came firmly established. 

When the Moors were driven from Spain in 
1492 by Ferdinand and Isabella, many of them 
settled in Algeria, and from that time on for 
centuries the country was known to outside 
peoples chiefly as the home of pirates who were 
greatly to be feared. The United States, in 
common with other nations, at one time paid 
tribute money to the outlaws of the Barbary 
States to insure safety for its commerce. By 
the beginning of the nineteenth century the 
daring of these pirates had become a real men¬ 
ace to the Christian powers, and efforts to 
suppress them were constant, but in vain. 
Finally, in 1815, Commodore Decatur suc¬ 
ceeded in forcing the dey, or ruler, of Algeria 
to admit that the United States flag was inviol¬ 
able, and in the next year an English fleet 
wrung from Algeria a treaty which promised 
the cessation of piracy and the liberation of all 
Christian slaves. These promises the pirates 
constantly broke, and in 1830, after a French 
consul had been grossly insulted by the dey of 
Algeria, the French sent a fleet which reduced 
the country to utter dependence. It was many 
years before the insurrections were all put 
down, however, and the country brought to the 
point where any real progress was possible. 


ALGERIA 


197 


ALGERIA 


Since 1871 a civil government has taken the 
place of the military system necessary up to 
that time. 

Algeria is much interested in all plans for the 
development of the continent of Africa, and its 
government is pushing plans to assist in the 
commercial advancement of vast areas. A rail¬ 
road is projected from the Algerian coast south¬ 
ward through the wastes of the Sahara to Lake 
Chad and then towards the Belgian Congo and 
British South Africa. Work on this line may 
not be commenced before 1920; the War of 
the Nations may delay it even longer, because 
of financial difficulties, but it is one of those 
'vast projects which will one day help to make 
the “Dark Continent” an enlightened country. 

Other Points of Interest. The nomadic Arab 
tribes do not really own any land, but tradi¬ 
tion has assigned to each tribe a certain terri¬ 
tory within which it may wander. 

During the summer months the sirocco, a 
hot, dry wind, blows across Algeria, filling the 
air with fine sand. 

There is an extraordinary boiling spring, 
called by the natives “the accursed bath,” 
which legend declares came into existence sud¬ 
denly to punish a sheikh who had sinned. 

There are many cork trees in Algeria, and 
the income from cork is considerable. 

In the central part of the country there are 
numerous salty lakes, known as shats, which 
dry up in summer and leave a layer of salt. 

The name Tell, applied to the most populous 
region, is an Arab word meaning hill. 

The coast of Algeria has always been known 
as an unusually dangerous stretch—the ancient 
Romans spoke of its “savage sea and inhospit¬ 
able shore.” But the French government, by 
its excellent lighthouse system, has done much 
to lessen its dangers. 

Forest fires do great damage in Algeria. Gov¬ 
ernment reports state that in some years over 
6,000,000 trees are damaged or ruined. 

The highest point in Algeria is 7,600 feet 
above sea level. 

There are 50,000 more asses than horses in 
Algeria, despite the fact that Arabs are always 
thought of as riding “fiery steeds.” 

Goats and sheep are by far the most numer¬ 
ous animals, there being almost eight times as 
many sheep and more than three times as 
many goats as cattle. e.d.f. 

Consult Statt’s The Real Algeria; Wilkins’s 
Among the Berbers of Algeria. These are Eng¬ 
lish publications; there are no American books 
for recommendation, owing to the remote Ameri¬ 
can interest in the subject. 



Outline and Questions on 
Algeria 


I. Position 

(1) Latitude, 30° to 37° north 

(2) Longitude, 2° 10' west to 8° 50' 

east 

II. Size 

(1) Length, 550 miles from east to 

west 

(2) Breadth, 320 to 380 miles 

(3) Area, 225,000 square miles 

HI. Country and In habit ants 

(1) Fertile coast region 

(2) Atlas Mountains 
(3 ) Desert regions 

(4) The natives 

IV. Climate 

(1) In mountains and uplands 

(2) In lower sections 

V. Resources 

(1) Minerals 

(2) Fisheries 

(3) Agriculture 

VI. Government and History 

(1) Early conquests 

(2) Piracy 

(3) Interference by the United States 

and France 

( 4 ) French government 

Questions 

What is the “Tell,” and why is it so 
called? 

Why are Algeria and the other coun¬ 
tries of North Africa known as the 
Barbary States? 

How does this country compare in 
size with the Canadian province of 
Saskatchewan? With the largest state 
in the American union? 

Compare its population with that of 
each of these divisions. 

How do the Berbers compare moral¬ 
ly with the Arabs? 

Why did the French interfere in Al¬ 
geria? 

What are shats? 

Give two reasons why it would be 
safer to approach the Algerian coast 
now than a century ago. 

What is the “accursed bath”? 

Why is not Southern Algeria as 
thickly-settled as the northern part? 

With what ancient country was Al¬ 
geria identified? 

Has Algeria always been a profit¬ 
able colony to its owner? 

What change is taking place in this 
respect? 

What is the attitude of France 
toward the Arab chiefs? 

Does Algeria make its own laws? 

What attractions has the country to 
offer to tourists? 



















ALGIERS 


198 


ALGONKIAN SYSTEM 


ALGIERS, al jeers', a fortified seaport on 
the African coast of the Mediterranean Sea, 
formerly the most important Moorish city, now 
capital of the French colony of Algeria. It is 
advantageously situated partly at the foot and 
partly on the slopes of a hill overlooking the 
Bay of Algiers. The ancient Moorish section 
on the hill above the modern portion preserves 
the characteristics of Oriental cities many cen¬ 
turies old. The modern city is a gay, electric- 
lighted watering place, thronged with visitors. 
The streets are broad and well kept, and there 
are many fine squares. Prominent structures 
are the Roman Catholic Cathedral, the Mili¬ 
tary academy and its astronomical observatory. 
Although changeable, the climate is very 


Algol loses five-sixths of its brightness at 
regular intervals of three days. The diminish¬ 
ing process lasts four and one-half hours, and 
the full brilliancy is recovered in a further three 
and one-half hours. This is accounted for by 
the presence of a satellite revolving about the 
star and partially obscuring it when directly in 
line between it and the earth. Measurements 
show that the diameter of Algol is 1,160,000 
miles; that of the satellite, 840,000 miles, and 
that the two are about 3,250,000 miles apart. 
Algol has a density equivalent to that of a 
cork, and a mass about two-thirds that of the 
sun. The distance of Algol from the earth is 
so great that it cannot be expressed in figures. ' 
See Perseus; Medusa. 



TWO SCENES IN ALGIERS 

A street in the native section, and a public square in the modern part of the city. 


healthful, and particularly desirable for inva¬ 
lids. Parisian manners and customs have been 
transported to Algiers, which is said, though 
incorrectly, to be “more French than Paris.” 

The harbor and docks have been greatly im¬ 
proved since the French occupation of the city 
in 1830. Extensive commerce is carried on 
with France, Italy, England, Spain and other 
European countries. Algiers exports flour, 
esparto, wine, olive oil and fruit, and is the 
most important coaling station on the Mediter¬ 
ranean Sea. In 1910 the population was 590,000. 

ALGOL, al' gahl, in astronomy, a variable 
star in the constellation Perseus, forming part 
of “Medusa’s Head,” which in the account in 
mythology Perseus carried in his hand, to turn 
his enemies to stone. The name is derived 
from the Arabic al ghul, meaning the ghoul or 
destroyer. For more than a century it was 
known to be variable and was a puzzle to as¬ 
tronomers. It has now been ascertained that 


ALGONKIAN, algon'kian, SYSTEM, the 

term used by the United States Geological Sur¬ 
vey to specifjr a great layer of rocks lying be¬ 
tween the Archean System, below, and the 
Cambrian, above. Algonkian is used synony¬ 
mously with the term Proterozoic, which has 
been adopted b}^ many geologists (see Geology). 
It is the first, therefore the lowest, layer of 
those rocks in the earth’s crust which were 
formed from sediment deposited at the bottom 
of large bodies of water and hardened into 
rock. Such rocks are known as sedimentary. 
They contain few fossils, indicating a meager 
development of life at the time of their for¬ 
mation, but on the other hand proving the 
existence of life. Outcroppings of the Algon¬ 
kian System appear in the Lake Superior re¬ 
gion, in Southwestern Minnesota, Missouri, 
Texas, and in the Rocky Mountains. Most 
geologists call the period in which they were 
formed the Proterozoic Era, meaning the time 
































































ALHAMBRA 


ALGONQUIAN INDIANS 199 


of earlier life. See Archean System; Cam¬ 
brian System; also Paleozoic Era; Rocks. 

ALGON'QUIAN, algon'kian, INDIANS, 
the largest family of tribes in the United States 
and Canada, both in colonial days and at the 
present time. They first inhabited the land 
lrom Labrador southwest to the Carolinas and 
Tennessee, and west to the Mississippi River, 
surrounding the Iroquois and bordering on the 
Siouan tribes to the west and south, and the 
Athapascan tribes to the northwest. Though 
originally of a rather peaceable disposition, 
their New England representatives resented the 
depredations of the colonists, and wherever 
they met the English, long and bloody wars 
followed, until the natives were either extin¬ 
guished or driven across the Alleghanies. 
Throughout the French and Indian wars they 
fought stubbornly against the English, but in 
the end found themselves confined to scattered 
reservations west of the Mississippi. To-day 
there are about 90,000 Algonquians in exist- 



/ATLANT/C 
\ OCEAN 


ORIGINAL ALGONQUIAN TERRITORY 


The various tribes were located approximately 
in the sections indicated: 


(a) Chippewa 

( b ) Sauk and Fox 

(c) Kickapoo 

( d ) Illinois 

(e) Shawnee 
(/) Ottawa 


(g) Potawatomi 

( h ) Miama 

( i ) Powhatan 
O’) Delaware 
( k ) Pequot 

(0 Narraganset 


ence, of whom about 41,000 live in the United 
States and the remainder in Canada. 

Corn was a great staple among the Algon¬ 
quians, who cultivated the soil about their 
permanent homes of bark and logs. Among 
the chief tribes of this family are the Algon¬ 
quin, whose name has been adopted for the 
entire stock, the Abnaki, Micmac, Passama- 


quoddy, Narraganset, Pequot, Delaware, Ot¬ 
tawa, Ojibwa, Cree, Miami, Illinois, Kickapoo, 
Shawnee, Potawatomi, Arapaho, Menominee, 
Sauk, Fox and Cheyenne. The greatest chiefs, 
of the Algonquians—King Philip, Pontiac, Te- 
cumseh and Black Hawk—are treated in these 
volumes. For the manners, customs and his¬ 
tory of the Indian race, see Indians, American. 

Consult Dellenbaugh’s The North Americans 
of Yesterday. 

ALGON'QUIN PARK, a forest and game pre¬ 
serve in Ontario, only a few miles from the 
valley of the Ottawa River, once the hunting 
grounds of the Algonquian Indians (which see). 
It was formerly called Algonquin National 
Park, but it has always been owned by the 
province of Ontario. Its area of 2,060 square 
miles is in the heart of one of the wildest regions 
in North America. Yet this region, much of it 
primitive forest untouched by man, is easily 
accessible, being only 200 miles by rail north 
of Toronto, and from sixty to seventy miles 
east of the shore of Georgian Bay. The Park 
has an altitude of 1,500 to 2,000 feet, and is 
dotted with more than a thousand lakes of 
various sizes, practically all of which are 
abundantly stocked with trout, bass and other 
fish. Deer are common, moose are frequently 
seen, and smaller game, including birds, is 
plentiful. The park is said to have more 
beaver and otter than any other section of 
equal area in America. No hunting is per¬ 
mitted in the park, but the nearby territory 
is a sportsman’s paradise. 

ALHAMBRA, alham' brah, the most splen¬ 
did example of Moorish art in Europe, is an 
ancient palace and fortress of the Moorish 
kings of Granada in Southern Spain, situated 
on a terrace on the southeastern border of that 
city. The Moors built a citadel on the site of 
the Alhambra in the ninth century, as a pro¬ 
tection against their Christian enemies. In 
1248, after Granada had become the capital of 
the few remaining Moorish dominions in Spain, 
this was rebuilt, and additions were made up 
to the year 1354, when numerous halls and 
buildings had been erected. The name Alham¬ 
bra, meaning in Arabic, the red, is probably 
taken from the sun-dried bricks that compose 
the outer wall. Thirteen towers rise upon this 
wall, which encloses an area of thirty-five 
acres. Within the enclosure are gardens made 
beautiful by fountains and waterfalls, trees and 
fragrant flowers, and the singing of a multitude 
of nightingales. 

The Alhambra was captured in 1492 by the 






ALIAS 


200 


ALIEN AND SEDITION LAWS 


Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, in 
the same year that they started Columbus on 
his voyage of discovery. Though it has suffered 
at the hands of spoilers and from the marks of 
time, it is still a wonderful work of art, and 
the beauties of the palace have been copied by 
many artists and architects of later times. An 
interesting account of the Alhambra is given 
in Washington Irving’s The Alhambra. 

Consult Irving’s The Alhambra; Calvert’s 
Granada and the Alhambra. 

ALIAS, a' lias, a legal term for the name 
assumed by a person who wishes to hide his 
identity. Thus Henry Morgan, alias Harry 
Nicol, alias Paul West is the description in law 
for a man whose true name is Henry Morgan, 
but who has at times called himself by the 
other names, to avoid attracting the attention 
of the police, or for a similar questionable 
reason. This description would be the one to 
be used in an alias writ for his arrest (see 
Writ). A pen name or stage name is not con¬ 
sidered an alias, but a nom de plume. 

ALI BABA, ah' le bah' ba, the hero of the 
Arabian Nights’ tale of Ali Baba and the Forty 
Thieves, who opened the door of the thieves’ 
cavern by using their magic password, “Open 
sesame.” The life of Ali Baba was saved by 
the slave Morgiana, who poured boiling oil 
in the jars where the robbers lay hidden. See 
Arabian Nights. 

ALIBI, aV iby, a Latin word meaning else¬ 
where, is applied to a defense used in lawsuits, 
whereby a person accused of a crime attempts 
to show that he could not have committed the 
deed because he was in a different place at the 
time. If he succeeds in this proof he is said 
to establish an alibi. An alibi supported by 
true evidence is the best possible means of 
proving the innocence of one accused, but this 
mode of defense also offers the guilty an 
alluring opportunity of escape by the introduc¬ 
tion of false witnesses and perjury. 

ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDER¬ 
LAND, a book for children which contains 
some of the most delightful juvenile reading 
ever put in print. It was written by Charles L. 
Dodgson, under the pen name of Lewis Car- 
roll, and purports to be a narrative of the 
dream of little Alice, a most charming and 
natural child. The author has kept throughout 
the book the child’s point of view, and the 
White Rabbit, the Dodo, the Duchess, the 
Mocking Turtle and the March Hare are char¬ 
acters which are alive to every boy or girl 
who reads the book. Alice in Wonderland and 


its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, have 
been illustrated by several artists, but none of 
the later pictures are as entirely satisfactory 
as the original ones by Tenniel. 

ALIEN, ayV yen, a person residing in one 
country, but owing allegiance to another. Thus, 
an Englishman may live in the United States 
for many years, but unless he transfers his 
allegiance by naturalization (which see), he is 
still, in the view of the United States, legally 
an alien. The position of aliens differs in 
various countries, but generally they owe a 
local allegiance and are bound equally with 
citizens to all rules for the preservation of 
order. They have no political rights, but in 
case of need they may be compelled to serve 
in the militia or do police duty. As a rule they 
may acquire, hold or dispose of property, both 
real and personal, in any way open to citizens, 
except that in some states foreigners can own 
real estate no longer than six years. This is 
true throughout the British Empire, but in the 
United States a few states have not granted 
such rights to aliens. 

Occasionally, as in the California law of 
1913 prohibiting Japanese from, owning land, 
a state law violates a treaty made by the 
United States government w T ith a foreign na¬ 
tion. The prevailing opinion seems to be 
that in such a case the Federal government 
has the power to force the state to change its 
law, for the Constitution states that all rela¬ 
tions with foreign powers are retained in the 
hands of the general government. 

ALIEN AND SEDITION LAWS, four stat¬ 
utes enacted by the Congress of the United 
States in 1798, during the Presidency of John 
Adams. The Alien Act, which remained in 
force for two years, gave the President power 
to order out of the country any people not 
citizens whom he considered dangerous to the 
government; and if they failed to leave 
promptly they were subject to imprisonment. 
The Sedition Act was passed in July, 1798, and 
remained in force until March 3, 1801; it im¬ 
posed a fine not exceeding $5,000 and imprison¬ 
ment for not more than five years as a penalty 
for conspiring to resist government measures 
or for publishing libelous or scandalous state¬ 
ments concerning Congress or the President. 
A third law included harsh provisions applying 
to alien enemies, and a fourth made fourteen 
years’ residence the qualification for naturaliza¬ 
tion (which see). 

These laws were passed chiefly to suppress 
violent opposition to the administration, and 


ALIMENTARY CANAL 


201 


ALKALI 


also to end the movement, begun by Genet, 
which sought to secure American aid for 
France in its war with England (see Genet). 
Their extreme character, however, aroused 
great indignation, led to the Kentucky and 
\ irginia Resolutions (which see), and was 
partly, if not chiefly, responsible for the decline 
of the Federalist party. See Adams, John. 

ALIMENTARY, alimen' tari, CANAL, a 
long tube which receives and digests the food 
taken into the body. It is about thirty feet 
long in an adult, or five or six times his height, 
and is lined throughout with soft, reddish mu- 



PARTS OF THE ALIMENTARY CANAL 


(a) Lower end of 

oesophagus 

(b) Stomach 

(c) Pylorus 

( d ) Duodenum 

(e) Ascending colon 
(/) Transverse colon 


(ty) Descending colon 

( h ) Rectum 

( i ) Convolutions of the 

small intestines 
O') The caecum, with 
the vermiform ap¬ 
pendix 


cous membrane. This is a thin skin which 
contains glands having the power to originate 
liquids which help in digestion. Outside the 


mucous membrane are layers of muscle and 
tissue which strengthen the alimentary canal 
and push the swallowed food along its course. 

The alimentary canal begins at the mouth 
and includes the pharynx, oesophagus, stomach 
and the small and large intestines. The small 
intestine for about ten inches from the stomach 
is called the duodenum; for the next eight 
feet it is called the jejunum; and for the re¬ 
maining eleven feet, the ileum. The small 
intestine opens into the side of the large intes¬ 
tine by a slit-like valve. The beginning of the 
large intestine is a small pouch called the 
caecum; leading from the caecum is a small 
tube a quarter of an inch in diameter and two 
inches long, called the vermiform appendix, 
but the latter cannot be considered a part of 
the alimentary canal. Extending upward to 
the ribs from the caecum is the ascending 
colon; the intestine then crosses the abdomen 
to the left side, forming the transverse colon; 
a section about six inches long passing down¬ 
ward is called the descending colon. The last 
section of the large intestine is the rectum. See 
Intestines; Stomach; Dicestion. 

ALIZARIN, a Hz' arin, a substance chemi¬ 
cally abstracted from madder root, forming a 
coloring matter exceedingly valuable for dye¬ 
ing. It produces various shades of red, of 
which the most popular is ‘‘turkey” red. The 
more modern process of obtaining alizarin from 
the refuse of coal tar has caused the cultivation 
of madder to be almost entirely abandoned, 
though it is still found growing wild in most 
tropical countries. See Madder. 

ALKALI, aV kaly. This Arabic word orig¬ 
inally meant the ashes of certain plants called 
in English saltwort and glasswort. Its meaning 
was then extended to the most characteristic 
constituents of the lye made by treating the 
ashes of plants (for instance, w T ood ashes) with 
water, and then to a class of substances resem¬ 
bling these two constituents of lye, namely, 
potassium carbonate (potash, pearl ash) and 
sodium carbonate (soda, soda ash). Solutions 
of these two substances soften animal and 
vegetable tissues and therefore feel slippery 
to the fingers. Upon many vegetable and arti¬ 
ficial coloring matters they have the opposite 
effect from acids. For example, they turn 
red litmus blue, and colorless phenolphthalein 
pink. They neutralize acids, forming salts, and 
act upon fats, making soap and glycerine. 

When lime is added to a solution of sodium 
(or potassium) carbonate, a precipitate is 
formed. When this is allowed to settle, the 






ALKALI 


202 


ALLAH 


clear liquid remaining is found to be a much 
more active lye than the original solution, 
and if the water is evaporated off, the white 
substance left is found to be much more 
soluble in water than the original carbonate. 
This product is called a caustic alkali, since it 
not merely softens but actually dissolves ani¬ 
mal tissues. The caustic alkalies are the 
hydroxides (compounds with hydrogen and 
oxygen) of the metals of which the mild alka¬ 
lies are the carbonates. The majority of 
modern writers on chemistry limit the term 
alkali to the caustic alkalies, but speak of all 
substances that effect litmus similarly as being 
alkaline or having an alkaline reaction. In 
addition to sodium and potassium, the ele¬ 
ments lithium, rubidium and caesium have 
hydroxides which are caustic alkalies. These 
five metals, accordingly, are known as the 
alkali metals, or metals of the alkalies. Am¬ 
monia water, which resembles the caustic 
alkalies in its chemical action, is called the 
volatile (that is, flying) alkali, because it will 
all evaporate away. In contradistinction the 
original alkalies (mild or caustic) are termed 
fixed. The oxide of calcium (which is quick¬ 
lime) and those of strontium and barium are 
called the alkaline earths, and these elements 
the alkaline earth metals. 

Alkali lands are soils which contain so large 
a proportion of soluble salts as to prevent or 
interfere with the growth of plants. These 
salts may come from underground deposits of 
sea salt left by the drying up of ancient seas. 
In a greater number of instances they have 
probably originated in that action of water 
and carbonic acid on the rocks by which the 
soil itself has been formed. In dry weather 
following rains the salts crystallize out on the 
surface of the soil, leaving either a white or a 
black deposit. White alkali consists mainly 
of sodium chloride and sodium sulphate and is 
often chemically neutral. Black alkali usually 
contains sodium carbonate and is really alka¬ 
line in the chemical sense of the word. The 
black or brown color is due to the action of 
the sodium carbonate on the organic matter 
of the soil. Black alkali is the worst kind. 
Plants can stand about one-fourth of one per 
cent of sodium chloride or one-half of one per 
cent of sodium sulphate, but few of them will 
grow in soil containing one-tenth of one per 
cent of sodium carbonate. Black alkali soils 
are benefited by the application of land plaster 
(gypsum, calcium sulphate), which converts 
the sodium carbonate into the less harmful 


sodium sulphate and the harmless or bene¬ 
ficial calcium carbonate. Too heavy irrigation 
brings up the soluble salts from the subsoil 
and so makes alkali soils worse. Sometimes it 
converts good soil into alkali land. Irrigation 
of hillsides often causes alkali trouble in the 
valleys, because the salts washed out of the 
highlands accumulate in the lowlands. The 
only remedy for alkali in soils is to remove the 
salts by drainage. 

Alkali soils are common in dry climates. 
They occur in many places in the western part 
of the United States. j.f.s. 

ALKALOIDS, al' kaloyds, a class of chemi¬ 
cal compounds which includes the strongest 
poisons and the most powerful remedies known 
to man. Their names usually end in ine, as 
atrojpine, caffeine, cocaine, morphine, quinine 
and strychnine, all of which are described in 
these volumes. An alkaloid, like an alkali, 
will combine with an acid to form a salt. It 
is, therefore, a base (which see). An alkali, 
however, is mineral, or inorganic, whereas an 
alkaloid is vegetable, or organic. An alkaloid 
may be defined as an organic base, but the 
term is usually restricted to the vegetable 
world, the term for animal alkaloids being 
ptomaine (which see). Most alkaloids are 
odorless, crystalline bodies, more soluble in 
alcohol than in water, but a few, such as nico¬ 
tine, are liquid and mixible with water; the 
solids contain oxygen in addition to carbon, 
hydrogen and nitrogen, which are present in 
all forms. Nearly all alkaloids, if taken in 
harmful doses, injure the nervous system. 
They frequently cause permanent paralysis of 
certain nerves and may even cause death. The 
possible dangers from their use make it advis¬ 
able never to use them except on the prescrip¬ 
tion of a physician. 

Alkaloids are found in many plants, usually 
combined with organic acids. They often occur 
in the fruits and seeds, but sometimes in the 
roots and bark. Opium (which see), a product 
of the unripe fruit of the poppy, contains a 
score of different alkaloids, of which morphine 
is the most abundant; the roots of the various 
species of aconite (which see) yield a dozen or 
more; coca leaves give cocaine and several 
others; and the barks of cinchona plants yield 
a group of over thirty, among them quinine 
and cinchonine. Coffee berries and tea leaves 
contain caffeine, cacao (cocoa) beans theobro¬ 
mine, and tobacco leaves nicotine. j.f.s. 

ALLAH, al' la, the Arabic name for the Su¬ 
preme Being, corresponding to the Hebrew 


ALLAHABAD 


203 


ALLEGORY 


God. The word has made its way through all 
Mohammedan countries by means of the 
Koran, and Allah Akbar (God is great) is the 
war-cry of the Moslems. The word was ap¬ 
plied many centuries before Mohammed to a 
heathen god of the Arabs. 

ALLAHABAD, al lah hah bahd', meaning 
“City of Allah,” or “City of God,” is an ancient 
city of India, seat of the government of the 
United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. It is 
one of the chief resorts of Hindu pilgrims, who 
come to have their sins washed away by bath¬ 
ing in the waters of the sacred rivers, Ganges 
and Jumma, at their junction. It is also the 
scene of a great religious festival in December 
and January, when the city becomes crowded 
with fanatics and beggars. The native town 
is poorly built, but contains some remarkable 
buildings, of which the best examples are the 
great mosque, or Jumma Musjid, the palace 
of the sultan and the great citadel of Akbar. 
This citadel is the center of the fort of Alla¬ 
habad, one of the chief strongholds of British 
India. The European portion of the town is 
handsome and well planned. 

The city is situated in the midst of an agri¬ 
cultural district and forms the center of a 
large trade, the chief products being cotton, 
indigo and sugar. The town dates back to 
the third century b. c. From 1765 to the 
beginning of the nineteenth century it suffered 
from change of rulers, but finally came under 
British rule in 1801. In the mutiny of 1857 
it was the scene of a serious outbreak and 
massacre and the town, with the exception of 
a few monuments, was destroyed. Population 
in 1914, 171,697. 

ALLAN, al' len, Sir Hugh (1810-1882), a 
Canadian financier and ship-owner, born in 
Scotland. In 1826 he went to Canada and 
entered the employ of the leading grain-ship¬ 
ping and ship-building firm in Montreal. He 
progressed rapidly, became a junior partner 
in 1835, and in 1853 established a new line of 
ocean steamers, still called the Allan Line. 
He was one of the original promoters of the 
Canadian Pacific Railway, but the company 
organized by him lost its charter as the result 
of charges that the charter was obtained by 
bribery. Sir Hugh was knighted in 1871. 

His son, Sir Hugh Montagu Allan (1860- 
), succeeded to his large commercial and 
financial interests, and became active in the 
management of the Allan Line. He was 
knighted in 1904 and was created a commander 
of the Victorian Order in 1906. 


ALLEGHANY, allega’ni, MOUNTAINS or 
ALLEGHANIES, the name of a range of 
mountains that extends across the states of 
Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania from 
southwest to northeast, and consists for the 
most part of a series of parallel ridges, wooded 
to the summit and with some fertile valleys 
between. Their mean elevation is about 2,500 
feet; but in Virginia they rise to over 4,000. 
It is in these mountains that the great coal 
mines of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, also 
the iron mines of Pennsylvania are found. 
They form the richest coal mining region in 
the United States. The name is sometimes 
wrongly applied to the entire Appalachian sys¬ 
tem (see Appalachian Mountains), but of 
it they are only a part. See, also, Blue Ridge; 
Cumberland Mountains. 

ALLEGHENY, allega' ni, a river about 325 
miles long that has its source in northern 
Pennsylvania about 2000 feet above sea level. 
It flows through Pennsylvania into New York, 
and again through Pennsylvania, and at Pitts¬ 
burgh meets the Monongahela to form the Ohio 
River. It is navigable by small boats for 200 
miles above Pittsburgh. The country through 
which it flows is very hilly and it is joined by 
many tributaries, the chief being the Clarion, 
French Creek, and Kishiminitas. The river 
with these tributaries drains an area of 11,000 
square miles. 

ALLEGORY, al'legohri, a word which 
means literally, to speak other, or to say some¬ 
thing else than the exact thing which is meant; 
thus when Jesus said to His disciples “I am the 
vine, ye are the branches,” he was speaking 
allegorically. The word allegory is used to 
describe a form of literature in which a story 
is told not for its own sake but to present 
clearly and forcibly some abstract thought. 
The story should be interesting in itself, that 
it may hold the attention of its readers until 
the truth is driven home. 

The very simplest allegories are the little 
beast fables, such as those of Aesop, which 
every child should know. For instance, the 
story of the “Fox and the Grapes” is told not 
just as an account of how a fox acted under 
certain circumstances, but to bring out the 
thought that people are apt to scoff at wh^t 
they cannot attain. More elaborate allegories, 
and the most dignified ever written, are the 
parables of the Bible. No other language is 
as rich in allegories as the English, which 
possesses not only that most perfect specimen, 
Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, but Spencer’s 


ALLEN 


204 


ALLENTOWN 


Faerie Queene, Swift’s Tale of a Tub, and 
many other examples. 

ALLEN, Charles Grant Blairfindie (1848- 
1899), a Canadian novelist and writer on 
science, usually known as Grant Allen. He 
was born at Kingston, Ont., attended various 
schools in Canada, the United States and Eng¬ 
land, and was graduated from Merton College, 
Oxford, in 1871. He became a popular writer 
on scientific subjects, particularly on the theory 
of evolution; his books include The Color 
Sense, The Evolutionist at Large, Flowers and 
Their Pedigrees and Physiological Aesthetics, 
the latter possibly his best work. He also 
wrote about thirty novels and a series of his¬ 
torical guide books to European cities. 

ALLEN, Ethan (1737-1789), an American 
soldier of Revolutionary fame, the hero of the 
capture of Fort 'Ticonderoga. He was born 
in Litchfield, Conn., but removed to Benning¬ 
ton, Vt., a few years before the outbreak of 
the Revolution. He first came into promi¬ 
nence as the leader of the “Green Mountain 
Boys,” a band of troops organized to expel 
from the “New Hampshire Grants,” now Ver¬ 
mont, a number of settlers from New York. 
For this act the governor of New York offered 
a reward of $750 for the arrest of Allen. Soon 
after the Battle of Lexington, Allen and his 
Green Mountain Boys started for Fort Ticon¬ 
deroga, and on May 10, 1775, made a dramatic 
seizure of that stronghold, Allen ordering the 
British commander to surrender “in the name 
of the great Jehovah and the Continental 
Congress.” 

After this Allen went to Philadelphia, where 
he received the thanks of Congress for his 
services. He was sent on a secret mission to 
Canada to learn the views of the Canadians 
as to rebellion, and accompanied Montgom¬ 
ery’s expedition. In an adventure at Montreal 
he was captured and sent to England, but 
was returned to this country, where he was 
confined in prison-ships. On obtaining his 
freedom Allen was appointed lieutenant colonel 
of the Vermont militia and was sent as an agent 
to Congress to secure the admission of Ver¬ 
mont to the Confederation. Congress hesi¬ 
tated, and the British commanders endeavored 
to persuade Allen to restore the authority of 
the Crown. He was accused of treason, but it 
is believed that he desired only to advance the 
cause of the colonies. After the Revolution 
Allen lived in retirement and wrote a book 
on natural religion, entitled Reason the Only 
Oracle of Man. 


ALLEN, James Lane (1849- ), an Amer¬ 

ican novelist whose works show not only a 
most artistic st}de, but a deep interest and 
knowledge of human nature. He was born 
near Lexington, Ky., was graduated at Transyl¬ 
vania University, 
and after teach¬ 
ing at Kentucky 
University be¬ 
came a professor 
of Latin and 
higher English 
at Bethany Col¬ 
lege, W. Va. By 
1886 he had be- 
come so well 
known through 
his contributions 
to magazines that 
he was enabled 
to move to New 
York and devote all his time to writing. 
Among his works are The Choir Invisible, a 
tale of Kentucky in frontier days, dealing not 
with adventures, however, but with the inner 
life of its characters; The Reign of Law, a 
story of a young man’s loss of religious faith 
and his recovery of it through the woman he 
loves; A Kentucky Cardinal, in which the 
beautiful cardinal bird plays a part in the 
lives of two young people. The Doctor’s 
Christmas Eve, and The Heroine in Bronze, 
The White Cowl and Sister Dolorosa are per¬ 
haps his best short stories. 

ALLENTOWN, Pa., an industrial city, known 
for its manufacture of silk and furniture. It 
is the county seat of Lehigh County, and is 
situated in the eastern part of the state about 
midway between the northern and southern 
state lines, and on the Lehigh River and 
Lehigh Canal. Philadelphia is fifty-six miles 
southeast, Easton is eighteen miles east and 
north, and New York City is ninety-two miles 
northeast. The city is served by the Lehigh 
\ alley, Central Railroad of New Jersey and 
Philadelphia & Reading railways; three trolley 
lines communicate with other cities and extend 
as far as Philadelphia. The population, largely 
of German descent, increased from 51,913 in 
1910 to 61,901 in 1915. The area is nearly six 
square miles. 

Allentown is located on a plateau which 
slopes toward the Lehigh, Little Lehigh and 
Jordan rivers. Beside City Park, Dorney Park 
and Center Square, which has a soldiers’ and a 
sailors’ monument, there are nine well-equipped 



JAMES LANE ALLEN 


ALL-FOOLS’ DAY 


205 


ALLIGATOR 


playgrounds. Paterson, N. J., is the only city 
of the United States that excels Allentown in 
the manufacture of silks, 10,000 people being 
employed in its twenty-three silk mills. It is 
one of the largest furniture-producing cities in 
the United States, and it also manufactures 
iron, steel, cement and cigars. A mammoth 
steel plant, located a half hour’s ride from the 
city, employs about 1,200 skilled mechanics, 
and the thirty-four cement mills of the Lehigh 
district employ 12,000 men and produce about 
one-third of the total product of the United 
States. 

A $1,000,000 courthouse was built without 
bond issue or increase of taxes; the hospital 
for the insane, the prison and other public 
buildings are constructed of limestone found in 
the vicinity. Besides these its city has a 
$500,000 high school building, a public library, 
Muhlenberg College (Lutheran), and Allen¬ 
town College, for women. 

The first settlement was named in honor of 
William Allen, then Chief Justice of Pennsyl¬ 
vania, who founded the town in 1752. It be¬ 
came the county seat of Lehigh County in 
1811, when it was incorporated as Northampton 
Borough. Here in 1799, John Fries of “Fries 
Rebellion” fame, aroused the German opposi¬ 
tion to the window tax, a tax formerly imposed 
in Great Britain on all windows in houses, 
above a certain number. In 1838 the original 
name was restored, and Allentown was incor¬ 
porated by special charter. The commission 
form of government was adopted in 1913. 
Allentown owns and operates its w T ater works. 

ALL-FOOLS’ DAY, the name given to the 
first of April, a day quite generally devoted 
to playing absurd but harmless jokes. Its 
origin, though unknown, is not recent, as an 
old English almanac printed in 1760 contains 
the following rhyme: 

The first of April, some do say 

Is set apart for All-Fools’ Day. 

In English-speaking countries the victim of a 
joke is called an April fool ; in France, an April 
fish; 'n Scotland he is a gowk. See April, for 
panel-shaped illustration. 

ALLIANCE, alii'ans, Ohio, an industrial 
city in Stark County, in the northeastern sec¬ 
tion of the state, and on the Mahoning River. 
Canton is nineteen miles southwest, Cleveland 
is fifty-five miles northwest, and Pittsburgh 
is eighty-three miles southeast. The New 
York Central Lines and the Pennsylvania 
Company provide railway transportation, and 
electric lines extend north, east and south from 


the city. The first settlement, in 1838, was 
called Freedom, the name being changed to its 
present one in 1851; the village was incor¬ 
porated in 1854, and the city was chartered in 
1889. Americans comprise seventy-five per 
cent of the population, which increased from 
15,083 in 1910 to 17,718 in 1914. The city’s 
area is a little less than four square miles. 

Industrially Alliance is largely engaged in 
engraving and in making account registers. 
About 2,000 people are employed in its lead¬ 
ing engraving establishment, and almost as 
many are occupied in making registers. There 
are steel works, manufactories of agricultural 
implements and heavy machinery and large 
machine shops. Pottery is an extensive prod¬ 
uct of the vicinity. The city has two parks, 
a $100,000 city hall, the Glen-Morgan building 
which cost $300,000, a Carnegie Library, and 
Mount Union College (Methodist Episcopal), 
founded in 1846. 

ALLIGATOR, al’ ligay tur, a large reptile re¬ 
sembling the crocodile, from which, however, 
it differs in having a shorter and flatter head, 
and feet less fully webbed. A few alligators 
are to be found in China, but for the most 



ALLIGATORS 

(a) represents the bony structure of the head. 


part they dwell in and about the waters of 
tropical America, where they may be seen 
during the day basking on the ground in the 
heat of the sun or floating near the surface of 
fresh-water streams. Formerly they were very 
common along the shores of the United States 
from North Carolina southward, and far up the 
Mississippi River, but now they are not often 
seen north of Florida. Millions have been 
killed for sport and because of their hide, 
which makes a valuable leather, so there is 
danger of their being exterminated, unless pro¬ 
tective measures are undertaken. There is 
one very successful alligator farm in Florida, 
where the animals are reared for profit. 












ALLIGATOR PEAR 


206 


ALLITERATION 


Alligators are very slow in growth, and when 
fifteen years of age are not more than two 
feet long, while nearly a hundred years are 
required for them to reach their full length of 
sixteen feet. They are active animals and 
prey upon whatever game comes their way, 
taking their food into the water below the 
surface and eating it. In spite of their size 
they are rather timid, but defend themselves 
viciously if attacked; on shore they rush with 
open mouth at their enemies and thrash their 
powerful tails from side to side. The young 
are hatched by the sun from eggs, of which the 
female lays 200 or more in great heaps of 
vegetable matter, each one slightly larger than 
a hen’s egg. 

i 

During the winter months the alligator re¬ 
mains under ground, in a torpid condition, and 
while in this state is often dug out and killed. 
This is not the only way in which alligators 
are killed, however. They are angled for like 
fish, with hook and line, dragged ashore and 
then shot. See Crocodile. 

ALLIGATOR PEAR or AVOCADO, av oh 
kay' doh, an egg-shaped fruit, weighing from 
one to two pounds, borne by an evergreen 
tropical plant. When ripe it is usually dark 
green in color on the outside, and contains a 



ALLIGATOR PEAR 

The illustration shows the whole fruit and 
foliage, also the fruit halved. 


large round kernel embedded in the flesh, 
which is light green and of the consistency of 
firm butter. It is highly prized for its delicate 


flavor and may be eaten with sugar and cream 
or a sprinkling of salt and pepper. Alligator 
pear salad is considered a luxury, and in the 
southern states of the American Union the fruit 
is used for flavoring soups. Its food value is 
greater than that of most fruits, as it contains, 
on an average, ten per cent of fat. 

In most tropical countries it is found grow¬ 
ing wild; in California, Florida and Hawaii it 
is extensively cultivated. In most large cities 
of the United States it is sold at prices rang¬ 
ing from forty to seventy-five cents each. It 
is sometimes called vegetable butter, and is 
known as “midshipman’s butter” among sailors. 

AL'LISON, William Boyd (1829-1908), an 
American statesman, for thirty-five years 
United States senator from Iowa. For twenty- 
five years before his death he was chairman of 
the important committee on appropriations, 
and during his long service practically every 
financial measure passed by Congress was at 
least partly his work. He was joint author of 
the Bland-Allison bill of 1878, which provided 
for the purchase of silver bullion and the coin¬ 
age of a certain number of silver dollars each 
month. He took a prominent part in the dis¬ 
cussion and amendment of the so-called rail¬ 
road rate bill in 1906. He was several times 
a prominent candidate for the Republican 
nomination for President, and was always one 
of the party’s leaders. 

Allison was born at Perry, Ohio, was edu¬ 
cated at Allegheny College, Pa., and Western 
Reserve College, Ohio, and practised law in 
Ohio until 1857, when he removed to Dubuque, 
Iowa. He served in the Federal House of 
Representatives as a Republican, from 1863 to 
1871, and in 1873 was elected to the United 
States Senate, being five times reelected. A 
month before his death he was renominated for 
a seventh term. 

ALLITERATION, al lit ur a' shun, the use 
of the same or similar letters or sounds at the 
beginning of two or more closely succeeding 
words or syllables, as “ purged of pride”; “a 
damsel with a dulcimer”; “the cloth that cloaks 
the clay." Early poetry, whether English, Ger¬ 
man or Norse, had no rhyme, and alliteration 
was essential, and was arranged according to 
a certain definite scheme. To-day, though no 
longer looked upon as necessary, it is often 
employed to add beauty or to bring out certain 
effects. Thus Keats conveys perfectly the im¬ 
pression of gentle waters against the bank 
when he says, “I hear lake water lapping with 
low sounds on the shore.” Coleridge, Tennjr- 













ALLOPATHY 


207 


ALLSPICE 


son, Swinburne and Kipling are among the 
modern poets who have used alliteration most 
Swinburne especially depending on it for 
many of his beautiful effects. 

ALLOPATHY, al lop' athi, a word originat¬ 
ing with Dr. Samuel Hahnemann and applied 
by him to the old or “regular” school of medi¬ 
cine, to distinguish it from his system of 
homeopathy, introduced about 1800. Allo¬ 
pathy is derived from two Greek words meaning 
other and disease. See Homeopathy. 

ALLOTROPY, a lot' roh pi, in chemistry, is 
the existence of an element in several forms, 
which are physically different, as in hardness, 
smell, transparency, but are chemically the 
same. The word is of Greek origin, and is de¬ 
rived from alios, meaning other, and tropos, 
meaning turn, or way. The best example, prob¬ 
ably, is carbon, which exists in three pure 
forms, as charcoal, graphite and diamond. 
Coal is not pure carbon, ranging from 
about fifty to eighty-five per cent. Another 
good example is oxygen, which is ordinarily 
odorless; but if a silent electrical discharge 
takes place the oxygen turns to ozone, which 
has, among other characteristics, a disagree¬ 
able odor. A third element which shows 
marked changes is phosphorus. In its ordinary, 
pure form, phosphorus is a pale yellow, crystal¬ 
line solid, much like wax in its consistency. 
It burns readily, sometimes spontaneously, has 
a strong odor, and is very poisonous. When 
heated for a short time at a temperature of 
450° F. it turns into an odorless, brownish-red 
powder which is not poisonous. It exists in 
several other allotropic varieties, which are 
discussed in the article Phosphorus. 

ALLOY, alloi'. If the wedding rings and 
brooches which are sold in the stores as “solid 
gold” were really made of the pure metal they 
would not wear well and would not long retain 
their shape, for pure gold is too soft to be 
serviceable for most purposes. Few metals, 
indeed, are fit to be used in a pure state, and 
most of the innumerable metallic objects which 
are in constant use are composed of mix¬ 
tures of various metals. These compounds are 
called alloys. Such compounds are formed by 
melting together two or more metals, the 
object being to obtain certain qualities not to 
be found in any of the metals singly. 

Various changes are produced in the proper¬ 
ties of metals by combining them with others. 
In general, the resulting mixture, or alloy, is 
made harder, and becomes less capable of being 
hammered into sheets or drawn out into wires. 


The weight of an alloy, strange as that may 
seem, is sometimes less than the average 
weights of the metals of which it is composed. 
Then too, an alloy is always more fusible than 
the metal most difficult to melt that enters into 
its makeup, and generally even more so than 
the most easily melted one. 

It is hard to overestimate the importance of 
allo 3 ^s. Steel, bronze, brass, German silver, 
pewter and solders are all alloys and of each 
of these there are numerous varieties, formed 
by different combinations of the metals, each 
specially adapted to some certain purposes. 
The gold of which coins are made is 900 parts 
out of 1,000 pure gold, while the other 100 
parts are an alloy of silver and copper in the 
proportion of 1 to 3. Silver for coins is 900 
parts pure, the alloy in this case being copper. 
When gold is used in jewelery it is measured 
in carats (which see), 24 carat being pure gold. 
Thus 20-carat gold is an alloy of twenty parts 
gold to four parts of some other metal or 
metals, usually silver and copper. Although 
articles made of 10-carat gold will hold their 
color and not discolor, comparatively little 
jewelry is now made of less than 14-carat gold. 

ALL-SAINTS’ DAY, a Christian festival 
first celebrated by Pope Boniface IV in 835, 
when the Roman Pantheon was dedicated as a 
Christian temple. It is observed on Novem¬ 
ber 1 and is designed to commemorate all the 
saints, thus honoring those not more signally 
remembered by days named solely for them. 

ALL-SOULS’ DAY, a Roman Catholic festi¬ 
val set apart for the relief of the souls in 
purgatory by means of prayers and the celebra¬ 
tion of the mass. It was founded in the 
eleventh century and is observed on Novem¬ 
ber 2. In certain Catholic countries, lighted 
candles are placed on the graves of the faithful 
and kept burning throughout the day. 

ALLSPICE, awl' spice, a useful spice which 
receives its name from the fact that its flavor 
suggests those of cinnamon, nutmegs and 
cloves, mixed together. Allspice is the dried 
berry of a tree of the West Indies, belonging 
to the myrtle group, and known as the 
pimento. The fruit is also called Jamaica pep¬ 
per because the tree flourishes abundantly on 
the island of Jamaica. Allspice is employed 
chiefly as a spice for seasoning food. The oil 
of the berries is sometimes used in medicine 
and in perfuming soaps. The toilet article, bay 
rum, obtains its characteristic odor from the 
oil of the berries of an allied species, known as 
the bayberry tree. 


allston 


208 


ALMANAC 


ALLSTON, awl' stun, Washington (1779- 
1843), an American painter whose characteristic 
use of rich, glowing color has given him the 
name “the American Titian.” He was born 
at Waccamaw, S. C., studied art in New Eng¬ 
land schools and was graduated at Harvard 
in 1800. While abroad he attended the Royal 
Academy of London, and also made a special 
study of the master artists of the Venetian 
School. An early painting, The Dead Man 
Revived, is in the Pennsylvania Academy of 
Fine Arts. Other w T orks include Uriel in the 
Sun, The Prophet Jeremiah and Belshazzar’s 
Feast. 

ALLUVIUM, allu' vium. Water is one of 
the chief agents which slowly but continuously 
modify and change the surface of our earth. 
The materials produced by the action of water, 
known as erosion (which see), are collected 
by the rivers and deposited along their lower 
course. These deposits are known as alluvium 
or alluvial deposits. They consist of sand, 
mud, gravel, clay, boulders and so on, and are 
deposited either at the bottom of the rivers, 
or along their banks or at their mouth, where 
they form what is known as deltas. The large 
tracts of fertile land found in the valleys and 
along the banks of many rivers have been 
formed by alluvial deposits left there by the 
river in the course of many centuries. Gold 
found in the soil on the banks and in the bed 
of streams is spoken of as alluvial gold, that 
is, gold found in alluvium. See Delta; Flood 
Plain; River. 

ALMA MATER, aV ma may' tur, a Latin 
phrase meaning jostering mother, affectionately 
applied by the graduates of a school or col¬ 
lege to the institutions in which they have 
been educated. Thus a graduate will speak of 
Harvard, Michigan, McGill, Cambridge, or 
other college or university as his alma mater. 
In England the term is applied rather to one 
of the great public schools than to a university, 
so that Eton is more frequently referred to as 
alma mater than is Oxford. The term was 
originally applied by the Romans to Ceres, the 
goddess of agriculture, but it has been used in 
its present figurative meaning for many years. 

ALMANAC, awl' manak, a book or pam¬ 
phlet which contains a calendar and a variety 
of information. It usually gives interesting 
facts about the planets and the stars, the 
dates of the phases of the moon, and the time 
of eclipses and other phenomena. Holidays 
and feast days ark given, as well as birthdays 
of great men, dates of important battles, and 


many items of current interest, often includ¬ 
ing summaries of recent events in political 
history and statistics of area, population, agri¬ 
culture, manufactures, mining and other indus¬ 
tries. 

In addition to these general almanacs there 
are many whose field is limited to special sub¬ 
jects, such as navigation and astronomy. One 




i € G 7- 






ALMANACK 

FOR. 

The Year of ou? LORD 
166 7 . 

Bifssg fa cut Account Bi flext He* or Leap- 
jQOiiAJsd from the Cr{anoaj6l6 $ 

Whofe Vulgar Motes are, 

(roldenNflrt&er t> C } t'nJT&ioo 4 

Cycle oPtWSurt U 

DominiO I Letters FE x. j Nurob: Drrraion *7 

Fitted for the Lon^uidt of 3 K 
and 4 Z gr+ 30 of North : 

and jma 7 ferve without {cnfible 
errour for moffr pars of 



By Fhiloro£tb< 


J|ob ofi; \\ y Ctrftt ifaubindthe frttrt thfutrtctl 
»}9\cia&e%y <rf (<)oTtiktfrsnrU~of 0<\on} .*■ 

Vet.* s. Cfinjtttoti krtPIJoH» f» hj 

fcttfutyfr idnji thongvUe.hr J*tu% w/ttbu 

C A~M Y~ D~G 


Priiwed Ky :Sn nwl\Gran : - t 6 & 1 , 




ONE OP AMERICA’S EARLIEST ALMANACS 

Only two copies of the 1667 Almanac are 
known to exist. One is in the library of the 
American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass., 
purchased for $275. The other is in the hands 
of a private collector in Albany, N. Y. The 
illustration shows the title page. 


of the most famous of these is the Almanach 
de Gotha (that is, Almanac of Gotha), so 
called because it is published in the German 
city of Gotha. It includes much statistical 
matter for all countries, but is best known for 
its genealogies of royal and noble families. It 
is edited with extreme care, and only those 
persons are listed whose right to a title is 
beyond dispute. 

Almanacs were in use among the Romans in 
ancient times, but the oldest existing manu¬ 
script copies date from the fourteenth and 












ALMANDINE 


209 


ALMOND 


fifteenth centuries. Formerly their immense 
popularity was due to the mass of astrological 
prediction with which they were filled, and the 
effect of these guesses at the future was often 
so bad that it was frequently necessary to pro¬ 
hibit the publication of prophetic almanacs. 
In 1828 the Society for the Diffusion of Useful 
Knowledge, by publishing the British Almanac, 
took the lead in the production of an almanac 
containing genuine information, and by con¬ 
trast showed the fraudulent nature of the infor¬ 
mation which had been furnished in the earlier 
almanacs. Even to the present day there are 
published almanacs containing astrological pre¬ 
dictions, but they are not taken seriously. 
There are also many almanacs the sole purpose 
of which is to advertise patent medicines. 

The most famous of the popular almanacs 
which have been published in the United States 
was Poor Richard's Almanac, begun by Frank¬ 
lin in 1732 and continued for twenty-five years 
(see Poor Richard's Almanac). The publica¬ 
tion of good almanacs in America is now gen¬ 
erally the work of religious denominations, 
newspapers, trades, and professions. The 
Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris, 
published annually by the United States Navy 
Department, contains the information neces¬ 
sary for determining at any time the absolute 
and relative places of the sun, moon and 
planets and of many of the fixed stars, also sev¬ 
eral different series of phenomena for the deter¬ 
mination of longitudes and latitudes, the dis¬ 
tances of the moon from fixed stars and from 
planets and the time for the occurrence of 
eclipses. To this are added rules and tables 
for practical use in nautical astronomy, land 
observations and tables of tides. It is a text¬ 
book for the navigator, and no sailor leaves 
the American shore without it. The computa¬ 
tions are made three years in advance and 
could be made still farther if necessary, but no 
cruise is made which lasts longer than that 
time. Similar publications are issued by the 
governments of Great Britain, France, Ger¬ 
many and other countries. w.f.z. 

ALMANDINE, al’ mondin, or ALMAN- 
DITE, names given to two kinds of compara¬ 
tively inexpensive precious stones of great 
beauty, one a variety of garnet, red in color 
and transparent, the other belonging to the 
ruby species, and having a rich violet color. 
The red variety is found chiefly in Alabanda, 
Asia Minor, hence its name. It is highly valued 
as a setting for gems, and when cut with a 
convex face is known as a carbuncle. The 


violet almandine is found in Ceylon, Australia, 
Alaska, New York and less plentifully in other 
parts of the United States. 

ALMA-TADEMA, ahl’ ma tad' ema, Law¬ 
rence (1836-1912), a Dutch painter whose pic¬ 
tures of ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman 
life are remarkable for the correctness with 
which they record the costumes and the spirit 
of the past. No other artist has so wonderfully 
reconstructed on canvas the life of ancient 
nations, and refurnished the homes of 2000 
years ago and peopled them with figures that 
live. He was born in Friesland, but lived 
after 1870 in England, where in 1879 he became 
a member of the Royal Academy. Some of 
his best-known pictures are A Reading from 
Homer, a pen-drawing of which will be found 
with the article Homer in these volumes; The 
Four Seasons, Antony and Cleopatra and At 
the Shrine of Venus, the last-named of which 
was exhibited at the exposition in Saint Louis 
in 1904. 


ALMERIA, al may re' ah, capital of the 
province of the same name, a seaport of South¬ 
ern Spain, sixty miles southeast of Granada. 
It is chiefly noted for its excellent harbor and 
for the export of vast quantities of fine- 
flavored white grapes. The most important 
building is the Gothic cathedral, dating from 
1524, built to resemble a fortress with battle¬ 
ments. The city’s commerce is very extensive, 
the principal exports, next to grapes, being 
wine, almonds, pomegranates, and other fruits, 
sugar, macaroni and iron ore. Almeria was the 
foremost seaport of Granada during its occupa¬ 
tion by the Moors and was not captured by 
the Spaniards until 1489. Population in 1914, 
45,198. 

ALMOND, ah' 

mund, the fruit 
of the almond 
tree, is a plant 
belonging to the 
rose family, and 
related to the 
peach and nec¬ 
tarine. The al¬ 
mond tree is a 
native of Asia 
and Africa, and 
was a common 
fruit in Bible B ran ch, 
lands, but is now 
also grown abun¬ 
dantly in Southern Europe along the Medi¬ 
terranean Sea, and is cultivated in England for 



fruit 


ALMOND 

with flowers, (a) 
( b ) cross-section 
of fruit. 


ALMONTE 


210 


ALPACA 


its beauty and in California for its fruit. It 
reaches a height of twenty feet, and bears 
beautiful pink or white flowers that appear 
before the leaves, which are oval, pointed and 
notched on the edge. The fruit has a downy 
outer coat enclosing a hard, wrinkled shell, 
within which is the kernel, or seed. 

There are two varieties of fruit, the sweet 
and the bitter. Sweet almonds are widely used 
for food, and are nutritious, as they contain 
over thirty per cent of fat. They are eaten 
either raw or cooked, and are also used in cakes 
and candies. Sugared almonds and salted 
almonds are popular delicacies. The kernel 
of both varieties contains an oil that is used 
in medicine and as a perfume. Bitter almonds, 
through chemical processes, yield the poisonous 
substance, prussic acid. Almond butter, a com¬ 
pound of bitter almonds, rosewater, white of 
egg and alcohol, is a toilet article. 

ALMONTE, almon' te, Ont., a town in 
Lanark County, on the Canadian Pacific Rail¬ 
way, thirty miles southwest of Ottawa. It is 
important chiefly as a marketing and distribut¬ 
ing point for the surrounding farm region, but 
also has woolen and knitting mills, a soap 
factory and stove and iron works. Almonte 
was settled in 1830, and was incorporated as a 
town in 1881. Population in 1911, 2,452. 

ALOE, aV o. Though these tropical plants 
belong to the lily family, they bear little re¬ 
semblance to any of the lilies. In height they 
range from a few inches to thirty feet or more, 
but despite these differences in size they have 
certain well-marked characteristics which prove 
their close relation. Their leaves are fleshy, 
thick and lance-shaped, and generally bear 
sharp spines at the point and along the edges. 
Usually these appear to grow directly from the 
ground, but sometimes they are borne on a 
visible stem. The flower stalk shoots up from 
the center, and bears at its end a dense cluster 
of yellow or reddish flowers, which are rather 
tube-like in form. 

In the African countries where the aloe is 
most plentiful, cordage, fishing-nets, lines and 
coarse cloth are made from its fibre, and from 
its fleshy leaves is distilled the bitter aloes 
which is of much importance in medicine. 
From the leaves of certain species, too, a 
beautiful violet color is obtained. The Amer¬ 
ican aloe or agave is an entirely different plant, 
known as the century plant (which see). 

Aloes in Medicine. This intensely bitter 
drug, which is obtained by evaporating the 
juice from the leaves of various aloe plants, 


has been known since the beginning of the 
Christian Era, at least. Aloes act upon the 



ALOE 

Small inserts show details of flower head. 


liver and the intestines, and are the most im¬ 
portant of the vegetable purgatives. 

ALPACA, alpak' a, a South American ani¬ 
mal belonging to the same family as the camel, 
and of special value to man because of its 
thick growth of fine wool. The alpaca is 
reared only on the high plateaus of the Andes 
Mountains, and thrives especially well on the 
heights of Chile and Peru. It resembles both 
the llama and the sheep in appearance, but is 
between them in size, and has a longer neck 
than the sheep. Like them, it is a cud-chewing 
animal. Its wool is finer than that of the llama 
and straighter than that of the sheep. Its 
color varies from grayish-white to almost black. 

The alpaca is shorn every year, w’hen the 
silky wool has grown to be eight inches in 
length, and millions of pounds of wool are 
shipped to Europe and America. The strong, 
soft, elastic fiber is woven into beautiful fab¬ 
rics, which, under the name alpaca, are made 
into shawls, clothing for warm weather, coat- 
linings and umbrella covers. A fabric of cot¬ 
ton and wool, containing very little alpaca 















ALPENA 


211 


ALPHABET 


wool, and used for women’s dresses, is now 
widely sold under the name alpaca. The flesh 



ALPACA 


of the animal has a pleasing taste and is a 
wholesome food. 

ALPENA, alpe'na, Mich., the county seat 
of Alpena County, in the northeastern part of 
the state, is situated on both banks of Thunder 
Bay River and on Thunder Bay, a small arm 
of Lake Huron. Bay City is 124 miles south, 
and Saginaw is 152 miles, also south. The 
population in 1910 was 10,763; in 1914 it was 
11,234. The area is seven square miles. 

Alpena has an excellent harbor, which has 
been improved by the Federal government. 
The surrounding counties, abounding in small 
lakes, are an agricultural and timber section. 
Near the city are quantities of limestone, clay 
and shale. These and the timber supply raw 
material for two of the largest manufacturing 
industries, paper (wood pulp) mills and the 
cement works. Besides these there are tan¬ 
neries, extract works (hemlock), foundries and 
machine shops, woolen mills, sawmills and ex¬ 
celsior mills. Alpena is served by the Detroit 
& Mackinaw railroad, and there are steamship 
lines to Detroit. 

The city and vicinity are favorite summer 
resorts. In the many small lakes are quanti¬ 
ties of speckled trout, black bass and perch. 
In some parts partridge, duck, deer and fox 
are abundant. The city has four parks and 
among the public buildings are the Federal 
building, in front of which stands a cannon 
from the battleship Maine , the city hall, a 
library and a hospital. 

The site occupied by Alpena is an old Indian 


burying ground. In 1835 a trading post was 
established, and a permanent settlement was 
made in 1858. A city charter was obtained in 
1871. The commission form of government 
was adopted in 1916. h.m.h. 

ALPHA, aV jah, AND OMEGA, o me' ga, an 
expression often used to convey the idea of 
completeness, for the two words are the first 
and last letters of the Greek alphabet. They 
are used as a symbol of God in Revelations I, 
8; “I am Alpha and Omega . . which is, 

and which was and which is to come.” At one 
time the letters were emblematic of Christian¬ 
ity, being engraved on the tombs of the early 
Christians. 

In astronomy Alpha is applied to the chief 
star of a constellation, and the word has a 
similar use in other sciences. 

ALPHABET, al' ja bet. When this word is 
used to designate the series of characters used 
in writing a language it means exactly what the 
child’s “A-B-C” means, for Alpha and Beta are 
the first two letters of the Greek alphabet. As 
long as civilization was on a low plane and 
people had little communication with each 
other except by word of mouth, such a thing 
as an alphabet was unthought of. Gradually, 
however, the necessity arose of being able to 
send word to people at a distance or to record 
certain events, and a rude form of picture- 
writing came into existence. This represented 
words or ideas, however, and not sounds, as 
does the true alphabet. For instance, if a 
man in one village wished to send word to a 
man in another village that he had been 
attacked by a number of enemies, he might 
draw a rough picture of a man at a tent door— 
himself—being made the target of the numer¬ 
ous spears of other crudely drawn men. Kip¬ 
ling in his Just-So Stories has two very inter¬ 
esting fanciful tales called The First Letter 
and The Making of the Alphabet which show 
the possible origin of such communication. 

But such picture-writing was always likely to 
be misunderstood, and it gradually became 
clear that characters representing sounds would 
furnish the only sure means of communication. 
So far as is known, the Phoenicians were the 
first to invent an alphabet, in this true sense of 
the term, though it is possible that they 
received suggestions from the cuneiform writing 
of the Babylonians or the hieroglyphics of the 
Egyptians. At any rate, the Greeks, when they 
came into contact with the Phoenicians, found 
the latter to possess the very useful art of 
writing with an alphabet, and that art they 

















ALPS 


212 


ALPS 


promptly borrowed. Either directly or through 
the Latin all the alphabets of modern times 
are derived from the Greek, which was an 
improvement upon the Phoenician in that it 
had letters to represent vowel sounds instead 
of the dots of which the older language made 
use. 

Just how the earliest alphabet was made up 
is by no means certain, though it seems prob¬ 
able that in part at least it was an outgrowth 
of the older picture-writing; that is, each let¬ 
ter was probably drawn at first to represent 
some object, the name of which began with the 
sound which the letter was to represent. Thus 
the B, which in Greek was beta, in Phoenician 
beth, undoubtedly represented a house, for 
beth was the Phoenician for house. Originally 
it was drawn in some resemblance to the end of 
a house (see B), but as it was written more 
rapidly and more frequently its form changed 
until it became the capital B of to-day. 

The perfect alphabet has not been invented; 
if it ever appears it will be found to have just 
as many letters as the language has sounds. 
The Spanish language is the most nearly pho¬ 
netic of any modern tongue. The English 
alphabet is imperfect, since, in the first place, 
it has not a character for every sound, and, 
in the second place, it has letters which are 
superfluous, because there are other letters 
which represent the same sounds. Thus a may 
stand for any one of eight sounds, while c is 
unnecessary because its two sounds are repre¬ 
sented by k and s. 

An alphabet is not absolutely necessary to 
the writing of a language, since what is called 
a syllabary is a possible substitute. That is, 
every syllable, instead of every sound, has its 
special character, as in Chinese. It is a much 
more difficult method of writing, however, for 
the Chinese child must learn thousands of 
symbols instead of the twenty-six which suffice 
for the English child. See Cuneiform Inscrip¬ 
tions; Phoenicia. a.mcc. 

Consult Skinner’s The Story of the Letters 
and the Figures , written particularly for boys 
and girls. 

ALPS, the greatest mountain system and the 
most important and magnificent physical fea¬ 
ture of Europe. Once the Alps marked the 
northern limit of the civilized world, but even 
before the Christian Era the Romans knew 
the way through eight or ten of its passes. 
Across these passes the Roman legions poured 
into Gaul, which eventually became a great 
Roman province. Back over these same passes 


came foreign invaders, first Hannibal, with his 
Carthaginians, a few centuries later the Goths, 
then the armies of Charlemagne and the Holy 
Roman Emperors, and finally Napoleon, who 
built a wonderful road from France into Italy 
for his invading hosts. 

Except for the few passes known to the Ro¬ 
mans, there was little exploration of the moun¬ 
tains until comparatively recent times. The 
Mont Cenis, from 1400 until the time of Na¬ 
poleon the most traveled pass, was unknown 
until the eighth century, and the Saint Gothard 
and the Simplon were first used in the middle 
of the thirteenth century. Yet in the heart 
of these mountains flourished an independent 
nation, the Swiss Confederation. Here, too, and 
in the foot hills, several great families first be¬ 
came powerful—the Houses of Savoy, Haps- 
burg and Hohenzollern, later the royal family 
of Italy and the imperial families of Austria 
and Germany. 

No other mountain system in the world has 
now been so thoroughly explored, even to the 
summits of its highest peaks. Not only has 
man made paths for himself, but he has built 
excellent roads, many of which would be a 
credit to a great city. He has built railroads, 
so that to-day the roar of the train echoes in 
the passes which once heard the shouts of the 
Roman legions. Great tunnels, the Simplon, 
the Saint Gothard, the Mont Cenis and the 
Arlberg carry the rails below the crest of the 
range. A railroad even runs inside a great 
mountain, the Jungfrau, almost to its summit. 
Every point of scenic or historic interest now 
has its inns and hotels, and the pedestrian with 
a knapsack on his back is cared for in count¬ 
less chalets. 

At all seasons the Alps are now a great play¬ 
ground, in which nature has done its best to 
present a beautiful picture on every hand, and 
the Swiss people have provided for the com¬ 
fort of visitors who come to appreciate. No¬ 
where else in the world are more magnificent 
contrasts in scenery. Standing on the shores 
of a little lake, surrounded by pretty Swiss 
chalets and farms, the visitor may gaze upward 
10,000 or 12,000 feet to the snowy summit of 
the Jungfrau or Mont Blanc. From the sum¬ 
mit of such a peak, or even from many lower 
points, there is an endless vista of mountains, 
with here and there a green field or a brown 
village; men and their homes seem minute 
specks, clinging to the sides of rocky preci¬ 
pices or huddled in narrow valleys. 

Of the entire 90,000 square miles covered by 


ALPS 


213 


ALSACE-LORRAINE 


the Alps (an area larger than Ohio and Penn¬ 
sylvania), one-fourth is barren—rock, ice, snow 
and water; another fourth is available for 
farms and vineyards; and a half is pasture land 
and forest. In the summer the herds roam 
high on the mountain-side, and they are often 
seen only a few hundred feet from the snowy 
source of some stream. In the lower regions 
the plant and animal life is not different from 
that of the rest of Europe, but above the tim¬ 
ber-line there are a few animals and plants 
which belong distinctively to the Alps. There 
are the chamois and the steinbock, or mountain 
goat, who haunt the inaccessible rocks of the 
higher altitudes, and there is the famous 
flower, the edelweiss (which see). There are 
also the Alpine rose and violet, known the 
world over, and no nature-lover can escape a 
thrill when he first sees a snow-field dotted 
with the little patches of color which testify 
to the hardy character of these flowers. 

Detailed Location. The Alps form a some¬ 
what irregular crescent in Southern Europe, 
with its horns near Nice, on the Mediterranean, 
and Trieste, on the Adriatic. The mountains 
almost reach to the seashore at both ends, 
thus shutting off Italy from the rest of Europe. 
They cover a total area of 90,000 square miles, 
including almost the whole of Switzerland and 
parts of Northern Italy, Southeastern France, 
Southern Germany and Western Austria. The 
Alps have a length of 700 miles in a general 
east-and-west direction, and a width of 100 
to 180 miles. From the principal chains spurs 
extend to the Apennines, the Vosges, the Harz 
and the Carpathians. Most of the so-called 
Alpine region has an average altitude of 6,000 
to 8,000 feet, but there are hundreds of 
peaks exceeding 10,000 feet. Mont Blanc, the 
loftiest, Monte Rosa, the second highest, the 
Matterhorn, another giant, and the Jungfrau, 
perhaps the most beautiful of them all, are 
described in separate articles. The summits of 
these peaks and many others are covered with 
an everlasting mantle of snow and ice. From 
them there descends to the valleys below great 
glaciers, enormous masses of partly-melted 
snow and crushed ice, which acquire a force 
that nothing can resist (see Avalanche). The 
Mer de Glace, on the northern slope of Mont 
Blanc, is fifteen miles long and three miles wide, 
and the Aletsch glacier, the largest in the Alps, 
is sixteen miles long. The Rhone glacier, the 
source of the river Rhone, is one of the most 
famous. 

Several of the great European rivers rise in 


the Alps, including the Drave, the Po, the 
Rhine and the Rhone (all of which see). The 
important lakes in or near the Alps are also 
described in these volumes; these are Como, 
Constance, Garda, Geneva, Lugano, Maggiore, 
Neuchatel and Zurich. w.f.z. 

Outline on the Alps 

1. Size 

(a) Area, 90,000 square miles 

(b) Length, 700 miles from east to west 

(c) Breadth, 100 to 180 miles 

(d) Average altitude, 6,000 to 8,000 feet 

(e) Loftiest peaks 

2. Location 

(a) Occupying Switzerland and part of 
Italy, France, Germany and Austria 

3. Physical features and scenery 

(a) Precipices 

(b) Glaciers 

(c) Farms and chalets 

(d) Lakes and rivers 

(e) Plant and animal life 

4. Exploration and improvements 

(a) Thoroughly explored 

(b) Hotels and railroads 

5. Historic interest 

(a) Early boundary of the civilized world 

(b) Crossed by invaders and conquerors 

(c) Rise of two imperial houses of Eu¬ 

rope in small Alpine kingdoms 

Consult Bowney’s The Building of the AIjjs ; 
Coolidge’s Alps and Nature in History. 

ALSACE-LORRAINE, al sahs'- lo rane', an 
imperial territory of the German Empire, occu¬ 
pying a peculiar position as a joint possession 
of all the German states. It is under the direct 
jurisdiction of the imperial government, and 
the provincial administrator, or statthalter, is 
appointed by the emperor. Its position is like 
that of a territory in the United States, for it 
is an integral part of the country, yet its local 
government derives all authority from the 
national government. 

Historic Importance. In France, since 1871, 
Alsace and Lorraine have been called “the lost 
provinces”; for in that year, at the end of the 
Franco-German War (which see), the German¬ 
speaking portion of Lorraine and all of Alsace 
were ceded by France to the new German 
Empire. This was not the first time that this 
region had changed owners. It was originally 
the home of Celtic tribes, but in the fourth and 
fifth centuries was overrun by the Teutonic 
tribes, who laid the foundations for the empire 
of Charlemagne. When Charlemagne’s empire 
was divided among his grandsons, it became 
a part of Germany, and so it remained until 
the sixteenth century. In 1552 Henry II of 
France took Metz, Toul and Verdun, and in 
1648, by the Peace of Westphalia, the Holy 


ALSACE-LORRAINE 


214 


ALTAI MOUNTAINS 


Roman emperors ceded more lands in Alsace 
to France. Louis XIV, however, was not 
satisfied, and in 1680 and 1681, in times of 
peace, he seized the imperial free cities of 
Strassburg and Colmar. 

For a century the inhabitants resisted all 
efforts to turn them into Frenchmen, but with 
the French Revolution came a great change. 
The Alsatians, especially, were roused to a 
frenzy, and no more violent advocates of “lib¬ 
erty, equality and fraternity” existed anywhere. 
So completely did Alsace then become French 
in spirit that in 1871 it preferred to remain so, 
and about 50,000 Alsatians moved across the 
new border into France rather than swear 
allegiance to the German emperor. The an¬ 
nexation of the provinces to Germany was 
insisted upon partly because the German peo¬ 
ple regarded it merely as a just restoration, and 
partly because the area was necessary to the 
protection of Germany’s military frontier. 

Present Conditions. As established in 1871, 
Alsace-Lorraine has a total area of 5,605 square 
miles, slightly larger than Connecticut. It oc¬ 
cupies the extreme southwest corner of the 
German Empire, with the Rhine on the east, 



ALSACE-LORRAINE 

Small map shows size as compared to France. 


France on the west, Switzerland on the south. 
At the narrowest point of Alsace the distance 
from the Rhine to the French boundary is 
only twenty-two miles. The province is roughly 


shaped like an inverted L, Lorraine being the 
base and Alsace the vertical arm. 

Most of Alsace-Lorraine is a plain, which be¬ 
comes slightly lower as it approaches the 
Rhine. Half of it is occupied by farms, wheat, 
rye, barley and oats being important crops. 
Grapes are also raised extensively, and the 
white wines of Alsace and the red wines of Lor¬ 
raine are famous. The western part lies mostly 
in the Vosges Mountains. Here coal and salt 
are mined in considerable quantities, and the 
iron mines are the most valuable in Ger¬ 
many. Many of the manufactures, especially 
the textile industry, are still carried on in the 
homes of the workmen. Cotton weaving is 
most important, followed by woolens, silks and 
linens. The iron and steel industry ranks 
second to the textile industry. There are good 
highways even in the mountains; there are 1,400 
miles of railway, and several of the rivers are 
navigable. The canal which connects the Rhone 
with the Rhine has a large traffic on barges. 
French is the language of business and in¬ 
dustry, but German is required by law in the 
schools, courts and legislature. Strassburg, the 
capital, Colmar and Metz are the important 
cities. 

In the War of the Nations. After 1871, when 
Alsace-Lorraine became a part of the German 
Empire, there persisted a feeling, both in France 
and Germany, that France would some day 
attempt to retake “the lost provinces.” This 
feeling was always a factor in the relations be¬ 
tween the two nations, and was one of the 
causes leading to the War of the Nations in 
1914. Within a week after the war began, senti¬ 
mental and semi-political reasons dictated a 
French offensive against both provinces. From 
a military point of view the invasion failed, be¬ 
cause the French were soon driven back, ex¬ 
cept in the extreme south, beyond the border, 
but it was successful in arousing the patriotism 
of the French and in stimulating their desire to 
reconquer the provinces. The strategy of the 
war, however, required the concentration of the 
French strength in the north of France, and 
after the first weeks of the war no further in¬ 
vasion on a large scale was attempted in Al¬ 
sace or Lorraine. For further details of military 
operations, see War of the Nations. w.f.z. 

Consult Putnam’s Alsace and Lorraine. This 
is an English publication (1915) ; all other 
worthy books on the subject are in German. 

ALTAI, aV ti, MOUNTAINS, the name of a 
lofty mountain system, immensely rich in gold, 
silver, copper, and iron; geologically they are 





ALTAR 


215 


ALTON 


among the oldest mountains in Asia. They lie 
partly in Russian and partly in Chinese terri¬ 
tory, on the borders of Siberia and Mongolia. 
The Obi, Irtish and Yenesei rivers rise on the 
north side of the range. Their lower slopes are 
covered with verdure and the forests of the 
higher elevations extend nearly to the rounded 
summits, the highest of these being Byeluka, 
or White Mountain (11,000 feet). Mining is an 
important industry in the Russian provinces 
traversed by this range. 

ALTAR, awl' tur. Taking its name from the 
Latin altus, meaning high, an altar as it first 
existed was simply a high place, such as a 
mound of turf, a flat-topped rock, or some 
other elevated object, upon which sacrifices 
could be performed or offerings laid. Altars 
have been used by nearly all races and from 
the earliest times, because the idea of winning 
the favor of the gods or of turning away their 
wrath by offering sacrifices and bringing gifts 
to the altar, has had a very important place 
in the religions of mankind. 



FORMS OF ANCIENT ALTARS 
(a) In the time of Abraham; (b) altar of 
burnt-offering; (c)altar of incense. 


In the course of time altars became more 
elaborate. The Babylonians built them of sun- 
dried bricks; the Assyrians, of limestone and 
alabaster; the Egyptians, of richly-carved 
stone. The altars of the Hebrews, from the 
one that Noah “builded unto the Lord” after 
the Flood, to the magnificent gold-covered al¬ 
tar of incense in the Temple at Jerusalem, were 
a most intimate part of their worship. The 
altar among the Romans developed from a 
simple mound of earth or a heap of stone to 
the great Altar of Peace, built in honor of Au¬ 
gustus, and a masterpiece of art; both the 
Greeks and Romans reared magnificent altars 
in honor of their more important gods. The 
Greeks and Romans employed various shapes— 
round, square, oblong or many-sided. 

In the Christian Era. When the early Chris¬ 
tians began to build their churches they tried 
to have their altars as different as possible from 
those of the pagan Romans. Only one was 
permitted in each church, and the oblong shape 
was finally adopted. Beneath the altar was a 
small chapel used for the relics of the martyrs 
and saints, called the confession. It later be¬ 


came the crypt (see Crypt). As early as the 
fifth century the altars were being adorned with 
precious stones, and those in the great cathe¬ 
drals were often very elaborate. In the Middle 
Ages there came into use the altar piece, a 
decoration placed at the top of the altar and 
at the back, and these were sometimes beauti¬ 
fied by master sculptors, painters and carvers. 

At the present time the altar is quite plain 
in those churches which have the more simple 
forms of worship. In many Protestant churches 
there is no real altar, but the rail in front of 
the pulpit where the worshippers kneel to re¬ 
ceive the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is 
sometimes given that name. In The Reformed 
Episcopal Church the communion table has 
taken the place of the altar. It is in the Roman 
Catholic and high Episcopal churches, where 
the more elaborate ceremonies have been re¬ 
tained, that the only stately and very beautiful 
altars of modern times may be seen. 

ALTDORF, awlt' dorf, or ALTORF, a small 
town in the canton of Uri, Switzerland, famous 
as the place where, according to legend, Wil¬ 
liam Tell shot the apple from his son’s head 
(see Tell, William). Altorf is beautifully 
situated above Lake Lucerne, amid vineyards, 
gardens and orchards, and is visited every 
summer by large numbers of tourists. 

ALT'GELD, John Peter (1847-1902), an 
American political leader of radical tendencies, 
governor of Illinois from 1893 to 1897, but 
above all else, a real friend of the working- 
man, of the immigrant, of the poor, and a 
leader in securing prison reform. In this 
position he became a national figure for his 
courageous, but at that time unpopular, pro¬ 
test to President Cleveland against the use 
of Federal troops during the great railway 
strike of 1893 and also for his pardon of the 
anarchists who were convicted of murder for 
their share in the Haymarket riot in Chicago. 
He was of German birth, but at the age of 
three was taken to the United States, where 
he lived on a farm in Ohio until 1863, when 
he enlisted in the Union army. After the war 
he studied law, became a leader in his profes¬ 
sion, and was at one time a judge of the 
superior court in Chicago. 

ALTON, awl' tun, III., an important com¬ 
mercial center of the state, popularly called 
the Bluff City, on account of its beautiful 
location on a limestone bluff, which rises 200 
feet above the Mississippi River. The city' 
was founded in 1817 and was incorporated in 
1833; its population, largely American, in- 

































ALTONA 


216 


ALTOONA 


creased from 17,528 in 1910 to 22,092 in 1914. 
The area is about six square miles. 

Alton is situated in Madison County, about 
twenty-five miles north of Saint Louis and 
about three miles north of the confluence of 
the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. The dis¬ 
tance to Chicago, directly northeast across the 
state is 257 miles and to Springfield, the cap¬ 
ital, also northeast, is seventy-two miles. Ex¬ 
cellent railway accommodations are afforded 
by the Chicago & Alton Railway, built to the 
city in 1867, the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chi¬ 
cago and St. Louis, or “Big Four” route, con¬ 
structed in 1879, the Chicago, Peoria and Saint 
Louis Railway, constructed in 1890 and the 
Illinois Terminal, built in 1900. Electric rail¬ 
ways operate to adjacent towns north and 
south, and it is a port of call for several lines 
of steamers. About 3,700 people are emploj^ed 
in the two principal industrial establishments, 
the Illinois Glass Company and the Western 
Cartridge Company, and a large number are 
engaged in the manufacture of machinery, 
carriages, farming implements and tobacco 
products. Valuable limestone is found in the 
vicinity; this, with cement, coal, wheat and 
fruit comprise the principal articles shipped. 

In addition to the public school system, the 
city has an Ursuline convent. Upper Alton, 
one and a half miles distant, is the seat of 
Shurtleff College (Baptist) for both sexes, and 
the Western Military Academy. Monticello 
Seminary, for women, is about five miles dis¬ 
tant. The Haynes Memorial Public Library, 
provided by the city, the Federal Building, 
erected in 1911 at a cost of $75,000, Saint 
Joseph’s Hospital, and the Cathedral of Saints 
Peter and Paul, are structures of interest. 
Rock Springs Park (eighty acres) and River- 
view (eight acres) are the beauty spots of the 
city. 

Elijah Love joy, first martyr to the cause 
of abolition, was killed by a mob at Alton, 
November 7, 1837, and the state has erected 
in the city a monument to his memory. The 
state penitentiary was established here in 1827 
and subsequently removed to Joliet. The 
buildings were used as a government prison 
during the War of Secession. 

ALTONA, ahl' tona, a Prussian city in the 
province of Schleswig-Holstein and a German 
commercial center of importance; it adjoins 
Hamburg on the south, the two being virtu¬ 
ally one city. It carries on a very extensive 
commerce and since 1888, when the city joined 
the imperial Tollverein (German customs 


union), the harbor and docks have been 
greatly improved at a cost of $2,500,000. The 
name is derived from allzu-nah, meaning all 
too near, a term applied by the burghers of 
Hamburg to the only inn in the neighborhood 
in the middle of the sixteenth century. 
Altona became a Prussian city in 1866, at the 
time of confederation of the Germanic states. 
Population in 1910, 172,628. 

ALTOONA, altoo' na, Pa., distinctly a rail¬ 
road city, having within its limits the great 
shops of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, 
the largest in the world. It is situated in 
Blair County, southwest of the geographical 
center of the state, 117 miles east of Pittsburgh, 
132 miles northwest of Harrisburg and 237 miles 
northwest of Philadelphia. The city is well 
served by the Pennsylvania Railroad, at least 
fifty passenger trains being operated daily to 
and from the city. Electric lines extend to 
cities and towns north and south. In 1915 
the population was 57,606, an increase of 
5,500 since 1910. The area of the city is more 
than three square miles. 

Altoona lies at the eastern base of the Alle¬ 
ghany Mountains, 1,180 feet above sea-level, 
in a district noted for its mountain scenery. 
Here the railroad begins to ascend the moun¬ 
tains to the west in a serpentine route by a 
grade of ninety feet to the mile, and at a 
distance of five miles, near the top, winds in 
a graceful curve around the mountains, form¬ 
ing the famous Horseshoe Bend. This is the 
highest elevation traversed by the Pennsyl¬ 
vania Line. North of the city is Wopsononoc 
Mountain, the summit of which affords a 
magnificent view of dale and river; and Sink¬ 
ing valley, to the east, abounds in wonders of 
nature. In this picturesque setting more than 
16,000 people are employed in making and 
repairing locomotives, passenger coaches and 
freight cars. So extensive are the railroad 
interests in Altoona that the Pennsylvania 
Railroad has cooperated with the public 
schools to establish a railway high school, with 
full equipment of forge, foundry, and wood¬ 
working machinery. The city is also the busi¬ 
ness center for an agricultural region and has 
manufactories of silk, glass and agricultural 
machinery. Immense coal deposits are found 
in the locality and coal-mining is an important 
industry. Altoona has over fifty churches, two 
hospitals, a public library and a mechanics’ 
library with about 40,000 volumes. 

In 1849 the Pennsylvania Railroad Company 
selected the site of Altoona for its principal 


ALTO-RILIEVQ 


217 


ALUMINUM 


workshops. It w r as incorporated as a borough 
in 1854, as a chy in 1868, and since 1914 the 
government has been administered on the 
commission plan. 

ALTO-RILIEVO, ahl' to relya' vo (high re¬ 
lief), is the term applied to sculpture when 
the figures stand out more than one-half their 
thickness from the background without being 
entirely detached. On the so-called metopes, 
or slabs of marble which topped the columns 
of the Pantheon (which see), there are some 
wonderful examples of figures in high relief. 
The sculptures at the sides of the base of the 
Nelson Monument in Trafalgar Square, Lon¬ 
don, are also sculptured in this manner. See 
Bas-Relief ; Mezzo-Rilievo. 

ALTRUISM, al' truizm, a word which 
means literally otherism, or thoughtfulness for 
others above self, and stands for the belief 
that the individual should subordinate his 
personal feelings and sacrifice himself to the 
welfare of society. The word was coined by 
the French philosopher Comte from the Latin 
word alter, meaning other, and the theory was 
worked out by him. It is the opposite of 
egoism, which makes self-benefit always the 
motive for conduct. Pure altruism is impos¬ 
sible, because everyone who has tested the 
theory in any degree has learned that the indi¬ 
vidual secures his own happiness in the hap¬ 
piness of others. The truly charitable person, 
who sacrifices himself that he may make others 
happy, attains in the end greater happiness 
than the selfish man, and thus to that extent 
may be reckoned an egoist. While there still 
remains an occasional philosopher who holds 
that self-assertion or self-development should 
be the main principle of life, society as a 
whole realizes that there can be no real prog¬ 
ress unless each person has due regard for the 
interests of his fellowmen. 

ALUM, al' um, a substance used to adulter¬ 
ate cheap baking powders, to harden fats and 
tallow, to fix colors in dyeing and also in the 
tanning of leather. Alum is a powerful astrin¬ 
gent (which see) and if taken internally in 
large quantities seriously injures the digestive 
system. An ounce of alum, taken by mistake 
for Epsom salts, has been known to burn the 
throat, stomach and other organs so that death 
resulted in a short time. It is a disputed 
question, whether the quantity of alum used 
in making baking powders is harmful; in some 
of the states of the American Union its use 
for this purpose is forbidden. It is used in 
medicine as an emetic, notably in cases of 


lead poisoning, as a means of stopping hem¬ 
orrhages, and for various other purposes. 

Common alum, sometimes called potash 
alum, is the result of the decomposition of a 
variety of sandstone called alum stone or alum 
shale. If the shale is broken up by exposure 
to the weather, iron pyrite in the rock dis¬ 
solves, and the sulphur combines with the 
alumina to form aluminum sulphate, which 
is made into alum by adding potassium sul¬ 
phate. The shale may also be decomposed 
by roasting. Common alum is a clear, colorless 
solid, usually in the form of crystals; when 
heated it turns to a fine powder, called burnt 
alum. It dissolves readily in water, and has 
a peculiar puckery taste. 

Most of the alum of commerce to-day is 
not potash alum but ammonium alum, ammo¬ 
nium being substituted for potassium. The 
latter is much cheaper and for most purposes 
is as useful, though it does not dissolve as 
readily in water. The ammonium sulphate is 
a by-product in the manufacture of illumi¬ 
nating gas. 

ALUMINA, alu' mina, the oxide of alumi¬ 
num, in its purest forms known as bauxite and 
corundum; its varieties include the amethyst, 
ruby, sapphire, topaz and emery, and in other 
forms it is known almost everywhere. It 
enters in large quantity into the composition 
of granite, traps, slates, schists, clays, loams 
and other rocks. The porcelain clays and 
kaolins contain about half their weight of this 
earth, to which they owe their most valuable 
properties. It has a strong affinity for color¬ 
ing matters, which causes it to be employed 
in the preparation of the colors called lakes, 
used in dyeing and calico printing. See 
Oxide; Aluminum. 

ALUMINUM, alu' minum, or ALUMIN¬ 
IUM, alyumin' ium, the most abundant and 
one of the lightest of all metals, and with 
the exception of silicon and oxygen the most 
widely distributed element in the earth’s crust. 
It is a whitish substance, with a slightly bluish 
tint, a little harder than tin, which it resem¬ 
bles. It is about two and one-half times as 
heavy as water, but it is only one-third as 
heavy as iron, a little more than one-fourth 
as heavy as copper, almost exactly one-fourth 
as heavy as silver and one-seventh as heavy 
as gold. In tensile strength it excels all the 
other metals except iron and copper; yet it 
may be hammered into sheets or drawn into 
wires like gold or silver. It requires a heat 
of 1160° F. to melt it. 


ALUMINUM 


218 


ALVA 


Its Uses. The uses of aluminum are con¬ 
stantly increasing. It is a good conductor of 
electricity, and sometimes takes the place of 
copper wire in the construction of electric 
lines. The top of the Washington Monument 
is covered by a thin sheet of aluminum, which 
is connected with a lightning rod. One of its 
most important uses is in the manufacture 
of steel; the addition of an almost impercep¬ 
tible amount, say five thousandths of one per 
cent, eliminates air-holes, and makes the steel 
solid. It is also used in the manufacture of 
numerous household utensils, for which it is 
especially suited, since it is light, durable, does 
not rust like tinware nor chip like granite, 
and is not easily acted upon by vegetable 
acids. Hairpins, thimbles, combs, mirror 
frames, a substitute for tinfoil and dozens of 
other articles are also made from it. 

There are numerous alloys of aluminum and 
other metals, such as aluminum bronze, an 
alloy with copper, and magnalium, an alloy 
with magnesium (see Alloy) . Aluminum gold, 
which is a compound of aluminum and copper, 
when new closely resembles real gold, and 
is often used in the manufacture of watch cases 
and cheap jewelry; it tarnishes quickly, how¬ 
ever, and is then worthless as an ornament. 
Other alloys, some made by secret processes, 
are used in boats and automobiles and for the 
framework of aeroplanes and dirigible balloons. 

So varied are the uses of aluminum that it 
seems as if man must have known of its ex¬ 
istence for ages, yet it was unknown before 
the beginning of the nineteenth century, and 
it has not, in any part of the world, been found 
in a pure form. Pure aluminum w r as not in 
existence until 1854, when it was produced 
chemically. The metal was of no practical 
value until the last decade of the nineteenth 
century, after a new process was discovered 
for the reduction of aluminum by electrolysis 
(which see). 

Its Manufacture. In this method, known 
in America as the Hall process and in Europe 
as the Heroult process, aluminum ore in the 
form of bauxite is mixed with a readily fusible 
mineral called cryolite. An electric current is 
passed through the mixture. The poorly con¬ 
ducting mixture soon becomes hot enough 
to melt the cryolite. The bauxite dissolves 
in the molten cryolite and is decomposed by 
the current. Molten aluminum is set free at 
the negative electrode and runs down to the 
bottom of the crucible, whence it is drawn off 
through a tap-hole. At the positive electrode 


oxygen is set free. The operation is carried 
on in a furnace which is practically a huge 
crucible made of blocks of carbon. The posi¬ 
tive electrode is composed of heavy carbon 
plates or cylinders. This is attached to a chain 
and a derrick so it can be lowered into the 
crucible as fast as the end is burned off by 
the liberated or nascent oxygen (see Hydro¬ 
gen Peroxide). The carbon-lined crucible is 
itself the negative electrode. The bauxite is 
fed into the crucible as fast as it is reduced, 
and the process continues until the carbon 
electrode has been entirely consumed. An 
ordinary furnace will produce about 400 pounds 
in twenty-four hours. 

Production and Prices. The first smelter 
using the Hall process was built in Pittsburgh 
in 1889, and in 1895 the works were moved to 
Niagara Falls so as to take advantage of the 
cheap water power there for the production of 
the electric power. A third large smelter is 
at Shawinigan Falls, Que. The production of 
aluminum in the United States increased from 
1.5 tons in 1886 to 75 tons in 1891, 3,575 tons 
in 1901 and 23,062 tons in 1911. The average 
annual production is now 35,000 to 40,000 tons. 
In Canada, the annual average has increased 
from less than 1,000 tons to 15,000 tons; all 
the aluminum produced in Canada is from 
imported ores. 

At the same time that the production of 
aluminum has increased, its price has de¬ 
creased. In 1855 the chemists sold it at the 
rate of $90 a pound. Ity 1890 the price had 
fallen to $2 a pound, and to-day it fluctuates 
from eighteen to twenty-five cents, the aver¬ 
age being about twenty cents. This enormous 
decrease in price is the result of perfected 
processes of manufacture and of the increase 
in use. One vast and comparatively new de¬ 
mand for it is in the manufacture of auto¬ 
mobiles, both body and chassis. j.f.s. 

Consult 1911 Bulletin of United States Geologi¬ 
cal Survey, Mineral Resources of the United 
States; Minet’s The Production of Aluminum and 
Its Industrial Use. 

AL'VA, or AL'BA, Ferdinand Alvarez de 
Toledo, Duke of (1508-1582), a Spanish gen¬ 
eral and statesman w r hose name became a 
synonym for cruelty and tyranny. Under 
Charles V and Philip II he fought in the 
armies of Spain, winning some distinction, but 
his real part in history did not begin until he 
was sent in 1567 as governor to the Nether¬ 
lands. Philip II had given him authority to 
reduce the country to order, and thorough 


ALVARADO 


219 


AMARANTH 


indeed were his methods. He carried before 
his “Council of Blood” all who presumed to 
question his deeds, and all who had property 
which he coveted, and their condemnation was 
sure and speedy. He had Egmont and Horn 
executed, compelled William of Orange to flee 
to Germany, and made life in the Netherlands 
so unendurable that many merchants and 
mechanics emigrated to England. But his 
tyranny worked its own defeat, for Holland 
and Zealand rose 'against him, his fleet was 
destroyed, and finally he was recalled to Spain 
at his own request. In Spain he was given a 
genuine ovation, and later he confirmed him¬ 
self in the good graces of his king by defeat¬ 
ing the Portuguese in a decisive campaign. 

ALVARADO, ahl va rah' tho, Pedro de (about 
1499-1541), one of the early Spaniards in 
America, in search of gold and adventure, 
whom circumstances made the conqueror of 
Guatemala. He was born at Badajoz, Spain, 
and in his youth began a more or less excit¬ 
ing career in the New World. He was the 
companion of Cortez in the latter’s conquest 
of Mexico (1519-1521), and in 1523 was ordered 
to subdue the tribes of Guatemala. On the 
completion of this task he returned to Spain 
to receive from Charles V the appointment 
of governor of Guatemala. Later he made a 
dash across the Andes Mountains, with a 
force of 500 soldiers to conquer Quito, but 
found Pizarro and Almagro ahead of him in 
that field. In 1537 Alvarado was made gov¬ 
ernor of Honduras. In 1541 he was crushed 
under his fallen horse during a fight with the 
Indians. 

AL ' VERSTONE, Lord (formerly Sir Rich¬ 
ard Webster, 1842-1915), a distinguished Eng¬ 
lish jurist, formerly attorney general of the 
United Kingdom, and since 1900 Lord Chief 
Justice. He acted for Great Britain in the 
Bering Sea arbitration of 1893, and in the 
boundary dispute between British Guiana and 
Venezuela in 1898. In 1903 Lord Alverstone 
was president of the commission chosen to set¬ 
tle the boundary dispute between Alaska and 
Canada, and cast his vote in favor of the 
United States, securing for that country control 
of the Pacific coast. 

ALYSSUM, SWEET, See Sweet Alyssum. 

AMALEKITES, am' a lekites, a wandering 
tribe of Arabs with whom, from the sixteenth 
to the seventh century b. c., the Israelites 
came into fierce conflict, both during their 
years in the Wilderness ( Exodus XVII, 8-16), 
and after their settlement in Canaan. No tribe 


was more bitterly hated by the Israelites, who 
determined to exterminate them. Saul almost 
succeeded in doing this (7 Samuel XV, 2) but 
there remained a strong and desperate band, 
against whom David later fought successfully 
(7 Samuel, XXX, 1-20). In the days of Heze- 
kiah the utter destruction of the Amalekites 
was finally achieved (7 Chronicles IV, 43). 

AMALGAM, a mol' gam. When mercury is 
brought in contact with some other metal, 
what is known as amalgam is formed. In min¬ 
ing operations mercury is used to extract free 
gold and silver from their ores. Tin amalgam 
was formerly used for silvering mirrors, but 
real silver is now invariably used. To fill the 
cavities in decaying teeth, dentists mix mer¬ 
cury with alloys of silver with other metals. 
In the tooth the soft amalgam soon sets to a 
hard, durable filling. The zinc plates of elec¬ 
tric batteries are sometimes “amalgamated” 
by rubbing the surface with mercury. This 
prevents the zinc from dissolving in the bat¬ 
tery liquids when the cells are not in use. The 
word amalgam is probably derived from the 
Greek malagmos, meaning soft. See Alloy. 

AMANA, amah'na, a German religious 
society founded in 1714, by Eberhard Gruber, 
at Wetterau, and now centered at Amana, 
Iowa, a community of seven villages twenty- 
eight miles west of Iowa City. The members 
came to the United States in 1843, began the 
settlement in Iowa in 1855, and the society was 
incorporated under its present name in 1859. 
Amana is the name of a mountain mentioned 
in Songs of Solomon, IV, 8, and means true 
or fixed. 

The community is directed by a president 
and a board of thirteen, each village having its 
own board of elders. Though family life is 
maintained, meals are prepared and served in 
“kitchen-houses,” and the society as a whole 
carries on manufacturing, agriculture and other 
work. In 1913 there were about 1,800 persons 
in the community. They own about 26,000 
acres of land, having a value of SI,800,000. 
All of these people dress plainly and in sober 
colors. 

AMARANTH, am' aranlh, a word which 
means unfading, and is therefore used as the 
name of various flowers which have dry, scaly 
petals that keep their color a long time after 
they are plucked. So well known are the flow¬ 
ers and so celebrated their quality that they 
have given to the English language the adjec¬ 
tive amaranthine, meaning undying. Thus 
Wordsworth speaks of “the amaranthine flower 


AMARILLO 


220 


AMAZON 


of faith.” Everlastings is another name for the 
same flowers, which are frequently used during 
the winter for decorative purposes. Most of 
the brilliant red, green, yellow and purple ones, 
however, which are to be seen in Christmas 
wreaths have been dyed. The coxcomb and 
prince’s feather, often seen in gardens, are 
species of amaranth. 

AMARIL'LO, Texas, the county seat of 
Potter County, centrally located in the “Pan¬ 
handle,” the northwestern part of the state. 
The nearest large city, Oklahoma City, is 273 
miles east; Fort Worth is 336 miles southeast, 
and Denver is 467 miles northwest. Three 
railroad lines intersect at Amarillo—the Fort 
Worth & Denver City; the Atchison, Topeka 
& Santa Fe, and the Chicago, Rock Island & 
Gulf. The population in 1900 was 1,442; in 
1910, 9,956; in 1914, 13,585. The area of the 
city is three and a half square miles. 

Amarillo is the commercial center for a vast 
section of cattle country. Level, dry, but fer¬ 
tile, plains extend in every direction. The city 
obtains an abundant supply of water for every 
purpose from a lake 200 feet underground. 
The city reflects the character of the country; 
it is one of the largest cattle shipping points 
in the United States, and also ships great 
quantities of flour and wheat. The important 
manufactures include leather goods, saddles, 
harness and shoes; there are also ice plants 
and grain elevators. 

From a small settlement near a large cattle 
corral, Amarillo in fifteen years became a city 
of paved streets, electric lights, street car 
service, fine residences and public buildings. 
Among the latter are the Federal building, 
completed in 1916, costing $200,000; a city 
hall, a courthouse, and a city hospital. In 
addition to the public schools there is the 
Lowrey-Phillips Military School, Saint Mary’s 
Academy and a business college. The commis¬ 
sion form of government was adopted in the 
year 1914. t.t. 

AMARYLLIS, am aril'is, FAMILY, lily¬ 
like plants, of which one species was formerly 
supposed to be the Biblical “lily of the field,” 
which “toils not, neither does it spin.” In gen¬ 
eral the members of the Amaryllis family 
spring from bulbs and bear beautiful, highly- 
colored flowers, many of which are highly 
prized in gardens and hothouses. The snow¬ 
drop, the daffodil and the narcissus are every¬ 
where familiar, and the century-plant grows 
profusely in warm climates. The bulb of a 
certain South African species known as the 


blood-flower is so poisonous that the Hottentots 
use the juice to anoint their deadly arrow- 



BELONGING TO THE AMARYLLIS FAMILY 

(a) Belladonna lily; (b) Narcissus; (c) Star 
grass. 


heads, and the bulb of the common narcissus 
is strongly emetic. The most valuable mem¬ 
ber of the family commercially is the agave, 
which is treated under the title Century- 
Plant. 

AMAZON, am'azon, the great river of 
South America, and with its tributaries the 
largest river system in the world. The origin 
of the name is uncertain, but it is usually cred¬ 
ited to one of the early Spanish explorers. His 
party was attacked by a 'band of natives, in¬ 
cluding many women, whose presence sug¬ 
gested the name of the warlike women of 
Greek mythology (see Amazons). The Ama¬ 
zon is the only great river in the world whose 
general direction is east and west, all others 
being north and south. The total length of 
the main river is 3,300 miles, about 100 miles 
longer than the distance from New York to 
San Francisco, and its drainage basin has a 
total area of 2,500,000 square miles, equal to 
five-sixths of the United States, excluding 
Alaska. The river is navigable for ocean 
steamers as far as Iquitos, 2,300 miles from 
the Atlantic, and up to this point it has an 
average depth of 120 to 150 feet during the 
rainy season. For nearly 500 miles beyond 
Iquitos it is navigable for steamers drawing 
no more than fourteen feet of water, and 
smaller vessels have ascended even higher. 
The total length of navigable rivers in the 
system is about 15,000 miles. 

The Amazon is formed by the junction of 
two main branches, the Maranon and the 
Ucayali. The Maranon, which rises in the 
Andes only sixty miles from the Pacific Ocean, 
has its source farther west than the Ucayali, 
but the latter, being larger, is usually called 
the chief branch. In its long course the Aina- 




AMAZON 


221 


AMAZONS 



THE COURSE OF THE MIGHTY AMAZON 


Some of its tributaries are among the great streams of the world. The smaller map, in its black 
portion, indicates the part of South America which appears in the larger space. 


zon receives over 200 tributaries, the most 
important of which are treated elsewhere (see 
Japura, Jurna, Madeira; Negro; Tapajos; 
Tocantins; Xingu). 

Much of the Amazon is really a great basin 
rather than a river, and the lower section, at 
least, was once a gulf of the ocean. After it 
leaves the Andes, there is a scarcely perceptible 
fall. Where it leaves Peru and enters Brazil 
it is already a mile wide, but is only 300 feet 
above the level of the Atlantic, and in the 
last 400 miles its average fall is only one- 
eighth of an inch per mile. Yet so enormous 
is the mass of water which the river receives 
from its tributaries that it flows at the rate 
of two and one-half to three miles an hour and 
discharges at its mouth between 4,000,000 and 
5,000,000 cubic feet of water per second. In 
a single day this discharge would make a lake 
twenty-five miles long and four to five miles 
wide, with a uniform depth of 100 feet. 

Throughout most of its course the banks of 
the Amazon are little higher than the stream. 
In the rainy season the river floods the low¬ 
lands, sometimes covering several hundred 
thousand square miles. Though the true 
course of the river is from four to six miles 
wdde, there are numerous side channels, which 
it is possible to ascend for hundreds of miles 
without even entering the main channel. Be¬ 
low Obidos (see colored map, South Amer¬ 
ica), the river widens gradually, until, at its 
mouth, it reaches a maximum of 207 miles. 
Lying in the mouth is the island of Marajos, 
which is larger than the combined areas of 
Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, 
and is about equal in size to the kingdom of 
Denmark. The river current is noticeable in 
the ocean 200 miles from shore because of the 
discolored water, and at high tide the current 


is reversed for 400 miles inland. The inrush 
of the tide is so great that it frequently 
creates a bore or pororoca, a wall of water 
from twelve to twenty-five feet high (see 
Bore). 

For the plant and animal life of the Ama¬ 
zon basin, and the character of the commerce 
carried on the river, see Brazil. w.f.z. 

Consult Mozans’ Along the Andes and Down 
the Amazon; Lange’s In the Amazon Jungle. 

AMAZONS, a race of warlike women who, 
according to ancient Greek tradition, either 



AN AMAZON 

This illustration is of a statue of an Amazon, 
in the Royal Museum, Berlin, Germany. The 
sculptor intended to convey an impression of the 
bravery, strength and daring of these women of 
tradition. 

permitted no men to reside among them, or 
kept them in a state of slavery. They are 
generally supposed to have inhabited the 
region on the banks of the river Thermodon, 







AMBASSADOR 


222 


AMBITION 


in Asia Minor. The most notable city estab¬ 
lished by them was Ephesus, where they built 
magnificent temples for the worship of Ares 
(Mars) and Artemis (Diana). The Amazons 
were defeated by Hercules, who sought the 
girdle of their queen Hippolyta; later when 
leading their armies to the help of Troy, the 
Amazonian queen was slain by Achilles. The 
race was finally exterminated by Theseus and 
the Athenians. It is said that the Amazons 
burned off their right breast that it might 
not impede them in the use of the bow; old 
sculptures, however, do not show such mutila¬ 
tion. In Greek art they are usually repre¬ 
sented as riding on horseback, carrying a lance, 
bow or battle axe and a shield. 

AMBAS'SADQR, a diplomatic officer of the 
highest rank, employed by one country at the 
court or capital of another. He is entrusted 
with the proper development of those matters 
which affect the governmental relations—or 
political relations—of the two countries. In 
this respect diplomatic officers of all grades 
differ from consuls, who are appointed to de¬ 
velop trade relations only. 

Ambassadors are ordinary when they are 
regularly appointed for a stated period at a 
foreign court, or extraordinary, when they are 
sent on a special mission. When ambassa¬ 
dors extraordinary have full powers, as of 
concluding peace, making treaties, and the 
like they are called plenipotentiaries. Until 
1896 the United States sent no ambassadors 
to foreign countries, but was represented by 
ministers-plenipotentiary, appointed by the 
President with approval of the Senate. In 
the above year the ministers to Germany, 
France, England and Italy were raised to the 
rank of ambassadors in recognition of similar 
action upon the part of those governments, 
and since that time the post of minister- 
plenipotentiary has been raised to ambassa¬ 
dor for Argentine, Brazil, Chile, Japan, Mexico, 
Russia, Spain and Turkey. 

The United States pays the ambassadors it 
sends to foreign courts $17,500 per year, but 
does not furnish them residences or offices 
abroad or make an appropriation for such 
expenses. On the contrary, a number of Euro¬ 
pean ambassadors to the United States live 
in fine residences owned by their governments 
and receive salaries ranging from $20,000 to 
$50,000, the latter being the salary of the 
British ambassador to the United States. See 
Diplomacy. 

AMBER, am' bur, As the pine trees of to¬ 


day secrete a sticky, yellowish resin, so did 
those of thousands and hundreds of thousands 
of years ago, and when those trees were 
buried under the ground or under the water, 
during the great changes which took place in 
the earth’s surface, the lumps of resin grad¬ 
ually hardened or fossilized into the beauti¬ 
ful substance which is known as amber. To¬ 
day these irregularly-shaped lumps, which 
occasionally reach a size of from ten to fif¬ 
teen pounds but which are generally much 
smaller, are dug up from the shores of the 
Baltic Sea and the North Sea, and in a few 
places in Great Britain and the United States. 
The pale yellow or yellowish-brown substance, 
with its characteristic luster, is much used in 
making cigar-holders, mouthpieces for pipes 
and beads, and the ash obtained by burning 
it forms the basis of the finest black varnish. 
In the beginning amber was in soft form, and 
often specimens are found in which are im¬ 
bedded the remains of insects; and the fact 
that these insects are always of species which 
no longer exist proves that it was ages ago 
that the amber was secreted. 

The ancient Greeks obtained amber from the 
shores of the Baltic Sea, just where it is most 
plentiful to-day, and they called it elektron. 
One of their philosophers, interested in the 
properties of matter, discovered that if this 
substance were rubbed briskly it became capa¬ 
ble of attracting to itself light objects, such 
as straws and bits of paper. This strange 
quality, which gave to man his first knowl¬ 
edge of electricity, was never lost sight of, 
and centuries afterward, when the study of 
this property in certain objects became a real 
science and a name was needed for it, the 
name electricity, taken from the Greek 
elektron, was chosen. The English form of 
elektron is electron. See Electricity. 

AMBERGRIS, am' bur grees, the most valu¬ 
able product of the sperm whale, sought for 
especially because of its importance in the 
perfume industry. For several centuries be¬ 
fore its true nature was known, it was famil¬ 
iar as a substance often found floating in 
lumps, some of which weighed 200 pounds. 
Its source is the whale’s intestines; it is wax¬ 
like and gray, yellow, black or variegated in 
color. See Whale. 

AMBITION, ambi' shun. Most words have 
fascinating life-stories, and ambition is no 
exception, for its derivation is rich in historical 
interest. Long ago, in the days of ancient 
Rome, those who were candidates for public 


AMBITION 


223 


AMBITION 


office went about from house to house solic¬ 
iting votes. This practice received the name 
of ambitio, meaning going about canvassing, 
from ambio, signifying I go around. 

“Vaulting Ambition.” From such an ori¬ 
gin the word has come to be used to charac¬ 
terize that selfish, overmastering desire for 
power, fame or wealth that stops at nothing 
until the goal is reached. In this sense it is 
rightly considered “one of the meanest of 
passions,” as some one has stigmatized it. It 
was this type of ambition that Shakespeare 
had in mind when he wrote of “virtue choked 
with foul ambition,” and “vaulting ambition, 
which o’erleaps itself.” 

The student of history finds striking exam¬ 
ples of inordinate ambition in such figures as 
Caesar, Napoleon, Richelieu and Wolsey, Tal¬ 
leyrand, and in more modern days, King Fer¬ 
dinand of Bulgaria, in whose ambition to 
make Bulgaria the Prussia of the Balkan states 
lay the source of the two recent Balkan wars. 
In literature the outstanding tj^pe of unscrupu¬ 
lous and futile ambition is the character of 
Macbeth, as delineated by the master-hand of 
Shakespeare. Uriah Heep in David Copper- 
field is a familiar example of overweening 
ambition, although on a petty scale. In the 
land of fable we have the tale of the frog who, 
ambitious to be as big as the ox, puffed him¬ 
self to the point of bursting. Mythology, too, 
is full of stories illustrating the folly of ambi¬ 
tion carried to an extreme; for instance, the 
myth of Phaethon, who was ambitious to 
drive the chariot of the sun; Icarus and his 
father, who made themselves wings of wax, 
thinking to soar to the abode of the gods; 
King Midas, dreaming of possessing unlimited 
gold and coming to grief through the sudden 
realization of his selfish dream. 

Praiseworthy Ambition. As the Roman 
rhetorician Quintilian sagely remarked, 
“Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it 
is often the parent of virtues.” To attain 
great wealth or personal glory a man must 
usually renounce ease, comfort and self- 
indulgence ; he must develop habits of per¬ 
sistence, industry, economy, study and unrest¬ 
ing activity, depending upon the goal at which 
he is aiming. In this way, perhaps, it has 
come about that the word is now applied also 
in a favorable sense, meaning the eager aspira¬ 
tion toward higher things, the steadfast deter¬ 
mination and unflagging effort which lead to 
the achievement of some worthy purpose. It 
is a creditable ambition to improve character, 


to develop ability, to reach out after a broader 
education, to give a higher quality of service 
to the world. Great public benefactors like 
Clara Barton, Jane Addams and Luther Bur¬ 
bank; captains of industry like Marshall Field, 
great merchant, and James J. Hill, builder of 
railroads; inventors like Stephenson, Edison 
and Marconi; daring explorers like Captain 
Scott, Amundsen and Peary—all these were 
fired with the high ambition to do some real 
work in the world. Ambition is a virtue or 
a vice, then, according to its object and the 
means employed in attaining that object. 

Ambition and Emulation. Emulation con¬ 
sists in trying to surpass some one else’s rec¬ 
ord. It is emulation that inspires a boy or 
girl in school to strive for marks and prizes 
rather than true knowledge and to rest con¬ 
tent with distancing the others in his class, 
regardless of what the victory means to him 
personally. Ambition is “made of sterner 
stuff.” Ambition keeps the boy or girl, man 
or woman, constantly pushing forward toward 
a clearly-visioned goal, ever trying to get 
ahead of himself. Ambition looks to the sur¬ 
passing of yesterday’s record, not a neighbor’s 
achievement. It was true ambition that en¬ 
abled the great artist, Joshua Reynolds, to 
reply, when asked how he had developed his 
remarkable ability, “By observing one simple 
rule; namely, to make each picture the best.” 
This suggests the famous motto of the Paulist 
Fathers, “Let the highest achievement of yes¬ 
terday be the starting point of to-day.” Such 
a desire to excel one’s own best work is the 
best kind of ambition. 

Cultivating Ambition. The spirit of ambi¬ 
tion is natural to every child born into the 
world. It is like a young shoot which, prop¬ 
erly encouraged, sends forth the blossoms of 
achievement and grows taller and stronger 
from year to year; neglected, it slowly withers 
and dies. Every boy and girl is entitled to 
home encouragement and help in bringing his 
ambitions to the point of fruition. He needs 
and should have home aids in the way of 
good books and magazines; he needs the in¬ 
terested cooperation of father and mother; he 
needs the loving, helpful hand stretched out 
to assist him in solving his individual prob¬ 
lems. 

Failing to receive such sympathy and assist¬ 
ance in realizing his ambitions, on meeting 
obstacles he finds himself utterly unable to 
cope with unaided, discouragement comes like 
a chilling wind and the tender plant of child- 


AMBITION 


224 


AMBULANCE 


ish ambition dies. The result is not only the 
failure of the particular object the child was 
cherishing; eventually it may mean also the 
death of all ambition, initiative and effort; till 
at length, through failing to progress, he has 
dropped so far behind in achievement that 
he can probably never regain that fine spirit 
of eager aspiration and confident trying which 
is his birthright. Ambition must be cultivated 
and fostered during the early years of child¬ 
hood, especially, if it is to develop into the 
hardy governing motive that will shape a 
successful life. The world belongs to the ener¬ 
getic and the ambitious. 

The Physical Side. It is also to be noted 
that educators struggling with the problem of 
the seemingly ambitionless pupil are now 
looking for the explanation, not only in a care¬ 
less, unsympathetic home environment, but in 
physical causes, as well. Experiment and tests 
have shown that a large proportion of such 
cases spring from diseases of the ductless 
glands and from defective sight, hearing or 
breathing. When these defects receive expert 
medical attention the child quickly regains the 
ambition and energy characteristic of normal 
boys and girls. Given the right home condi¬ 
tions, he is then prepared to apply himself 
to the solution of his special problems of 
home, school and society, and to compete 
with his fellows with an equal chance of suc¬ 
cess. L.M.B. 


Outline on Ambition 

Motto: 

“Too low they build who build beneath the 
stars.”—Young’s Night Thoughts. 

Essay on Ambition : 

(a) To develop our talents 

(b) To make use of our opportunities 

(c) To make some progress every day 

(d) To serve worthily 

(e) To make our ideal real 


Biography: 

Louisa M. Alcott 
Bismarck 
James G. Blaine 
Henry Clay 
Stephen A. Douglas 
Poems: 

Longing —Lowell 
Days —Emerson 
The Gleam —Tennyson 
Friend Brook —Lucy Larcom 
The Chambered Nautilus —Holmes 
The Song of the Chattahooche —Lanier 
Supplementary Heading: 

Gradatim —J. G. Holland 
The Vision of Sir Launfal —Lowell 
The Story of Dick Whittington 
Myths of Phaethon and Ariadne 
Essay, Of Ambition —Bacon 


Alexander Hamilton 
Wm. D. Howells 
Abraham Lincoln 
Benjamin West 


Quotations: 

Hitch your wagon to a star.—Emerson. 

If I shoot at the sun I may hit a star.—P. T. 
Barnum. 

Be thou contented with thy lot in earthly 
things, 

But be forever seeking after angels’ wings. 

—J. T. W. 

An aspiration is a joy forever, a possession as 
solid as a landed estate.—R. L. Stevenson. 

There is nothing noble in being superior to 
some other man. The true nobility is in 
being superior to your previous self. 

—Hindoo Saying. 

Aspire, break bonds, I say. 

Endeavor to be good, and better still, 

And best. Success is nought, endeavor’s all. 

—Browning. 

AMBROSE, am' broze, Saint (about 340- 
397), one of the early Fathers of the Church, 
the first great writer of Latin hymns. He was 
elected bishop of Milan in 374, and became 
the patron saint of that city, where the famous 
Ambrosian Library was named in his honor. 
To his sermons the great Saint Augustine 
partly owed his conversion. Saint Ambrose 
was famed for his wisdom, gentleness and 
purity of life. His works, which show the 
influence of Greek writers, may be had in 
English translations. 

AMBROSIA, ambro' zhia, with nectar, in 
Greek and Roman myths, was considered the 
food and drink of the gods, and a substance 
that gave them their immortal youth. Not 
only did they eat and drink of ambrosia, but 
they bathed in it and used it as an ointment. 
A god who went without ambrosia for a time 
suffered a loss of power, while a mortal who 
fed on it gained godlike strength and immor¬ 
tality. The adjective ambrosial, meaning 
sweet-smelling or delicious, is derived from the 
word. It is so used in a familiar line from 
Tennyson’s In Memoriam, “Sweet after show¬ 
ers, ambrosial air.” 

AMBULANCE, am' bu lance, from a Latin 
word meaning to move about, a vehicle used 
to carry the sick or injured to a place, usually 
a hospital, where they may receive medical 
attention. The modern hospital ambulance 
of the great cities is a four-wheeled vehicle 
drawn by horses or driven by electricity or 
gasoline. The latter, the automobile ambu¬ 
lance, is rapidly taking the place of the ambu¬ 
lance drawn by horses. These ambulances are 
constructed with rubber tires so that they run 
smoothly, and they carry one or two tiers of 
stretchers. Sometimes they are fitted with 
beds, surgical instruments and medicines; 


AMEN 


225 


AMERICA 


nearly always surgeons accompany them. 
They respond promptly to calls for help, and 
as they are driven through the crowded streets 
a gong is kept ringing to warn other vehicles 
of their approach, for an ambulance has the 
right of way over all other vehicles except 
those of the police and fire departments. Each 
large city in all enlightened countries has its 
own system of ambulance service, controlled 
by the police, the hospitals or the city gov¬ 
ernment. 

Nearly all countries at the present time use 
the military ambulance service that was per¬ 
fected in the United States during the War 
of Secession. In some European countries 
ambulances consist of entire railway trains 
fitted up as hospitals. The term is also applied 
to moving field hospitals that in war are car¬ 
ried about from place to place with the troops. 
Since the founding of the Red Cross Societies 
ambulance service on the field of battle has 
made striking progress. See Red Cross Socie¬ 
ties. 

AMEN, amen', a Hebrew word meaning it 
is trustworthy, or be it so, which was brought 
over without change of form into Greek and 
thence into Latin and the modern languages. 
It is used most commonly at the end of a 
prayer or hymn as a sort of summing up, a 
repeated wish that everything asked for may 
be granted, everything stated may be true. 
The “verily, verily” used in the New Testa¬ 
ment frequently at the beginning of a state¬ 
ment is a translation of the word amen. Pro¬ 
nounced quite frequently ay men in ordinary 
speech, it is invariably ah men in singing and 
usually in poetry, as in the Lost Chord, where 
occurs the line, “Like the sound of a great 
Amen.” 

AMENDMENT, amend' ment, a term ap¬ 
plied in legislative procedure to the alteration 
or modification of an existing law by the addi¬ 
tion of a new enactment relating to it. When 
an amendment has been adopted it becomes 
a part of the original. In parliamentary 
bodies amendments may be made to bills, reso¬ 
lutions or motions under consideration by the 
house. The rule followed everywhere is that 
an amendment to a resolution or bill may be 
amended, but that the amendment to the 
amendment cannot be further amended. 

In the Congress of the United States one 
house may amend a bill which has passed the 
other house, but such bill, with the amend¬ 
ment, must be returned to the first body for 
approval. If further amended it must be re¬ 


turned to the other house; if no agreement 
is reached the bill is sent to a joint commit¬ 
tee. The United States Constitution provides 
for its own amendment in these words 
(Art. V): 

“The Congress, whenever two-thirds of both 
houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose 
amendments to this Constitution; or, on the 
application of the legislature of two-thirds of 
the several states, shall call a convention for 
proposing amendments, which, in either case, 
shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as 
part of this constitution, when ratified by the 
legislatures of three-fourths of the several states, 
or by conventions in three-fourths thereof, as 
the one or the other mode of ratification may be 
proposed by the Congress; provided * * * 

that no state, without its consent, shall be 
deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.” 

AMERICA, a mer' i ka, a great land mass 
which exceeds in its north-to-south extent any 
other land area on the globe, and which di¬ 
vides throughout its entire length the Atlan¬ 
tic and Pacific oceans. Stretching as it does 
through 128° of latitude, from 72° N. to 56° 
S., it is 9,000 miles in length, and is washed at 
one extremity by the Arctic, at the other by 
the Antarctic, Ocean. Its greatest breadth, 
from the easternmost point of Brazil to the 
westernmost point of Peru, is over 3,000 miles, 
while its narrowest part, on the Isthmus of 
Panama, is little more than twenty-eight miles. 
The two great divisions, North America and 
South America, which make up the continent, 
are more or less similar in shape, since each 
is roughly triangular, with its greatest breadth 
toward the north. n 

Despite the fact that Columbus was the 
first European to take to Europe definite 
knowledge of the New World, Americus Ves- 
pucius received the honor of having his name 
given to it. Because Vespucius had explored 
and described the coast of Brazil, a map- 
maker in 1507 suggested that that part of the 
newly-discovered hemisphere be called by his 
name, and the new title was gradually ex¬ 
tended to cover all of South America. Still 
later, when the close connection between the 
two grand divisions was discovered, the one 
name was made to do duty for both. See 
North America; South America; Vespucius, 
Americus; Columbus, Christopher. 

AMERICA, the national hymn of the United 
States, beginning with the words, “My coun¬ 
try ’tis of thee.” The words were written by 
the Reverend Samuel Smith (which see), and 
were first used in 1832 at a children’s Fourth 
of July celebration in Boston. Years after- 


AMERICAN ACADEMY 


226 


AMERICAN BEAUTY 


ward, at a reunion of the Harvard class of 
which both Smith and Oliver Wendell Holmes 
were members, Holmes read a poem entitled 
The Boys, in which he spoke of Smith in the 
words: 

Here’s a nice youngster of excellent pith; 

Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith, 
But he chanted a song for the brave and the 
free; 

Just read on his medal, “My country, of thee.” 

The music to America was borrowed from 
England, having been composed bj^ Henry 
Carey about 1742. The English national 
hymn, God Save the King, is set to the same 
music, as is also the popular German patriotic 
song, Heil dir in Siegerkranz. The words of 
this best-known of America’s national hymns 
are as follows: 

My country, ’tis of thee, 

Sweet land of liberty, 

Of thee I sing; 

Land where my fathers died, 

Land of the pilgrims’ pride, 

From every mountain side 
Let freedom ring. 

My native country, thee— 

Land of the noble free— 

Thy name I love; 

I love thy rocks and rills, 

Thy woods and templed hills, 

My heart with rapture thrills 
Like that above. 

Let music swell the breeze, 

And ring from all the trees 
Sweet freedom’s song; 

Let mortal tongues awake ; 

Let all that breathe partake; 

Let rocks their silence break— 

The sound prolong. 

Our fathers’ God, to thee, 

Author of liberty, 

To thee we sing: 

Long may our land be bright 
With freedom’s holy light; 

Protect us by thy might, 

Great God, our King. 

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND 
LETTERS, an organization of distinguished 
artists, musicians and authors, established in 
1904. The members of the Academy, whose 
number is limited to fifty, are chosen from 
the National Institute of Arts and Letters, an 
organization of 250 members. The larger body 
was founded in 1898 by a committee of the 
American Social Science Association with the 
purpose of creating in the United States an 
association like the Institute of France. The 
committee named a small group of initial 
members, who were to elect other members. 


The membership was at first very small, but 
was later increased to 150, and finally to 250. 

After the Institute had established itself, 
and included most of the prominent writers 
and artists of the United States, a new and 
smaller organization was planned, to be called 
the American Academy of Arts and Letters. 
Its constitution states that the purpose of the 
Academy is to further and represent the inter¬ 
ests of fine arts and literature. In 1904 seven 
men were chosen to form the nucleus of the 
Academy; these seven were William Dean 
Howells, Augustus St. Gaudens, Edmund 
Clarence Stedman, John La Farge, Samuel 
Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain), John Hay 
and Edward A. MacDowell. They were given 
power to elect eight more members, and the 
combined fifteen then elected five more, and 
thus by successive steps the membership was 
increased to fifty. Among the distinguished 
men who have been members of the Academy 
are Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Joseph Jefferson, 
Carl Schurz, Joel Chandler Harris, John Bige¬ 
low and Edward Everett Hale. The only 
woman member was Julia Ward Howe. The 
members in 1917, in the order of their elec¬ 
tion, were the following: 


William Dean Howells 
Henry Adams 
Theodore Roosevelt 
John Singer Sargent 
Daniel Chester French 
John Burroughs 
James Ford Rhodes 
Horatio William Parker 
William Milligan 
Sloane 

Robert Underwood 
Johnson 

George Washington 
Cable 

Andrew Dickson White 
Henry Van Dyke 
William Crary Brownell 
Basil Lanneau Gilder-, 
sleeve 

Woodrow Wilson 
Arthur Twining Hadley 
Henry Cabot Lodge 
Edwin Howland Blash- 
field 

William Merritt Chase 
Thomas Hastings 
Hamilton Wright Mabie 
Brander Matthews 
Thomas Nelson Page 


Elihu Vedder 
George Edward Wood- 
berry 

Kenyon Cox 

George Whitefield Chad¬ 
wick 

Abbott Handerson 
Thayer 

Henry Mills Alden 
George de Forest Brush 
William Rutherford 
Mead 

Bliss Ferry 

Abbott Lawrence Lowell 
Nicholas Murray Butler 
Paul Wayland Bartlett 
Owen Wister 
Herbert Adams 
Augustus Thomas 
Timothy Cole 
Cass Gilbert 
William Roscoe Thayer 
Robert Grant 
Frederick Macmonnies 
J. Alden Weir 
William Gillette 
Paul Elmer More 
George Lockhart Rives 


The history of nearly all the past and pres¬ 
ent members is given in its alphabetical place 
in these volumes. w.f.z. 

AMERICAN BEAUTY, a choice variety of 
cultivated rose, famous for the size of its 




AMERICAN BEAUTY 227 


blossom, and its rare coloring. The velvety 
petals of the showy, fragrant flowers are of a 
carmine-crimson shade, tinged with soft vio- 



AMERICAN BEAUTY 
Flower, leaves and bud. 


let, and the blossoms are borne on long, thick 
woody stems. The peculiar hue of this rose 
is copied in d} r es having the name “American 
Beauty Red.” The flower was first produced 
in a rose nursery in Baltimore, Md., and was 
introduced to the trade by a florist of Wash¬ 
ington, D. C. It is the favorite flower for 
social functions where expense is not consid¬ 
ered, the choicer specimens bringing high 
prices. The retail price of the varieties sold 
at the ordinary florist shop is three to five 
dollars per dozen. Authorities on rose culture 
say that the amateur cannot hope to raise the 


AMERICAN LITERATURE 

American beauty with success, because this 
aristocrat among flowers demands skill and 
training, a certain temperature and a properly 
constructed hothouse for its cultivation. 

AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR, a 
national federation of trade unions. For 
details of its history and organization, see 
Labor Organizations. 

AMERICAN GOLD'FINCH, YELLOWBIRD, 
or THISTLE-BIRD, sometimes called also the 
wild canary, is a lively and interesting little 
songster, found generally throughout the 
United States and also in parts of Canada and 
in Mexico. This bird is about four and three- 
fourths inches in length. In summer the male 
is a bright yellow, with black cap, wings and 
tail; the female is olive brown above, yellow¬ 
ish below, with wings and tail much like those 
of her mate. In the winter time the male dons 
a more sober coat, and then greatly resembles 
the female. The nest, a graceful little cup 
made of grass and vegetable fiber and lined 
with grass and plant down, is usually placed 
in a bush or in the crotch of a low tree. The 
eggs, numbering three to six, are spotlessly 
white or tinted green or greenish-blue. They 
are usually laid about the end of June. 

The goldfinch is a sociable bird, and on the 
approach of spring, the males, dressed in their 
handsome new coats, may be seen in little 
groups, sitting on the branches of a tree, 
basking in the sun and warbling soft, pretty 
music. These birds are easily tamed, and 
when placed in cages in the home are almost 
as delightful a pet as the canary. The gold¬ 
finch is very fond of the seeds of the thistle, 
and thus is of value to man in keeping down 
the growth of this troublesome weed. 



THE STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 


MERIC AN LITERATURE. In a 

sense, American literature is a part of English, 
since it makes use of the same language, but 
it has grown up under such different condi¬ 


tions, among such different surroundings, that 
it possesses a distinct identity. Many of 
Irving’s essays, Hawthorne’s House of the 
Seven Gables, Cooper’s Leather Stocking Tales, 




















































































































AMERICAN LITERATURE 


228 


AMERICAN LITERATURE 


Longfellow’s Evangeline are distinctly Ameri¬ 
can, not merely because their scenes are laid 
in America, but because they breathe the 
spirit of the new land. 

Its Beginnings. The United States has a 
history which dates back 300 years, and since 
many of the men who made its earliest history 
were scholars, it produced literature of a kind 
through all that period. But literature in the 
broader sense—those writings which all the 
reading world accepts and authorities class 
with really worthy productions—it has had for 
little more than a century. 

They were serious folk, those early produc¬ 
ers of literature in America, and the condi¬ 
tions in the new home were not such as to 
encourage artistic production. Histories of the 
colonies; dissertations on liberty, the desire 
for which had led many of them across the 
sea; profound theological treatises; solemn 
song books—these were the earliest output of 
the colonies. Occasionally one figure stood out 
far above the rest. There was Anne Brad- 
street, for instance, the title-page of whose 
publications heralded her as “The Tenth Muse 
lately sprung up in America”; whose works, 
however, show nothing of the life of the new 
land to which she had come as a bride, but 
drone on about solemn “world facts.” 

Two of the greatest names in this very 
early history of literature in New England 
were those of Increase and Cotton Mather, 
autocratic father and ascetic son, whose works 


were highly regarded in their day, but have 
won no recognition from posterity. Jonathan 
Edwards had a more far-reaching influence, 
and his Freedom of the Will is still recognized 
as a masterpiece of reasoning. 

The Stirring Revolutionary Times. These 
early figures in the literature of America seem 
very far away and indistinct, but with the 
thrilling events which led to the Revolution, 
and with the Revolution itself, there came into 
prominence a man who stands even to these 
later days as a typical American—Benjamin 
Franklin. His writings, and particularly his 
Autobiography, which ranks with the great 
biographies of all time, mark the beginning 
of a new era in American literature. 

As the colonial period was interested most 
of all in religion, the Revolutionary era con¬ 
cerned itself chiefly with politics, and most of 
the great statesmen of the day left some mark 
on the literature of the period. The Federal¬ 
ist, the Declaration of Independence and Jef¬ 
ferson’s Autobiography stand as monuments 
of this era when men were too much engaged 
in doing to find much time for writing. 

No time is without its verse-writers, and 
this Revolutionary period had several, of 
whom only one, Philip Freneau, possessed 
enough force and originality to write verse 
that would live. The earliest novel-writer of 
note, Charles Brockden Brown, lived in this 
period, and his weird romances fairly bristle 
with horrors. 


The National Era 


The “Pioneers.” Only with the nineteenth 
century did the United States begin to pro¬ 
duce literature that attracted favorable atten¬ 
tion abroad. Men had made permanent homes 
for themselves, had won the liberty without 
which they felt that life could not broaden 
to its full, and at length they had time for 
joy and for beauty. The first man to respond 
to the new, scarce-conscious demand and to 
win international recognition was Washington 
Irving, whose genial spirit no less than his 
delightful style makes him to this day one 
of the best-loved of American authors. In 
poetry, the great name of those early days 
was that of Bryant, whose Thanatopsis stands 
as “an event and a landmark” in American 
literature. It is impossible to imagine a 
present-day boy of seventeen producing such 
a poem, yet that was Bryant’s age when he 
wrote; 


So live that when thy summons comes to join 
The innumerable caravan, which moves 
To that mysterious realm, where each shall 
take 

His chamber in the silent halls of death, 

Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, 
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and 
soothed 

By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave 
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. 

Another outstanding figure in the early half 
of the century was James Fenimore Cooper, 
whose Spy, published in 1821, was the first 
typically American novel. He almost always 
has “a forest trail to follow or a windy sea 
to sail,” and his stories will live for the action 
in which they abound. With this pioneer 
group, too, must be reckoned Edgar Allan Poe, 
accounted by many critics the supreme genius 
in the history of American literature. It is 
difficult to say which is more masterly, his 


AMERICAN LITERATURE 


229 


AMERICAN LITERATURE 


prose or his poetry. Certainly little in the 
entire range of literature in English can sur¬ 
pass in pure music some of his verse. 

The skies they were ashen and sober; 

The leaves they were crisped and sere, 

The leaves they were wickering - and sere; 

It was night in the lonesome October 
Of my most immemorial year ; 

It was hard bjr the dim lake of Auber, 

In the misty mid-region of Weir: 

It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, 

In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 

A lesser writer, but one much admired in 
his own day and still read with pleasure, was 
Nathaniel P. Willis, who wrote both prose and 
poetry. 

Later Prose Writers. As writers become 
more numerous it is simpler to consider sepa¬ 
rately the two great branches, prose-writers 
and poets, though some have attained distinc¬ 
tion in both. The two men who stand in the 
very front rank among men of letters, if the 
opinion of the majority of critics be taken, 
were born early in the nineteenth century— 
Emerson in 1803 and Hawthorne a year later. 
The philosophy of the one, with its inspiring, 
prophetic note, and the romances of the other, 
with their perfect artistry, made it apparent 
that the formative period of American litera¬ 
ture was over. Prescott, Motley and Parkman 
proved that the United States could not only 
make history, but write it, and they left a 
worthy tradition of historic writing which later 
writers, such as Fiske, Roosevelt and Wilson, 
have worthily supported. 

Contemporary with Emerson and Haw¬ 
thorne, but claimed by a later period because 
they lived longer, were Oliver Wendell Holmes 
and James Russell Lowell. Both wrote poetry, 
and Lowell especially is known for that rather 
than for his prose works, but his essaj^s marked 
an epoch in the history of criticism in Amer¬ 
ica. Holmes’s Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 
with its delightfully-intimate but scholarly 
style, ranks as one of the classics of literature. 
A charming example of Holmes’s clever way 
of treating his material is the following: 

When we are as yet small children, long be¬ 
fore the time when those two grown ladies offer 
us the choice of Hercules, there comes to us a 
youthful angel, holding in his right hand cubes 
like dice, and in his left spheres like marbles. 
The cubes are of stainless ivory, and on each is 
written in letters of gold— Truth. The spheres 
are veined and streaked and spotted beneath, with 
a dark crimson flush above where the light falls 
on them, and in a certain aspect you can make 
out upon every one of them the three letters, 
L, I, E. 


The child to whom they are offered very prob¬ 
ably clutches at both. The spheres are the most 
convenient things in the world ; they roll with the 
least possible impulse just where the child would 
have them. The cubes will not roll at all; they 
have a great talent for standing still, and always 
keep right side up. But very soon the young 
philosopher finds that things which roll so easily 
are very apt to roll into the wrong corner, and 
to get out of his way when he most wants them, 
while he always knows where to find the others, 
which stay where they are left. 

Of later prose writers, many have attained 
distinction, especially in the field of fiction. 
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Howells, Mary E. Wil¬ 
kins Freeman, Henry James, , Silas Weir 
Mitchell, Bret Harte, Edward Eggleston—each 
name stands for something distinctive in 
American literature. It is impossible to think 
of Mrs. Stowe, for instance, without connect¬ 
ing her with her epoch-making Uncle Tom’s 
Cabin; of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman without 
calling up pictures, wonderfully clear but none 
too cheerful, of New England life; of Edward 
Eggleston without associating him with pic¬ 
turesque pioneer days in Indiana. A novelist, 
too, was Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), but 
his humor was so distinctive and distinguish¬ 
ing a characteristic that his genuine story¬ 
telling power has not always been appreciated 
by all Americans. 

More recently, there has been an ever- 
expanding list. The drama may flourish or 
languish, poetry go unheard, essays gather 
dust, but the stream of fiction flows on. To 
name but a few of the outstanding figures, 
there have been Joel Chandler Harris, Frank 
Norris, James Lane Allen, Edith Wharton, 
George W. Cable, Anthony Hope Hawkins, 
Margaret Deland, Booth Tarkington, Gertrude 
Atherton, Winston Churchill and Robert Her¬ 
rick. In the article Novel there is given a list 
of the fiction-writers treated in these volumes, 
and that index includes not merely those 
named above, but numerous others. 

Poets. Those New England contempora¬ 
ries, Holmes, Emerson and Lowell, who pro¬ 
duced some of the finest of American prose, 
formed with Longfellow and Whittier the most 
distinguished group of poets the United States 
has yet seen. Critics may declare that some 
of these were popular poets rather than great 
poets, but criticism cannot loosen the firm 
hold which they have on the affections of 
their readers. Longfellow’s Hiawatha stands 
to thousands as the supreme epic of America, 
and the schoolboy never ceases to thrill at 
hearing how— 


AMERICAN LITERATURE 


230 


AMERICAN LITERATURE 


Forth upon the Gitche Gurnee, 

Of the shining Big-Sea-Water, 

With his fishing-line of cedar, 

Of the twisted bark of cedar, 

Forth to catch the sturgeon Nahma, 
Mishe-Nahma, King of Fishes, 

In his birch-canoe exulting, 

All alone went Hiawatha; 

while every returning winter makes new and 
fresh the charm of Whittier’s Snowbound: 

Unwarmed by any sunset light 
The gray day darkened into night, 

A night made hoary with the swarm 
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, 

As zigzag, wavering to and fro, 

Crossed and recrossed the winged snow: 

And ere the early bedtime came 

The white drift piled the window-frame, 

And through the glass the clothes-line posts 
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts. 

Whitman and Lanier, two other poets, one 
representing New York and one the South, it 
is interesting to contrast. Lanier said of 
Whitman that he was “poetry’s butcher,” who 
gives us “huge, raw collops slashed from the 
rump of poetry”; and it is not difficult to under¬ 
stand the aversion which the writer of exqui¬ 
site music felt for the other’s rough-hewn 
measures. Contrast Whitman’s— 

Creeds and schools in abeyance, 

Retiring back awhile sufficed at what they are, 
but never forgotten, 

I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at 
every hazard, 

Nature without check with original energy. 

with Lanier’s— 

Out of the hills of Habersham, 

Down the valleys of Hall, 

I hurry amain to reach the plain, 

Run the rapid and leap the fall, 

Split at the rock and together again, 

Accept my bed, or narrow or wide, 

And flee from folly on every side 
With a lover’s pain to attain the plain 
Far from the hills of Habersham, 

Far from the valleys of Hall. 

i 

Poe and Lanier are the most conspicuous 
poetic geniuses the South has produced, but 
a number of others have done very creditable 
work. Noteworthy among these are Paul 
Hamilton Hayne, William Gilmore Simms and 
Henry Timrod, all of whom have places in 
any anthology which attempts to include what 
is most representative in American poetrjb 
In recent years Eugene Field and James 
Whitcomb Riley have made a special appeal 
to the popular heart. Differing in many ways, 
they were alike in this, that they knew how 
to find the poetry, the tenderness, in every¬ 


day things and how to treat of them so simply 
that the man who cares little or nothing for 
other poetry finds heartfelt pleasure in theirs. 
Field is especially the poet of children—his 
lullabies have a sw r aying motion, his “real boy” 
poems a swing and “go” that make them 
favorites everywhere. Sometimes the touch 
of pathos is strong, as in Little Boy Blue: 

The little toy dog is covered with dust, 

But sturdy and stanch he stands ; 

And the little toy soldier is red with rust, 

And his musket moulds in his hands. 

Time was when the little toy dog was new, 

And the soldier was passing fair ; 

And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue 
Kissed them and put them there. 

But more often he sings of happy children, 
like the very real little boy who declares that 

I’d like to be a cowboy, and ride a fiery horse 
’Way out into the big an’ boundin’ west; 

I’d kill the bears an’ catymounts and wolves I 
came across, 

An’ I’d pluck the bald-head eagle from his nest. 
With my pistol by my side I’d roam the prairies 
wide, 

An’ to scalp the savage Injine in his wigwam 
would I ride— 

If I durst—but I dursn’t! 

Riley treats with kindly sentiment all phases 
of the Indiana life he knows so well, using 
frequently the Hoosier “dialect,” as in 

Little Orphant Annie’s come to our house to 
stay, 

An’ wash the cups an’ saucers up, and brush the 
crumbs away, 

An’ shoo the chickens off the porch, an’ dust the 
hearth, an’ sweep, 

An’ make the fire, an’ bake the bread, an’ earn 
her board-an’-keep; 

An’ all us other children, w r hen the supper things 
is done, 

We set around the kitchen fire an’ has the 
mostest fun 

A-list’nin’ to the witch-tales ’at Annie tells 
about, 

An’ the Gobble-uns ’at gits you 
Ef you 
Don’t 
Watch 
Out! 

It is possible at almost any time to pick 
up a literary magazine and find discussion as 
to whether or not poetry is on the decline, but 
in general a more optimistic note appears in 
these than was noticeable a few years ago. 
Recent years have produced no great poets— 
some critics believe that the world will never 
again see a Shelley or a Wordsworth; but 
there have been many whose true inspiration 
cannot be denied, many who have “followed 


AMERICAN LITERATURE 


231 


AMERICAN LITERATURE 



A special article on each author named appears in its alphabetical place in these 
volumes. 

Frank R. Stockton. 1834-1902 
Rudder Grange 
The Lady or the Tiger? 

Silas Weir Mitchell. 1829-1914 
Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker 
Thomas Bailey Aldrich. 1837-1907 
Story of a Bad Boy 
J. G. Holland. 1819-1881 
Arthur Bonnicastle 
F. Marion Crawford. 1854-1909 
Saracinesca 
The Heart of Rome 
Edward Eggleston. 1837-1902 
The Hoosier Schoolmaster 
Helen Hunt Jackson. 1831-1885 
Ramona 

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward. 1844- 
1911 

The Gates Ajar 

Joel Chandler Harris. 18 48-1908 
Nights with Uncle Remus 
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. 1862- 
The Portion of Labor 
James Lane Allen. 1849- 
The Choir Invisible 
George Washington Cable. 1844- 
Old Creole Days 
Lew Wallace. 1827-1905 
Ben Hur 

Opie P. Read. 1852- 
The Jucklins 

Cyrus Townsend Brady. 1861- 
The Island of Regeneration 
Stephen Crane. 1870-1900 
The Red Badge of Courage 
F. Hopkinson Smith. 1838-1915 
Caleb West: Master Diver 
Edith Wharton. 1862- 
The House of Mirth 
Stewart Edward White. 1873- 
The Blazed Trail 

Mary Elizabeth Dodge. 1838-1905 
Hans Brinker 
Henry Van Dyke. 1852- 
The Blue Flower 

Newton Booth Tarkington. 1869- 
The Gentleman from Indiana 
John Townsend Trowbridge. 1827-1916 
Cudjo’s Cave 

Winston Churchill. 1871- 
The Crisis 

Margaretta W. C. Deland. 1857- 
The Iron Woman 

Richard Harding Davis. 1864-1916 
Soldiers of Fortune 


I. EARLY PERIOD 

Poets and Their Chief Works 

Anne Bradstreet. 1612-1672 

Several Poems Compiled with Great 
Variety of Wit and Learning 
Philip Freneau. 1752-1832 
The Home of Night 
Francis Scott Key. 1780-1843 
The Star-Spangled Banner 

Prose Writers and Their Chief 
Works 

Cotton Mather. 1663-1728 
Magnolia 

Jonathan Edwards. 1703-1757 
Freedom of the Will 
Benjamin Franklin. 1706-1790 
Autobiography 

Thomas Jefferson. 1743-1826 
Declaration of Independence 
Alexander Hamilton. 1757-1804 
Federalist papers 
John Jay. 1745-1829 
Federalist papers 
James Madison. 1751-1836 
Federalist papers 

II. NATIONAL PERIOD 
Novelists 

James Fenimore Cooper. 1789-1851 
“Leather Stocking” Tales 
The Spy 

Nathaniel Hawthorne. 1804-1864 
The Scarlet Letter 
The House of the Seven Gables 
Harriet Beecher Stowe. 1811-1896. 
Uncle Tom’s Cabin 
Dred 

Bret Harte. 1839-1902 

The Luck of Roaring Camp 
Tennessee’s Partner 
Louisa M. Alcott. 1832-1888 
Little Women 
An Old-Fashioned Girl 
Samuel L. Clemens. 1835-1910 
Innocents Abroad 
Tom Sawyer 

William Dean Howells. 1837- 
A Modern Instance 
The Rise of Silas Lapham 
Henry James. 1834-1916 
The Portrait of a Lady 
Daisy Miller 































AMERICAN LITERATURE 


232 


AMERICAN LITERATURE 



An Outline on American Literature—Continued 


Gertrude Atherton. 1857- 
The Conqueror 
Mary Johnston. 1870- 
The Long Roll 
Hamlin Garland. 1860- 
Victor Olnee’s Disciples 
Thomas Nelson Page. 1853- 
Marsh Chan 
Thomas Dixon. 1864- 
The Clansman 

Paul Leicester Ford. 1865-1902 
The Honorable Peter Sterling 
Mary Plallock Foote. 1847- 
The Led Horse Claim 
Mary N. Murfree. 1850- 
The Story of Duciehurst 
Kate Douglas Wiggin Riggs. 1859- 
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm 
Alice Hegan Rice. 1870- 

Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch 
Gouverneur Morris. 1876- 
The Voice in the Rice 
Owen Wister. 1860- 
Tlie Virginian 
John Fox, Jr. 1863- 

The Little Shepherd of Kingdom 
Come 

Jack London. 1876- 
The Call of the Wild 
Josephine Daskam Bacon. 1876- 
Memoirs of a Baby 
Meredith Nicholson. 1866- 
A Hoosier Chronicle 
George Horace Lorimer. 1868- 

Letters from a Self-Made Merchant 
to His Son 

George Barr McCutcheon. 1866- 
Graustark 

Anna Katharine Green Rohlfs. 1846- 
The Leavenworth Case 
Adeline Dutton Train Whitney. 1824- 
1906 

We Girls 

Irving Bacheller. 1859- 
Eben Holden 
Upton Sinclair. 1878- 
The Jungle 

Clara Louise Burnham. 

The Opened Shutters 
Kirk Munroe. 1850- 
The Flamingo Feather 
George Alfred Henty. 1832-1902 
By Pike and Dyke 
Ralph Henry Barbour. 1870- 
Partners Three 
Oliver Optic. 1822-1897 
Young America Abroad 
Rex Beach. 1877- 
Heart of the Simset 
Robert Herrick. 1868- 
Together 


James Maurice Thompson. 1844-1901 
Alice of Old Vincennes 
Mary Roberts Rinehart. 1876- 
The Street of Seven Stars 

Critics 

Horace Howard Furness. 1833-1912 
Variorum Shakespeare 
James Russell Lowell. 1819-1891 
Among My Books 
Brander Matthews. 1852- 
Studies of the Stage 
Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 1810-1850 
Papers on Literature and Art 
Edmund Clarence Stedman. 1833-1908 
Victorian Poets 
William Winter. 1836- 
Sliadoivs of the Stage 

Dramatists 

George Ade. 18 66- 

The County Chairman 
David Belasco. 1862- 
Tlie Darling of the Gods 
John Augustin Daly. 1838-1899 
The Last Word 
Clyde Fitch. 1865-1909 
Nathan Hale 
Percy Mackaye. 1875- 
Sanctuary 

William Vaughn Moody. 1869-1910 
The Great Divide 
Augustus Thomas. 1859- 
The Witching Hour 

Essayists 

Ralph W T aldo Emerson. 1803-1882 
The Conduct of Life 
Washington Irving. 1783-1859 
The Sketch Book 

Plenry David Thoreau. 1817-1862 
Walden 

Oliver Wendell Holmes. 1809-1894 
Autocrat of the Breakfast Table 
Hamilton Wright Mabie. 1846- 
In the Forest of Arden 

Historians 

George Bancroft 1800-1891 

The United States of North America 
Hubert Howe Bancroft, 1832- 
History of the Pacific States 
John Fiske. 1842-1901 

The Critical Period in American His¬ 
tory 

Albert Bushnell Hart. 1854- 

Guide to the Study of American His¬ 
tory 

Henry Cabot Lodge. 1850- 

Hero Tales from American History 






















AMERICAN LITERATURE 


233 


AMERICAN LITERATURE 


An Outline on American Literature—Continued 


John L. Motley. 1814-1877 

The Rise of the Dutch Republic 
Francis Parkman. 1823-1893 

France and England in North Amer¬ 
ica 

William H. Precsott. 1796-1859 
Conquest of Mexico. 

Theodore Roosevelt. 1858- 

Theodore Roosevelt, an Autobiog¬ 
raphy 

Woodrow Wilson. 1856- 

A History of the American People 

Poets 

William Cullen Bryant. 1794-1878 
Thanatopsis 

Edgar Allan Poe. 1809-1849 
The Raven 

Henry Wadsworth Longfelow. 1807- 
1882 

Hiawatha 

John Greenleaf Whittier. 1807-1892 
Snowbound 

James Russell Lowell. 1819-1891 
The Vision of Sir Launfal 
Ralph Waldo Emerson. 1803-1882 
The Sphinx 

Oliver Wendell Holmes. 1809-1894 
The Chambered Nautilus 
Walt Whitman. 1819-1892 
Leaves of Grass 

Nathaniel Parker Willis. 1806-1867 
The Death of Absalom 
Fitz-Greene Halleck. 1790-1867 
Marco Bozzarris 

Samuel Francis Smith. 1809-1895 
My Country, ’Tis of Thee 
Alice Cary. 1820-1871 
Lyrics and Hymns 
Phoebe Cary. 1824-1871 

One Sweetly Solemn Thought 
Thomas Buchanan Read. 1822-1872 
Sheridan's Ride 
Lucy Larcom 1826-1893 
Hannah Binding Shoes 
Will Carleton. 1845-1912 
Betsy and I Are Out 
Eugene Field. 1850-1895 
With Trumpet and Drum 
James Whitcomb Riley. 1853-1916 
Rhymes of Childhood 
The Lockerbie Book 
Abram Joseph Ryan. 1839-1886 
The Conquered Banner 
Julia Ward Howe. 1819-1910 
Battle Hymn of the Repxiblic 
Cincinnatus Heine Miller. 1841-1913 
Songs of the Sierras 
Edwin Markham. 1852- 
Tlie Man with the Hoe 


Henry Van Dyke. 1852- 
Tlie Builders 

William Vaughn Moody. 1869-1910 
Gloucester Moors 

Richard Watson Gilder. 1844-1909 
Five Books of Song 
Edmund Clarence Stedman. 1833-1908 
Pan in Wall Street 
Paul Lawrence Dunbar. 1872-1906 
Candle-Liglitin’ Time 
John Godfrey Saxe. 1816-1887 
Fables and Legends 
Frank L. Stanton. 1857- 
Songs of the Soil 
Edgar Lee Masters. 1868- 
Spoon River Anthology 
William Orlando Butler. 1793-1880 
The Boatman's Horn 
William Gilmore Simms. 1806-1870 
Marion, “The Swamp Fox” 

Paul Hamilton Hayne. 1830-1886 
In the Wheat-Field 
Samuel Minturn Peck. 1854- 
The Grapevine Swing 
Madison Cawein. 1865-1915 
Kentucky Poems 
Robert Loveman. 1864- 
It isn’t raining rain to me 

Miscellaneous Writers 

Thomas Paine. 1737-1809 
Age of Reason 
Jared Sparks. 1789-1866 
Life of Benjamin Franklin 
Donald G. Mitchell. 1822-1908 
Reveries of a Bachelor 
Edward Everett Hale. 1823-1909 
The Man without a Country 
George William Curtis. 1824-1892 
Prue and I 

Bayard Taylor. 1825-1878 
The Lands of the Saracen 
Charles Francis Adams. 1835-1915 
Railroads , Their Origin and Problems 
Henry Elisha Scudder. 1838-1902 
James Russell Lowell 
Hezekiah Butterworth. 1839-1905 
Zigzag Journeys 

Henry Woodfin Grady. 1851-1889 
The New South 
Nathan Haskell Dole. 1852- 
Omar, the Tent-Maker 
Frank G. Carpenter. 1855- 
Geography Readers 
Ida M. Tarbell. 1857- 

History of the Standard Oil Company 
Life of Abraham Lincoln 
Elbert Hubbard. 1859-1915 
Little Journeys series 
Harry Stillwell Edwards. 1855- 
Sons and Fathers 




























AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 


234 


AMESBURY 


the gleam” with singleness of purpose and 
have written poems that will live. Among 
the older poets may be mentioned Joaquin 
Miller, Edwin Markham, Edward Rowland Sill, 
Thomas Bailey Aldrich and Richard Watson 
Gilder, while more recently William Vaughn 
Moody, Madison Cawein, Percy Mackaye and 
Edgar Lee Masters have won numerous 
admirers. 

The last-named is representative of an inter¬ 
esting tendency in modern poetry. The old 
stanza, meter and rhyme, declare many of 
the present-day writers, hamper genius and 
make real poetic freedom impossible; and 
they adopt therefore a new form—or absence 
of form—which they call free verse. Not only 
does it refuse to be bound by restraints of 
meter, but it insists that all subjects are alike 
poetic, and that the true artist may see as 
much beauty in a display of red shoes in a 
window as in a riot of red roses in a garden. 
Their idea is not entirely new—Whitman was 
the strong advocate of just such a theory; but 
the new poets are not exactly followers of 
Whitman. One of the strongest of these free- 
verse writers is undoubtedly Edgar Lee Mas¬ 
ters, whose Spoon River Anthology was one 
of the most discussed books of its year. 

The above discussion has of necessity been 
of the most general sort, for it is intended to 
serve merely as a basis for more extended 
study. Each author here mentioned is given 
full discussion in these volumes under his own 
name, while the articles on Essay, Novel, 
Poetry, Drama and History contain informa¬ 
tion and index lists which should be used in 
connection with this study. See Literature, 
sub-title Literature for Children, or, Directing 
Children’s Reading. a.mc c. 

Consult Bates’s American Literature; Haw¬ 
thorne and Lemmon’s American Literature; 
Matthews’ An Introduction to the Study of Amer¬ 
ican Literature; Trent’s Southern Writers. 

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY, an educational 
institution of university rank opened at Wash¬ 
ington, D. C., in 1914, under the auspices of 
the Methodist Episcopal Church. The first 
charter for the university was granted under 
the government of the District of Columbia 
in 1891. The plans for the institution included 
fellowships for graduate study, lectureships in 
Washington on matters of vital interest, and 
in other educational centers under the direc¬ 
tion of the university, and the publication of 
important lectures and theses; all of these 
features were inaugurated during the first year 
of actual work, ending in May, 1915, A cam¬ 


pus of ninety-two acres, overlooking the city 
of Washington and nearby districts in Mary¬ 
land and Virginia, affords an attractive site, 
and buildings are being erected as funds are 
available. The total university holdings are 
valued at about $2,225,000. A college publi¬ 
cation, called The University Courier, is issued 
every three months. The university is national 
in scope, and on its board of trustees are 
prominent men from various parts of the 
United States. 

AMERICUS VESPUCIUS, a mer' i kus 

vespu' shus. See Vespucius, Americus. 

AMERICUS, a mer' i kus, Ga., the county 
seat of Sumter County is in the southwestern 
part of the state, seventy-one miles southwest 
of Macon and sixty-four miles southeast of 
Columbus. It is at the junction of the Sea¬ 
board Air Line (with shops here), and the 
Central of Georgia railroads. The area is 
nearly five square miles. In 1910 the popu¬ 
lation was 8,063; in 1914 it was 8,227. 

Settled in 1832, Americus was first chartered 
as a city in 1855 and rechartered in 1889. It 
is the seat of the State Agricultural College 
and has a Y. M. C. A. building and Carnegie 
Library. It is in a productive agricultural 
section; the principal crops are cotton, sugar 
cane, corn, pecans and fruit. The city has 
cotton-seed oil mills, fertilizer mills, lumber 
mills, chemical works, iron foundry, and man¬ 
ufactures carriages, wagons and harness. It 
is an important horse and mule, and cotton 
market. e.h.h. 

AMESBURY, amz' her i, Mass., an old city 
in the extreme northeastern part of the state, 
which bears the distinction of being ‘The only 
Amesbury in the United States.” It was 
founded in 1600, was incorporated as a city 
in 1666, and was named for Amesbury, an 
English town. Most of the inhabitants are 
American, and their number was 9,894 in 1910; 
the state census of 1915 showed a slight de¬ 
crease to 8,543. The area is about thirteen 
square miles. 

Amesbury is situated in Essex County, on 
the Merrimac River, about five miles from the 
sea. Boston is forty-three miles, and Law¬ 
rence eighteen miles southwest. The Boston 
& Maine Railroad, constructed to this point 
in 1852, affords good railway transportation; 
with thirteen daily trains, trolley lines extend 
to towns in all directions and to the popular 
beaches and summer resorts in the vicinity. 
An important industry is the manufacture of 
automobile bodies and accessories; other 


AMETHYST 


235 


AMHERSTBURG 


prosperous enterprises include the manufac¬ 
ture of shoes, hats, rattan goods and carriages. 
Dories, power-launches and skiffs have been 
built at Amesbury since 1805. 

Amesbury was the home of the poet Whit¬ 
tier from 1836 until his death, and some of his 
later works describe the surrounding country. 
Whittier Park (thirty acres), named in his 
honor, is one of the recreation spots of the 
city. Amesbury is also noted as being the 
birthplace of Josiah Bartlett, one of the sign¬ 
ers of the Declaration of Independence, r.w.b. 

AMETHYST, am' e thist, a semi-precious 
stone of a beautiful violet or purple color, 
given its name (which means without wine) 
by the Greeks because they believed that it 
was a sure protection against the evil effects 
of strong drink. It is a variety of quartz, 
which usually occurs in crystals, and the col¬ 
oring is supposed to be due to manganese. 
Amethyst occurs in Siberia, India and Ceylon, 
and in the United States it is found in large 
quantities and of excellent quality around 
Thunder Bay on Lake Superior. The oriental 
amethyst, a beautiful and costly gem, is a 
variety of corundum. Because it makes the 
skin look white, amethyst is a popular stone 
for rings and for necklaces, the dark purple 
varieties being especially sought after. 

AMHERST, am' erst, Jeffrey, Baron (1717- 
1797), an English soldier, whose victories over 
the French at Crown Point, Ticonderoga and 
Montreal in 1759 and 1760 won Canada for 
Great Britain. He entered the army in 1731 
and served in various European campaigns 
until Pitt promoted him from lieutenant- 
colonel to major-general in 1758, and gave him 
the command of the expedition against Louis- 
burg, which surrendered after a short siege. 
In September, 1758, he became commander- 
in-chief of the British forces in America, and 
in the next year led his army to victory at 
Crown Point and Ticonderoga. For his serv¬ 
ices in winning Canada for Great Britain he 
was made Governor-General and was formally 
thanked by Parliament. After his return to 
England in 1763 he held a number of impor¬ 
tant offices, including that of absentee gov¬ 
ernor of Virginia from 1763 to 1768. From 
1772 to 1795, with the exception of a single 
year, he acted as commander-in-chief of the 
British army. He was raised to the peerage 
in 1776 and was made field marshal in 1796. 

AMHERST, am' erst, N. S., the county town 
of Cumberland, at the head of Chignecto Bay, 
an arm of the Bay of Fundy. Situated on the 


Intercolonial Railway at the narrowest point 
on the isthmus which connects the Nova 
Scotia peninsula with the mainland, it has 
naturally become an important center of trade 
and manufactures, and is the largest town in 
the western part of the province. It is 138 
miles by rail north of Halifax, and ninety-five 
miles northeast of Saint John, N. B. Popula¬ 
tion in 1911, 8,973; in 1916, estimated, 10,200. 

Industrially Amherst is of great importance. 
The neighborhood supplies coal, lumber and 
agricultural produce in large amounts, and also 
some gypsum. Boots and shoes, woolen goods, 
cars, malleable iron, engines and boilers, leather 
and wood products, including trunks, pianos, 
caskets and carriages, are the principal manu¬ 
factures. 

AMHERST, am' erst, COLLEGE, at Am¬ 
herst, Mass., one of the foremost of the smaller 
colleges in the United States. Though its 
faculty numbers only about fifty-five and its 
student body averages 500 to 550, its high 
standards are conspicuous, and from its foun¬ 
dation it has consistently aimed to be a small 
college of the best type. Fraternities play an 
important part in the student life, practically 
every undergraduate being a member of a 
fraternity. 

During its early years Amherst had a hard 
struggle for existence, but the college is singu¬ 
larly fortunate in its location. The town of 
Amherst, twenty-three miles north of Spring- 
field, lies in the beautiful Connecticut Valley, 
within sight of Mount Holyoke. Here the 
earnest Presbyterians and Congregationalists 
of western Massachusetts founded an academy 
in 1815, six years later changing it to a college. 
Here also is the State Agricultural College, 
opened in 1867, and not far away are Smith 
College and Mount Holyoke College. Popu¬ 
lation of the town in 1910, 5,112. 

AMHERSTBURG, am' erst burg, Ont., pop¬ 
ularly called “The Burg,” a town in Essex 
County, on the eastern bank of the Detroit 
River, seventeen miles south of Windsor and 
eighteen miles south of Detroit. It has steam¬ 
ship and rail (Michigan Central) connection 
with both cities, and is also the terminus of 
an electric railway running from Windsor 
through Sandwich, the county town. It is the 
center of a prosperous agricultural section 
noted for its production of corn, tobacco, 
fruits and hogs, and there are limestone quar¬ 
ries a short distance from the town. A grist 
mill, knitting factory and several lumber yards 
are noteworthy. Amherstburg, one of the old- 


AMIENS 


236 


AMMONIA 


est settlements in Ontario, was founded in 
1781, and was named in honor of Baron Jef¬ 
frey Amherst (which see), then commander- 
in-chief of the British army. Population in 
1911, 2,560. j.j.a. 

AMIENS, ah' myaN' , a city of France, cap¬ 
ital of the department of Somme, situated on 
the Somme River, eighty-one miles north of 
Paris. Peter the Hermit, who set Europe 
aflame with the spirit which led to the Cru¬ 
sades, was born here. The most noted build¬ 
ing is the cathedral, the largest ecclesiastical 
structure in France, with a spire 360 feet high, 
and considered one of the finest examples of 
Gothic architecture in Europe. It was begun 
in 1220 and required nearly seventy years for 
completion. Fortunately it escaped injury by 
bombardment in the great War of the Nations, 
which began in 1914. It was captured without 
damage by the Germans within a month of 
the beginning of the war, but evacuated by 
them thirteen days later. The city is well 
built, with wide, clean streets and several fine 
squares. It is provided with many educational 
institutions and has a municipal library con¬ 
taining over 100,000 volumes and many valu¬ 
able manuscripts. The manufactures include 
linen, woolen and silk goods, plush and shoes. 
Population in 1911, 93,207. 

AMMON, am' on, the national god of the 



The greatest present-day value of this example 
of old Egyptian art is in the idea it conveys of 
ancient dress and peculiar square-lined figures, 
doubtless a survival of older rock carving. 

ancient Egyptians, identified by the Greeks 
with their supreme god Zeus. In later times he 


was called Ammon-Re, meaning Ammon the 
Sun. At first his seat of worship was Thebes, 
the No-Ammon (City of Ammon) of the Old 
Testament. After his worship became national 
a celebrated temple was erected to him in the 
Libyan Desert. In statues Ammon is generally 
represented in human form, wearing a head¬ 
dress from which two immense feathers rise. 
The ram was sacred to him. The goddess Mut 
was his wife. 

AMMONIA, a mo' nia, a colorless gas which 
dissolves so readily in water that it is almost 
always used in its liquid form, known as 
aqueous ammonia or spirits of hartshorn. This 
latter name, the oldest one, it received because 
it was long ago made by heating in a closed 
vessel the horns of stags or harts. Many de¬ 
caying animal substances give off ammonia 
gas, and at such places as stockyards much of 
the refuse matter, as bones, hoofs and horns, 
is used in making ammonia. In Scotland it is 
obtained as a by-product in making petroleum 
from oil shale. By far the larger quantity, 
however, is obtained as a by-product in the 
making of gas from coal. Ammonia has quali¬ 
ties which readily distinguish it from other 
gases. First, there is its sharp, stinging odor; 
a strong inhalation will bring tears to the eyes. 
Then too, it is an alkali (which see), and as 
such has a decided value in restoring color to 
fabrics which have acids spilled on them. For 
this purpose it has the great advantage over 
the alkalies in that if more is put on than is 
necessary to neutralize the acid, the excess of 
ammonia will quickly pass into the air. 

The uses of ammonia are many and im¬ 
portant. Combined with various acids it forms 
salts which are of value for many purposes, 
while in its free form it is used in the manu¬ 
facture of artificial ice (see below) and of soda. 
Aqueous ammonia is used in the household. 
Ammonia contains the elements nitrogen and 
hydrogen. The former makes it of value to the 
soil, and it is therefore employed as a fertilizer, 
generally as sulphate of ammonia. Ammonium 
nitrate, or nitrate of ammonia, is extensively 
used in the manufacture of explosives. Am¬ 
monia chloride, or sal ammonia, is used in cal¬ 
ico dyeing and in cleaning metals before sol¬ 
dering or galvanizing. It is also used in some 
types of electric batteries. When reduced to a 
temperature 'of —34° C. ammonia becomes a 
liquid instead of a gas, and in turning back to 
a gas again it absorbs from the air or any 
other substances about it a great deal of heat. 
For this reason it is of the greatest importance 







































AMMUNITION 


237 


AMMUNITION 


in the business of cold storage and in the 
making of ice. See Ice, subhead Artificial Ice. 

As already noted, ammonia is a compound 
of nitrogen with hydrogen. Nitrogen is the 
most abundant constituent of the air. It is not 
very difficult to separate atmospheric nitrogen 
from oxygen, the other chief constituent. Hy¬ 
drogen also can be made without much expense. 
Recently it has been found possible to com¬ 
bine the elements nitrogen and hydrogen to 
form ammonia. This is done by mixing the 
two gases, one volume of nitrogen to three 
of hydrogen, putting on a very high pressure 
and heating almost to redness. This process 
is called the sjmthesis of ammonia—synthesis 
meaning putting together. j.f.s. 

AMMUNITION, amyu'nishun, a compre¬ 
hensive term used to describe all that is neces¬ 
sary for firing guns of all sizes. Armies in the 
field are supplied with what is called fixed 
ammunition for use with machine guns, small 
cannon, rifles, carbines, revolvers and pistols. 
This ammunition consists of a cartridge made 
of drawn brass with a charge of some explosive 
and a bullet or shell. Being in one piece, it is 
easily handled and rapid fire can be maintained. 
Field artillery firing shells of more than 4-inch 
caliber is supplied with ammunition in which 
the explosive propellant and the shell are 
loaded separately. A modern howitzer fires a 
shell weighing as much as 2,800 pounds, and 
special mechanical contrivances are necessary 
to hoist the shell into the breech of the gun. 
The powder is loaded separately, in cloth bags 
which are placed in a brass cartridge, after the 
shell has been forced into place. Such big guns 
can fire not more than two shots per minute. 
Lighter artillery firing shells weighing twelve 
or eighteen pounds may discharge six or eight 
shells per minute. 

Explosives. There are a great number of ex¬ 
plosives used in ammunition, and though all 
are based on the same principles, no two armies 
use exactly the same formula. Lyddite, cord¬ 
ite, melinite and maximite are among the most 
powerful used, and, so keen is the desire among 
nations to possess the most deadly destroyer, 
constant improvements are being made and 
fresh discoveries announced. All shells of more 
than one pound in weight fired from big guns 
are explosive. Each shell contains a charge of 
powder which causes the shell to burst, by 
means of a time fuse, at a certain distance from 
the gun, or on striking any object in its flight. 
In the War of the Nations a very high percent¬ 
age of wounds was inflicted by “shrapnel” shell, 


the most destructive form of projectile yet in¬ 
vented. It consists of a metal base, containing 
a charge of powder, and from 350 to 700 bullets, 
according to its size. The shell is burst by 
the charge and the bullets are released, plung¬ 
ing forward and spreading with terrific force. 

Modern Bullets. The modern rifle bullet is 
made of a core of lead, covered with a coat 
of nickel or steel. It is oval in shape and has 
rather a sharp point. Each soldier in the field 
carries 100 cartridges, his store being replen¬ 
ished from ammunition carts which follow the 
troops into action. The effective range of mod¬ 
ern rifles is about 3,000 yards, or nearly two 
miles, while big guns will send a shell weighing 
considerably more than a ton a distance of 
from seventeen to twenty miles. In the War of 
the Nations the Germans possessed one style 
of great gun with a range of twenty-six miles. 
Cartridges of the highest type for shot guns 
are made of brass or paper and brass and 
loaded with a smokeless powder and a charge 
of pellets or shot varying in size according 
to the game to be hunted. Cartridges for sport¬ 
ing rifles are similar to those used by the mili¬ 
tary, but the bullet is usually heavier in order 
to kill big game. 

Naval Ammunition. Ammunition used in 
naval warfare differs from that used on land in 
that the object aimed at is the destruction of 
ships rather than men. The shells fired are 
therefore designed to pierce the armor of the 
vessel and sink or disable it. Naval guns of 
12- and 15-inch caliber are used by big vessels, 
firing shells with hardened steel points. The 
effective range for such shells is as great as 
eight to ten miles. The War of the Nations 
brought into greater prominence than ever be¬ 
fore in the history of the world the destructive 
value of the torpedo, a cigar-shaped cylinder 
containing a charge of powerful explosive 
which is discharged by percussion on coming 
in contact with a vessel (see Torpedo). 

There have been many international con¬ 
ferences concerning ammunition that may or 
may not be used in warfare. A certain amount 
of humanity may be exercised even in war, 
and it is generally considered that it is not 
necessary to mutilate men in order to put them 
out of a fight. Hence the use of expansive bul¬ 
lets, called dum-dum bullets, which flatten on 
impact and inflict a terrible wound, has been 
universally condemned. Supplying modern ar¬ 
mies with ammunition is one of the greatest 
problems of war, for the expenditure of shells 
is enormous. The German armies before Lem- 


AMNESTY 


238 


AMPERE 


berg sent more than a quarter of a million 
shells into the Russian positions in twenty- 
four hours. l.r.g. 

The guns which demand the ammunition de¬ 
scribed above, from the rapid-firing machine 
guns to the terribly-destructive howitzers, are 
described under the title Artillery. 

AMNESTY, am'nesti, a term taken from 
the Greek word for forgetfulness, used in Eng¬ 
lish with much the same meaning, though in 
a very special sense which implies both for¬ 
giving and forgetting. When a number of peo¬ 
ple have taken part in wrong-doing against a 
government, and the government feels that 
they have been punished enough or should be 
spared punishment altogether, it proclaims an 
amnesty, or act of forgetfulness, which makes 
the wrong-doing as if it had never been. Some¬ 
times there are conditions attached which must 
be observed, but more often the pardon is 
free. Thus in 1863 President Lincoln issued a 
proclamation of amnesty, offering forgiveness 
to those who had been engaged in the War of 
Secession if they would swear to support the 
United States government; but in 1868 Presi¬ 
dent Johnson issued another proclamation, 
which pardoned all without making them take 
such an oath. 

AMOEBA, a me' ba, the name of an animal 
that belongs to the lowest division of the ani¬ 
mal kingdom, the Protozoa (which see). It is 
composed of only one cell and on this account 
it has been an interesting subject of study for 
men of science. It affords a splendid way of 
studjung the structure of the cell and some of 
the processes that go on in a living cell. For 
the same kind of cell structure is found also 
in higher animals. See Cell. 

The amoeba is very small, being only about 
one hundredth part of an inch in diameter, and 
can be seen only by the aid of a microscope. 



AMOEBAE 

It lies in shallow waters, either fresh or salt. 
It appears as a shapeless, naked mass of proto¬ 
plasm (which see), between whose particles 
are tiny spaces filled with water. In the center 


of it is a small brown mass which is a little 
denser and darker than the rest and which 
is the nucleus of the cell. 

When observed under the microscope an 
amoeba is seen to be constantly moving. The 
movement is accomplished in a peculiar way. 
It sends out in various parts of the body little 
finger-like projections called pseudopodia 
(which means false feet). It then pushes for¬ 
ward these projections in some parts of the 
body and retracts those in the opposite parts. 
Cells which have the peculiarity of moving in 
the same way are called amoeboid. Such cells 
are the white corpuscles in the blood of human 
beings. 

When an amoeba has reached a certain size 
it divides into two. This division starts first 
in the nucleus and then in the other mass of 
protoplasm, until it forms two amoebae. 

AMOY, amoi', one of the five Chinese ports 
thrown open to foreign commerce by a treaty 
between England and China in 1842. It is 
situated on the island of the same name, to the 
west of Formosa, at the mouth of the Kelung 
River. It has an excellent harbor and was for¬ 
merly the center of the tea trade of China. The 
tea that was sunk in Boston harbor in 1773 
came from Amoy, and all the tea grown in the 
island of Formosa was sent there for reship¬ 
ment until the harbor of Kelung assumed im¬ 
portance. Considerable commerce is still car¬ 
ried on, however, the principal imports being 
opium, cotton, indigo and grain; the chief ex¬ 
ports, tea, camphor, sugar, paper and earthen¬ 
ware. The business section is well built with 
good docks, warehouses and office buildings, but 
the native quarter is squalid and unhealthful. 
Flourishing mission stations have long been 
maintained in Amoy, where the animosity 
against the “foreign devils,” as all Europeans 
are called, is not so strong as in the interior of 
the country. 

In the seventeenth century the Portuguese 
traded considerably with Amoy, but they were 
driven out on account of cruelty and debauch¬ 
ery. The British captured the town in 1841 and 
compelled the Chinese to grant trading facili¬ 
ties. Population in 1911, about 114,000, of 
whom only 300 were Europeans. 

AMPERE, ampehr', the unit of strength or 
intensity of an electric current. An electric 
current is frequently compared to a current of 
water, but there is one important difference. 
Water can be measured in gallons, and the 
strength of its current can be actually seen as 
the water flows. Electricity, however, is in- 



AMPHIBIANS 


239 


AMSTERDAM 


visible, and the only way to measure it is by 
what it does. If a current of electricity is 
passed through a solution which contains a 
metal, the electricity decomposes the solution 
and deposits the metal as a solid. This process 
is electrolysis, and the unit of strength of the 
electric current is the ampere. A current with 
a strength of one ampere will deposit, under 
normal conditions, 0.001118 grammes of silver 
or 0.0003287 grammes of copper in one second. 
By Ohm’s Law the strength of a current is the 
initial force divided by the resistance it over¬ 
comes in doing its work; expressed in quanti¬ 
ties, amperes equal volts divided by ohms. 
Thus the ampere is the unit of any electric cur¬ 
rent, no matter for what purpose it may be 
used. The instrument for measuring the num¬ 
ber of amperes is really an ampere-meter, com¬ 
monly shortened to ammeter. It is really a 
form of galvanometer (see Galvanometer). 
The reader is advised to read the articles 
Electricity, Electrolysis and Ohm’s Law be¬ 
fore making any further attempt to study the 
details of this subject. 

The ampere is named in honor of Andre 
Marie Ampere (1775-1836), a great French 
physicist, who proved the identity of magnet¬ 
ism and electricity and investigated the sub¬ 
ject of electric currents. He first stated two 
simple laws which form the basis of modern 
electrical practice: (1) two parallel currents 
having the same direction attract each other; 
(2) two parallel currents having opposite di¬ 
rections repel each other. He also invented a 
form of needle which made possible the gal¬ 
vanometer. 

AMPHIBIANS, am fib' eanz, a group of 
creeping or leaping, cold-blooded animals which 
hatch from eggs and breathe at first by means 
of gills, and afterwards partly or wholly by 
means of lungs. Amphibian is from a Greek 
word meaning having a double life, and is 
given to these animals because they can live 
both on the land and in water. In all stages of 
growth, however, it is necessary that they have 
moisture. 

Amphibians are divided into two classes: 
the tailless, containing toads and frogs, and the 
tailed, containing newts and salamanders. The 
eggs are laid in fresh water streams and ponds, 
and the young are called tadpoles. Amphibians 
belong to that class of animals having a back¬ 
bone, the whole class being called vertebrates. 
This word means backboned animals. 

Related Topics. For a detailed description of 
the more important members of this order, as 


well as for illustrative material, consult the fol¬ 
lowing articles: 

Bullfrog Salamander 

Frog Tadpole 

Horned Toad Toad 

Mud Puppy Tree Frog 

Newt 

AMPUTATION, ampu ta' shun, in surgery, is 
the separation of a limb or other part from the 
body. If an arm or a leg is to be amputated 
the bone must first be laid bare by a deep cut 
in the flesh. This cut should be made in a slant¬ 
ing direction, so as to leave one or more flaps 
of flesh. The ends of the blood vessels must be 
tied, to prevent bleeding to death, and then 
when the bone has been sawed off the flaps may 
be held smoothly over the stump and stitched 
in place. Amputation is usually necessary in 
case of severe accidents or malignant growths, 
and always in case of gangrene poisoning. The 
advance of medical science, however, has made 
it possible in many cases to save a leg or arm 
which, under similar conditions a century ago, 
would have been removed without hesitation. 

Amputation, while recognized as a serious 
operation, is seldom dangerous to life. It has 
been practised from very early times, but al¬ 
most until our own days the percentage of 
deaths from bleeding or blood-poisoning was 
very large. It was in the seventeenth century 
that surgeons learned how to stop bleeding by 
the use of ligatures and tourniquets, but it was 
not until the nineteenth century that they 
learned how to prevent infection. See Sur¬ 
gery. 

AMSTERDAM, am' stur dam, the capital of 
Holland and one of the chief commercial cities 
of Europe, famous for its art treasures and as 
the center of the diamond cutting industry of 
the world. The name means the dam of the 
Anstel, the river which flows through the city. 
On account of the lowness of its site, the 
greater part is built on piles and it is divided 
into about ninety islands by numerous canals 
crossed by nearly 300 bridges. The harbor, 
formed by the Y or Ij, an arm of the Zuyder 
Zee, lies along the whole north side of the city 
and is surrounded by various docks and basins. 
A ship canal fifteen miles long and twenty-two 
to twenty-six feet deep connects the Y with the 
North Sea, and the city is joined to Helder, 
commanding the entrance to the Zuyder Zee, 
by the North Holland Canal, forty-six miles in 
length. 

Among the principal buildings in Amsterdam 
are the palace, originally built as a town hall, 
the Stadthuis, the Bourse, the Rijks Museum or 


AMSTERDAM 


240 


AMUNDSEN 


States Museum, and the New Church, in 
which the sovereigns of Holland are crowned. 
The palace belongs to the city, and when the 
Queen is in residence there, she is literally a 
guest of the city. In the States Museum is a 
wonderful collection of pictures by artists of 
the Flemish and Dutch schools, and there are 
several other collections of great value, making 
Amsterdam one of the great art centers of the 
world; it is particularly famous for its Rem¬ 
brandt’s, for it was here that the great painter 
lived. There are also many educational institu¬ 
tions, including two universities, colleges, hos¬ 
pitals and homes for the aged, poor, blind and 
infirm, supported chiefly by voluntary contribu¬ 
tions. 

The most important industry is diamond cut¬ 
ting, for which Amsterdam has been noted 
since the fifteenth century. Diamonds were in¬ 
troduced into Europe at a time when the 
Dutch controlled the oversea commerce of the 
world, and naturally found their way first to 
Amsterdam. In the Jewish quarter of the city 
the cutting industry sprang up and the su¬ 
premacy of its diamond cutters has never been 
disputed. Other industries include the manu¬ 
facture of tobacco, glass, soap, jewelry, linen, 
silk and machinery, but the city is of more im¬ 
portance as a trading than as a manufacturing 
center. During the days of Napoleon’s power 
the trade of Amsterdam suffered considerably 
from its forced alliance with France, but since 
the fall of the emperor it has steadily increased. 
Population, 1912, 587,876. 

AMSTERDAM, N. Y., a manufacturing city 
in the famed Mohawk Valley, in the eastern 
part of the state, about midway between its 
northern and southern borders. Troy and Al¬ 
bany are thirty-four miles southeast, and Utica 
is fifty-two miles northwest. It is situated in 
Madison County, on the Mohawk River and 
on the Erie Canal, and is served by the New 
York Central and West Shore railroads. Trol¬ 
ley lines afford communication with neighbor¬ 
ing towns. The population is largely Amer¬ 
ican; it was 31,627 in 1910; the local census of 
1914 showed an increase to 35,223. Amsterdam 
was known as Veedersburg from the time it 
was settled in 1778 until 1804, when the pres¬ 
ent name was adopted. It was incorporated as 
a village in 1830 and as a city in 1885. The 
area is nearly five and one-half square miles. 

Of the city’s varied products, carpets and 
rugs rank first, although its output of pearl 
buttons is claimed to be the largest in the 
world. There are also extensive manufactures 


of knit goods, wagon-springs, paper, silk and 
brooms. The annual output of the half hun¬ 
dred factories is $25,000,000. Amsterdam has 
a Children’s Home, a home for elderly women, 
an Elk’s Home and two hospitals. A good pub¬ 
lic school system, two business colleges, Saint 
Mary’s Catholic Institute and a Carnegie Li¬ 
brary supply the educational needs. Two large 
parks on the outskirts of the city provide 
recreation grounds. r.n.b. 

AM'ULET, an object usually of stone, metal 
or animal skin, with or without figures and 
words, and worn by superstitious people as a 
charm to ward off sickness, ill fortune, witch¬ 
craft, etc. Relics of the saints and herbs and 


(a) A medieval amulet. 

(b) The rabbit’s-foot amulet worn by many 
superstitious people. (See Superstition.) 

precious gems have also been used, and the 
Mohammedans use a tiny copy of the Koran, 
hung round the neck, as an amulet. The peo¬ 
ples of Asia have from ancient times believed 
in these charms, and still have great faith in 
their powers. The use of amulets was early 
forbidden by the Christian Church. See 
Talisman. 

AMUNDSEN, 
ah' mun sen, 

Roald (1872- ), 

the discoverer of 
the South Pole, 
one of the most 
careful and suc¬ 
cessful explorers 
of modern times. 

His great voyage 
was begun in 
1910, when he set 
out from Norway 
in Nansen’s ship, 
the Fram, intending to drift for several years 
across the Arctic seas; but shortly after sail- 





ROALD AMUNDSEN 

The discoverer of the South 
Pole. 












AMUR 


241 


AMUSEMENTS 


ing he changed his plans and headed for the 
Antarctic regions. Arriving in January, 1911, 
at the far southern land mass, he determined 
to set up his camp on the great ice barrier, 
which had always seemed impassible. Supplies 
for nine men for two years, together with 
building material, were hauled to the top of 
the ice cap, and there was built Framheim, 
his headquarters. 

With the aid of Eskimo dogs and sledges, 
three provision depots were established farther 
south, and with the coming on of the southern 
winter, men and dogs settled themselves at 
Framheim. When the weather broke in Oc¬ 
tober, 1911, Amundsen, with four companions, 
fifty-two dogs and four sledges, set out for 
the south over the ice. Latterly they traveled 
across a plateau 11,000 feet in height, and 
crossed some very dangerous crevasses, but on 
December 16 all their hardships were repaid 
when observations showed that they had 
reached the South Pole. There Amundsen set 
up a small tent, with the Norwegian flag float¬ 
ing above it, and it was these landmarks which 
Scott encountered a month later. 

This voyage of Amundsen was merely the 
climax of a life largely spent in explorations. 
He was born at Christiania, Norway, studied 
for the navy, and in 1897 went on his first 
Antarctic exploring trip as first mate of the 
Belgica. It was in 1903 that he undertook his 
first independent expedition, which had two 
objects: the locating of the north magnetic 
pole and the discovery of the Northwest Pass¬ 
age, which had been sought, off and on, since 
the sixteenth century. After making numerous 
observations from which scientists afterward 
worked out the location of the magnetic pole, 
he pushed the Gjoa from the Atlantic into the 
Pacific through Bering Strait; and the North¬ 
west Passage was found (see Northwest Pass¬ 
age). 

Amundsen’s character is noteworthy for its 
modesty. In his lectures on his great achieve¬ 
ment he can hold his audience for hours en¬ 
tranced with interesting and instructive tales of 
the “farthest south,” without once mentioning 
himself. His narrative has appeared in book 
form as The South Pole. See Polar Explora¬ 
tion ; Scott, Robert Falcon. 

AMUR, or AMOOR, ah moor', the river which 
separates Manchuria from Eastern Siberia, then 
turns north and discharges into the ocean be¬ 
hind Saghalien Island, a few miles from the 
Sea of Okhotsk. It is formed by the junction 
of the Argun and Shilka rivers, a few hundred 


miles east of Lake Baikal. It is the most im¬ 
portant stream flowing to the Pacific north of 
the Yellow River of China. 

The Amur is an important river in com¬ 
merce. Though its mouths are so choked with 
sand that goods must be transported by rail 
for nine miles, it is navigable in a great part 
of its 2,680 miles of length, from April to No¬ 
vember. Khaborovsk, at the point where the 
river turns north, has rail communication with 
the port of Vladivostok and the Trans-Siberian 
railroad. 

The river has four important tributaries, the 
Sungari and Ussuri on the south, and the Seya 
and Bureya on the north. Its basin-includes 
about 772,000 square miles. 

AMUSEMENTS. It is not only the children 
who need play or other relaxation to keep 
them physically and mentally fit; grown peo¬ 
ple, those who give up most of their time to 
work, are dependent no less upon some form of 
recreation. The man whose work is mo¬ 
notonous and deadening needs it to invigorate 
his mind; the student or the man of large 
affairs needs it as a mental rest, as a let-down 
to a mind too tensely keyed. 

There is thus a valid reason for many of 
the amusements or recreations which have been 
devised in almost infinite number, for different 
people demand different kinds of recreation. 
One man delights in games of skill in which 
he himself may take a part, and a wide choice 
awaits him—he may “relax” with golf or with 
tennis, with chess or with whist. Another 
prefers to watch the skilful moves of others; 
he spends his summer afternoons at the baseball 
grounds, or his evenings at the vaudeville, 
where graceful dancing is to be seen. The 
man who devises a popular amusement has 
found a sure way of attracting money to his 
pockets, for the majority of people are more 
willing to spend money for their recreation 
than for any other purpose. 


Related Topics. A glance at the following list 
will show something of the number and variety 
of amusements popular to-day or in some past 
time. Each topic is given detailed treatment in 
its alphabetical order in these volumes. In the 
article Games and Plays, also, are discussed 
numerous types of games for children. 

Acrostic Baseball, Indoor 

Anagram Basket Ball 

Angling Battledore and 

Archery Shuttlecock 

Athletics Billiards 

Backgammon Bowling 

Bagatelle Boxing 

Ballet Bridge 

Baseball Bullfighting 


ANABAPTISTS 


ANACONDA 


242 


Calisthenics 

Kites 

Camp 

Lacrosse 

Canoe and Canoeing 

Lawn Tennis 

Cards, Playing 

Legerdemain 

Carnival 

Marbles 

Casino 

Moving Picture 

Charade 

Pantomime 

Checkers 

Ping Pong 

Chess 

Piquet 

Circus 

Play 

Coasting 

Pole Vault 

Cockfighting 

Polo 

Cribbage 

Pool 

Cricket 

Prize-fighting 

Croquet 

Quadrille 

Curling 

Quoits 

Dancing 

Race 

Delsarte System 

Riding 

Dice 

Rouge-et-Noir 

Discus, Throwing the 

Roulette 

Dominoes 

Rounders 

Dumb-bells 

Rowing 

Euchre 

Shot, Putting the 

Fandango 

Shuffleboard 

Fencing 

Skat 

Ferris Wheel 

Skates and Skating 

Fives 

Ski 

Football 

Snowshoe 

Football, Association 

Solitaire 

Games and Plays 

Swimming 

Golf 

Target 

Gymnastics 

Tennis 

Hammer, Throwing the 

Theater 

Hand Ball 

Tobogganing 

Harlequin 

Top 

Hippodrome 

Tournament 

Hockey 

Trawling 

Hop Scotch 

Trolling 

Hunting 

Vaudeville 

Hurdling 

Waltz 

Ice Yachting 

War Game 

Jackstones 

Whist 

Jackstraws 

Wrestling 

Jiu-Jitsu 

Yacht and Yachting 

ANABAPTISTS, an a bap' tists, a Christian 


body of Reformation days, who did not be¬ 
lieve in infant baptism, and therefore newly 
baptized all who joined them. Those outside 
the group regarded this as a second baptism 
and called them Anabaptists, or “rebaptizers.” 
They were most active in Switzerland, Ger¬ 
many and the Netherlands, and about 1532 
they set up in the German city of Munster, 
Westphalia, the “kingdom of the New Zion.” 
The city became the scene of cruelty, fanati¬ 
cism and crime, and in 1535 was taken by the 
Protestant princes. The leaders of the sect 
were cruelly tortured and then killed, and the 
Anabaptists do not appear again in history 
as a distinct body. The modern Baptists are 
the most important of the religious bodies that 
reject infant baptism. See Baptists. 

ANABASIS, a nab' a sis, the name of two 
famous Greek histories. The first and best 


known is Xenophon’s absorbing story of the 
campaigns of the Greek mercenaries of Cyrus 
the Younger against Artaxerxes, the Persian 
king, his brother, and of the fighting retreat 
of the 10,000 Greeks, under Xenophon’s leader¬ 
ship, from Persia to the Black Sea through Ar¬ 
menia. The other story is Arrian’s chronicle 
of Alexander the Great. See Xenophon. 

ANACONDA, ana kon' da, a giant snake be¬ 
longing to the boa-constrictor family, which 
inhabits the swamps and rivers of the dense 
South American forests, chiefly of Brazil and 
Peru. The largest of all snakes, it grows to a 
length of from thirty to forty feet. The ana¬ 
conda is of a dark olive-brown color, with large, 
oval, black spots along the back, and smaller 
white spots along the sides. It can climb trees, 
and is often to be found coiled around a branch 



This characteristic pose suggests its great 
strength. 


waiting for its prey. This snake is also a water 
animal, and its habit of lying in the streams, 
with only a small part of the head above the 
surface, has given it the local name of water- 
boa. It feeds on birds, fish, monkeys and other 
animals, and is said to attack human beings 
when hungry. It has no poison fangs, but kills 
its prey by crushing it and then swallows it 
whole. In a wild state anacondas are known 
to live comfortably a month or even longer 
without eating, because they usually gorge 
themselves at a single feeding. In zoological 
gardens where small animals are given them, 
they are fed about once a week. The ana- 






























ANACONDA 


243 


ANALYSIS 


conda is the only large boa which has a vicious 
temper. See Boa; Python. 

ANACONDA, Mont., a city of rapid growth, 
famed for the largest copper-smelting industry 
in the world. The population, chiefly Amer¬ 
ican, includes also Irish, English, Austrians and 
Croatians; the people in 1910 numbered 10,134; 
in 1915, the city had increased to 10,424. It 
is the county seat of Deer Lodge County, in 
the southwestern part of the state, on Warm 
Springs Creek, about twenty-six miles north¬ 
west of Butte and about sixty-five miles south¬ 
west of Helena. Railway accomodations are 
afforded by the Butte, Anaconda & Pacific 
Railway, which connects with the Northern 
Pacific, the Great Northern, the Chicago, Mil¬ 
waukee & Saint Paul railways and the Oregon 
Short Line of the Union Pacific Railway. Ana¬ 
conda was only a small mining camp in 1880, 
it v r as incorporated as a city in 1889 and re¬ 
ceived its name from the famous Anaconda 
copper and silver mine, located at Butte. The 
area is about one square mile. 

The rapid growth of Anaconda is due to 
the founding of its great copper-smelting in¬ 
dustry. The Washoe Reduction Works em¬ 
ploy 3,500 men, the payroll amounts to $450,- 
000 monthly; about 16,000 tons of ore are 
treated every twenty-four hours. These w r orks 
produce about ten per cent of the world’s out¬ 
put of copper. There are also large railroad 
shops, machine shops, brick works and other 
manufactories. The city maintains a high 
school and a public library, which was the gift 
of Mrs. Phoebe Hearst, in memory of her 
husband, former Senator Hearst. The Mon¬ 
tana Hotel, erected at a cost of $100,000, the 
Daly School of Gymnastics and Domestic 
Science, w r hich cost $60,000, Saint Ann’s Hos¬ 
pital and two banks are the notable buildings. 
Four playgrounds and a baseball park that 
becomes a free skating rink in winter are main¬ 
tained by public subscription. At Anaconda 
is located The Montana State Fish Hatchery, 
which supplies trout, grayling and white fish 
for restocking the streams and lakes of the 
state. Georgetown Lake, Silver Lake and the 
surrounding mountains form the scenic beauty 
of Anaconda. Deposits of graphite, silver, gold 
and sapphires are found in the vicinity, f.w.w. 

ANAEMIA, ane'mia, a condition character¬ 
ized by lack of some important part of the 
blood. It is of two kinds, primary, or perni¬ 
cious anaemia, and secondary anaemia. In the 
former, the cause of which is unknown, there 
is a great decrease in the number of red blood 


cells. The victim of this condition has a very 
bad outlook and should be under the care of 
a skilled physician. In secondary anaemia the 
chief deficiency is in the coloring matter of 
the blood. This condition yields more or less 
readily to treatment. The best cure is natural 
living—a diet consisting largely of grains, milk, 
fruit, vegetables, eggs and a small amount of 
meat; exercise in the open air; and about 
eight hours of sleep a day in a v r ell-ventilated 
room or out-of-doors. Tonics containing iron 
are often helpful, but these should be pre¬ 
scribed by a physician. 

ANAESTHETIC, anesthet' ik, the classical 
form of Anesthetic (which see). 

ANA ' GRAM, from two Greek w T ords mean¬ 
ing backward writing, is the name given a word 
or v T ords made by changing the order of the 
letters of another word, phrase or sentence, 
so as to form an expression which has a differ¬ 
ent meaning. For example, the letters of 
French Revolution may be arranged to form 
the phrase “Violence run forth.” This is a 
good anagram because it contains the exact 
letters of the original expression, and is at the 
same time an apt description of the Revolu¬ 
tion. 

The making of anagrams was invented by 
the ancients, and was a popular exercise among 
the Jews, Greeks and Romans. The Eu¬ 
ropeans of the Middle Ages particularly en¬ 
joyed this amusement, and in more recent 
times literary men of note have felt it not 
beneath their dignity to form pen names out 
of the letters of their real names, though John 
Dryden called this “the torturing of one poor 
word ten thousand ways.” Barry Cornwall, 
poet, is the anagram for Bryan Waller Proc¬ 
tor, and Voltaire is formed from the family 
name of that French author. One of the best 
anagrams ever made was formed from the let¬ 
ters in the name of Horatio Nelson, the Eng¬ 
lish hero of the Battle of the Nile—“Honor 
est a Nilo,” a Latin sentence meaning “Honor 
is from the Nile.” Anagram making is a good 
mental exercise, and may be recommended as 
an interesting pastime for those fond of solving 
puzzles. 

ANALYSIS, anal'isis, a word derived from 
the Greek,'and literally meaning to unloosen 
or unravel, and also to break up into parts. 
The term is used in grammar, philosophy, 
mathematics and chemistry. 

In Grammar. Analysis is the breaking-up of 
a sentence into its parts, such as subject, verb, 
object and modifiers, with the purpose of show- 



ANALYSIS 


244 


ANARCHISM 


ing how the sentence is constructed and what 
function is performed by each word and phrase. 
Analysis becomes a familiar process to every 
child in school and is the first step in parsing 
a sentence. The points to be covered are the 
classification of the sentence; independent and 
dependent clauses separately treated with 
reference to complete subject and predicate, 
simple subject and predicate, and modifiers of 
each. 

Type Sentence Analyzed. “We think in words, 
and when we lack fit words we lack fit thoughts.” 

Classification: Compound, complex, declara¬ 

tive sentence. 

First independent clause, We think in words. 

Second independent clause, When we lack fit 
words we lack fit thoughts. 

The two independent clauses are connected by 
the coordinate conjunction and. 

First independent clause: Complete subject, 
we; complete predicate, think in words. Simple 
subject, the personal pronoun we, unmodified; 
simple predicate, the intransitive verb think; 
modified by the adverbial phrase of manner, in 
words, words being the object of the preposi¬ 
tion in. 

Second independent clause: Complete subject, 
we; complete predicate, lack fit thoughts when 
we lack fit words. Simple subject, the personal 
pronoun we, unmodified; simple predicate, the 
transitive verb lack, modified by the adverbial 
clause of time, when we lack fit words, and 
completed by its object thoughts, modified by the 
descriptive adjective fit. 

Dependent clause: Introduced by the adverb¬ 
ial conjunction of time when. Complete sub¬ 
ject, we; complete predicate, lack fit words. 
Simple subject, the personal pronoun we; simple 
predicate, the transitive verb lack, completed by 
its object words, modified by the descriptive ad¬ 
jective fit. 

Analysis is frequently recorded graphically 
by means of a diagram. See Sentence, sub¬ 
head Diagram of a Sentence. 

In Philosophy. If we study a subject by 
recognizing its characteristics, we are analyzing. 
Consider, for example, glass. It is hard, trans¬ 
parent, thin and easily breakable; sand is an 
important element in its manufacture. This 
is analysis, that is, distinguishing the parts or 
characteristics of a subject. The same process 
may be applied to any subject under dis¬ 
cussion. The opposite is synthesis; for ex¬ 
ample, we may say that this substance is hard, 
transparent and easily breakable—therefore 
it is glass (see Synthesis). 

In Mathematics. Euclid says that “analysis 
is the obtaining of the thing sought by as¬ 
suming it and so reasoning up to an admitted 
truth.” Analysis is of little importance in 
elementary mathematics, all of which is done 


by reasoning from the known to the unknown. 
Originally all propositions in geometry, for ex¬ 
ample, were solved by analysis, but now the 
method employed is to work from an axiom, 
or known truth, to a new and more specific 
application. Algebra is partly, as least, ana¬ 
lytic, for the solution of an algebraic equation 
means that unknown quantities become known. 

In Chemistry. Chemical analysis is the 
process of separating a compound into its 
parts. If this process is to determine what 
elements the compound contains, it is qualita¬ 
tive analysis; if it is to determine how much 
of each element is present, it is quantitative 
analysis. Thus by the first process w T e learn that 
water is a compound of hydrogen and oxy¬ 
gen, and by the second that it consists of one 
part of hydrogen by weight to eight parts of 
oxygen, or one part of oxygen by volume to 
two parts of hydrogen; because of these pro¬ 
portions by volume, the chemical symbol for 
water is H 2 O. If the analysis shows the ele¬ 
ments and the quantities in which they are 
present the analysis is said to be ultimate, 
that is, final. The chemist, however, may go 
farther and try to determine in what combina¬ 
tions the elements are present, and what their 
condition is with respect to the formation of 
combinations. This is called proximate analy¬ 
sis. See Chemistry; also Spectrum Analy¬ 
sis. e.d.f. 

ANAM. See Annam. 

ANANIAS, anani' as, a Bible character 
whose name has come to be used as a syn¬ 
onym for the word liar. He was a member of 
the early Church at Jerusalem, and with his 
wife Sapphira was struck dead for having pre¬ 
tended that he was bringing the whole price 
of his newly sold land to the Church treas¬ 
ury, when in reality he was keeping part for 
his own use ( Acts V, 1-10). 

ANARCHISM, an'arkizm, a philosophy or 
theory of life which w T ould free the individual 
from every form of restraint or compulsion 
whether political, religious or social. Unfortu¬ 
nately this theory has sometimes led to vio¬ 
lence and murder. Men of weak intellect, 
unable to see that the death of a king or a 
president could not change the social order, 
have murdered rulers and paid the penalty 
with their own lives. In popular language, 
therefore, anarchism is almost synonymous with 
disorder of every kind. But the philosophical 
anarchist refuses to acknowledge any connec¬ 
tion with men who resort to crime in their 
attempts to overthrow the present form of 


ANATOMY 


245 


ANATOMY 


society. To him anarchy is the perfect social 
order, in which every human act is voluntary. 

Anarchism vs. Socialism. Anarchism is 
sometimes called a form of socialism, and 
anarchists and socialists are wrongly classed 
together as undesirable citizens. Only in one 
respect are anarchism and socialism alike— 
both demand the abolition of private prop¬ 
erty, especially the means of production. Both 
believe that at some time in the future all 
production will be carried on for the benefit 
of those who are actually working to produce. 
The socialist believes that this condition will 
arise when all industry is controlled by the 
state, which is the expression of the popular 
will. The anarchist, on the other hand, be¬ 
lieves that production will be carried on by 
groups of people working in cooperation, be¬ 
cause it is to their individual interests and 
because they want to work together. 

Politically, anarchism and socialism are far 
apart. Socialism, it is claimed, would decrease 
the importance of the judicial powers of the 
state, because it would abolish private prop¬ 
erty. Socialists say that most of the civil and 
criminal cases tried in the courts arise from 
private property. The administrative powers, 
on the other hand, would be greatly increased, 
for the state would control all industry and 
regulate the functions and privileges of the 
individual. This system is as hateful to the 
anarchist as the existing capitalist form of 
organization. The anarchist believes that the 
power of the state is not to be preferred to 
the power of capital. Either system destroys 
the perfect liberty of the individual; therefore 
it is wrong. 

The philosophy of anarchism has made less 
progress in America than in Europe. Its prin¬ 
ciples are represented to some extent, how¬ 
ever, by the- Industrial Workers of the World 
(which see). 

ANATOMY, anat' omi. This word, which 
comes from the Greek, means to cut apart, 
and is the name of that science which treats of 
the structure of animals and plants; that is, 
it deals with the knowledge gained by dissect¬ 
ing, or cutting apart. Its two great branches 
are plant anatomy, and animal anatomy, and 
each of these has several divisions, according 
to the methods used or the purposes men have 
in view. 

Animal Anatomy. Under this heading are 
included animal anatomy proper, and human 
anatomy, which deals with the structure of 
human beings. This latter is of greatest im¬ 


portance, because upon it depends much of 
medicine and surgery, especially the latter. No 
surgeon would dare perform an operation if 
he did not know thoroughly the position and 
structure of the organ to be operated on. The 
science of human anatomy, helped out by all 
that has been learned of the structure of the 
lower animals, has reached a very high point 
of perfection in all the medical colleges of 
Europe and America. Indeed, so complete has 
it become that it is divided into many smaller 
branches; and a surgeon may make perfect 
his knowledge of any one of them, while hav¬ 
ing but a general knowledge of the others. 
Thus he becomes a specialist, and in large 
cities most surgeons are now specialists. 

Comparative Anatomy. There is a com¬ 
parative branch in both animal and plant 
anatomy. This science compares different 
classes of animals or plants, trying to find 
out all their likenesses and differences and so 
to discover in what ways they are related. 
Thus the families of plants and animals are 
determined. 

History of Anatomy. In ancient times most 
peoples believed that the body after death 
was a sacred thing, and that to cut it in any 
way was to commit a serious crime. Thus 
it is not strange that before the Christian Era 
little was known of the way the human sys¬ 
tem was organized. The Greeks, it is true, 
did permit an occasional dissection, after the 
fifth century b. c., and Galen, in the second 
century a. d., made real advances in the 
science of anatomy, but it was not until the 
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that it be¬ 
came clear that the art of healing could not 
advance far unless dissection was practised. 
The rulers of leading European nations ordered 
a certain number of dissections in the medical 
schools each year, and the results soon were 
shown in such wonderful discoveries as Har¬ 
vey’s tracing of the circulation of the blood. 
Advancement in physics, in chemistry and in 
botany has had great effect on the growth of 
the science of anatomy, and now the pupil in 
grammar school, with his pictures and colored 
drawings of the different parts of the body, 
knows more about the structure of that won¬ 
derful organism than the wisest of the ancient 
Greeks, such as Plato and Aristotle, ever 
dreamed of. w.f.r. 

Related Subjects. The following list of arti¬ 
cles in these volumes dealing with anatomical 
matters will be interesting and helpful to the 
reader who desires to gain a detailed knowledge 


ANCESTOR WORSHIP 


246 


ANCHOR 


of the science. No attempt has been made to 
separate physiological topics from anatomical, as 
the two subjects are very closely related: 


Abdomen 

Liver 

Absorption 

Lungs 

Adhesion 

Lymph 

Alimentary Canal 

Lymphatics 

Aorta 

Mastication 

Appetite 

Membranes 

Arm 

Mouth 

Arteries 

Mucus 

Assimilation 

Muscle 

Biceps 

Muscle Sense 

Bile 

Nails 

Bleeding 

Nerves 

Blood 

Nervous System 

Blushing 

Nose 

Bone 

Nutrition 

Brain 

Palate 

Breath 

Pancreas 

Capillaries 

Pelvis 

Cartilage 

Peptones 

Chest 

Pericardium 

Chyle 

Peritoneum 

Chyme 

Perspiration 

Circulation 

Pharynx 

Diaphragm 

Pleura 

Digestion 

Pulse 

Ear 

Reflex Action 

Embryo and Embry¬ 

Saliva 

ology 

Scalp 

Eye 

Secretion 

Face 

Senses, Special 

Fat 

Serous Membranes 

Fatigue 

Skeleton 

Fletcherizing 

Skin 

Foot 

Sleep 

Gall Bladder 

Smell 

Ganglion 

Snoring 

Gastric Juice 

Spinal Cord 

Gills 

Spleen 

Glands 

Starvation 

Hair 

Stomach 

Hand 

Taste 

Head 

Teeth 

Health 

Tendons 

Health Habits 

Thirst 

Heart 

Thoracic Duct 

Histology 

Tissues 

Immunity 

Tongue 

Intestines 

Tonsils 

Joints 

Touch 

Jugular Vein 

Trachea 

Kidneys 

Urine 

Lachrymal Glands 

Veins 

Lacteals 

Villi 

Larynx 

Vision 

Life Extension 
Ligament 

Voice 


A large number of articles on related topics 
will be found listed in the indexes accompanying 
the articles Disease, Medicine and Drugs, and 
Surgery. 

ANCESTOR, an' ses ter, WORSHIP. Cer¬ 
tain peoples, among whom the most impor¬ 
tant are the Chinese, have so great a rever¬ 
ence for the dead members of their families 


that it really amounts to worship. Many 
Chinese homes to-day have little carved 
wooden pillars, called ancestral tablets, in 
which the spirits of the family ancestors are 
supposed to dwell; and before these tablets 
incense is burned by the family as before a 
shrine. Much of the social system of China 
depends on this ancestor worship, for since 
only a “man-child” can fittingly do homage 
to the spirits of his ancestors, every family 
hopes for sons and regards daughters as 
worse than useless. Ancestor worship is also 
common in India and among certain savage 
tribes, who worship the animals in which they 
believe their ancestors have taken refuge after 
death. Christianizing influences are slow to 
effect moral changes in such people. 

Such rites appear so strange to people in 
highly civilized countries that we w r onder 
what causes may be back of them. It is easily 
understood if we are willing to believe that 
all human beings realize by instinct there is 
some influence above the highest powers of 
man. This belief. is indeed very real; the 
poet Pope expresses it in the words: 

Lo ! the poor Indian, whose untutored mind 

Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind. 

To be sure, the savage does not know that 
it is God he is seeking; it is just something 
or some one greater than himself. And who 
is so likely to be this greater person as the 
father or grandfather to whom all his life he 
has had to bow down? Fear enters into his 
worship to a great extent, too, for he believes 
that his father and his grandfather can punish 
him from the spirit w T orld for any neglect, 
just as severely as they did when their bodies 
were on earth. 

ANCHOR, ang' her, an implement nearly 
always of iron, used to prevent .a ship from 
drifting. It usually consists of a bar, or shank, 
with two arms, or flukes, at the lower end, a 
cross piece at the top and a ring to which a 
cable or chain is attached, for lowering it into 
the water. When the anchor is let go and 
sinks to the bed of the river or into the sea, 
one of the flukes is made to sink into the bot¬ 
tom and thus take a secure hold. In some 
anchors the flukes are loosely bolted to the 
shaft and turn on the bottom so that both 
take hold of the earth at once. 

Merchant ships do not as a rule carry such 
heavy anchors as men-of-war, which are pro¬ 
vided with two anchors, many tons in weight. 
A horizontal pull causes the anchor to take 


ANCIENT MARINER 


247 


ANDERSEN 


a firmer hold in good ground but in loose soil 
it may be pulled out by the motion of the 



ANCIENT, ayn' shent, MARINER, The, a 
long poem written by Samuel Taylor Coler¬ 
idge, containing some of the most exquisite 
poetry in the English language, as well as a 
beautifully-stated moral, expressed in the fol¬ 
lowing words: 

He prayeth best, who loveth best 
All things both great and small; 

For the dear God who loveth us. 

He made and loveth all. 

It is a story poem, which tells of a sailor 
who in wanton sport shoots an albatross which 
has followed his ship, while his companions 
praise him for his deed. For this they are 
punished with death, while he meets the worse 
fate of having to sail “alone on a wide, wide 
sea,” until he feels in his heart love for the 
moving things he sees about him on the water. 
Then he is released from his weight of guilt, 
but is doomed for the rest of his life to seek 
out men to whom he may tell his story. See 
Albatross. 

ANCIENT ORDER OF UNITED WORK¬ 
MEN, a mutual-benefit society, organized in 
1868, at Meadville, Pa. Families of deceased 
members receive a benefit of $2,000. The 
highest governing body of the society is the 
“supreme lodge”; this controls the “grand” or 
“state” lodges, and these in turn direct sub¬ 
ordinate lodges. In 1916 the organization had 
a total membership of 400,000. There were 
forty grand lodges and 4,500 sub-lodges. Since 
the organization of the society over $250,000,- 
000 has been expended in benefits. 


ANCONA, ang ko' na, the capital of a prov¬ 
ince of the same name in Italy, and next to 
Venice the most important port on the Adriatic 
coast, as it is a harbor for the Italian fleet. 
It is located 185 miles northeast of Rome in 
an amphitheatre between two hills and is 
divided into two parts, the old and the new 
city. The Cathedral of Saint Cyriac, built in 
the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and a tri¬ 
umphal arch of Parian marble erected in honor 
of Trojan, are the most remarkable features 
of the city. Ancona was founded about four 
centuries before the Christian Era, and fell 
into the hands of the Romans in the first half 
of the third century b. c. Population in 1911, 
63,100. 

ANDERSEN, ahn' dur sen, Hans Christian 
(1805-1875), one of the best-loved writers of 
children’s stories, known the world over as 
the author of The Ugly Duckling, The Fir 
Tree, The Constant Tin Soldier, and other 



HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN 


tales no less delightful. He was a strange 
man, and had in some ways a strange life. 
Born at Odense, in Denmark, into a poor 
home, he grew up with little education and 
almost no home training; but he acquired, 
through going to see every play of the travel¬ 
ing companies who visited his town, a great 
love for the theater. In 1819 he went to 
Copenhagen, determined to be an actor, and 
visited one theater after another, without suc¬ 
cess. Finally kind friends became interested 
in him, sent him to school, and supported him 




















ANDERS’ON 


248 


ANDERSON 


while he began to write plays which he thought 
would very soon make him famous. 

It was not until he began to write travel 
stories, however, during his journeys in Ger¬ 
many and Italy, that people paid any partic¬ 
ular attention to him; and not until 1835, 
when his first volume of Fairy Tales appeared, 
did he really become famous. More of these 
tales were published from time to time, and 
while his other works, such as the novels 
called The Imyrovvisatore, 0. T. and Only a 
Fiddler, and his Life’s Romance were highly^ - 
praised, it was for the charming fairy stories 
that grown people as well as children waited 
most eagerly. 

It is pleasant to know that Andersen’s great¬ 
ness was fully acknowledged before his death, 
and that during his last years he had honor and 
happiness enough to make up for the misery 
of his early life. The king and queen of 
Denmark were proud to call him their friend, 
and famous people in every country loved and 
respected him. When he died, men, women 
and children all over the world were as sor¬ 
rowful as if they had lost a personal friend. 

His Ugly Duckling, probably the most fa¬ 
mous of his stories, is given in full in the 
article Story Telling. 

ANDERSON, Marie Antoinette (1859- 
), commonly called Mary Anderson, one 
of the most popular of American actresses. 
Though she retired from the stage in 1890, 
after a career of only fifteen years, her fame 
still lives and her interpretations of Juliet in 
Romeo and Juliet, and of Rosalind in As You 
Like It have rarely been equalled. She studied 
for the stage under the guidance of Charlotte 
Cushman, a famous actress, and at the age 
of sixteen made her debut as Juliet. Later 
she played Meg Merrilies in Guy Mannering, 
Perdita in A Winter’s Tale, Galatea in W. S. 
Gilbert’s Pygmalion and Galatea, and Clarice 
in his Comedy and Tragedy, written especially 
for her. After her marriage to Antonio de 
Navarro in 1890 she retired from the stage 
and made her home in England. In 1896 she 
wrote A Few Memoirs, and in 1911 assisted in 
the dramatization of The Garden of Allah, a 
novel by Robert Hichens. 

ANDERSON, Ind., a railroad center and im¬ 
portant industrial city, notable for the vari¬ 
ety of its manufactures. The city was founded 
in 1822 and was incorporated in 1865; the 
population, chiefly American, increased from 
22,476 in 1910 to 23,453 in 1914. It was first 
settled as the home of the Delaware Indians 


and was known as Anderson’s Town, from the 
chief of the tribe, whose name was “Kick- 
tha-we-nund,” or Anderson. The area is a little 
less than five square miles. 

Anderson is situated a little to the north¬ 
east of the geographical centre of the state, 
on the west fork of the White River, in Mad¬ 
ison County, of which it is the county seat. 
Indianapolis is thirty-six miles southwest, and 
Muncie is eighteen miles northeast. It is the 
center of one of the most extensive electric 
traction systems in the middle west, and has 
the largest power house in the state. It is 
the junction point of the Cleveland, Cincin¬ 
nati, Chicago & Saint Louis, or Big Four 
Route, the Pennsylvania Line and the Central 
Indiana Railway. 

As a manufacturing/city, Anderson’s impor¬ 
tance is due to its location in a natural gas 
district. In its 115 factories, which employ 
nearly 8,500 people, almost every commodity 
known to trade is manufactured, and the an¬ 
nual output averages about $22,000,000. The 
Remy Electric Company, the Nicholson File 
Company and the American Steel and Wire 
Company are among the principal manufac¬ 
turing industries. The surrounding district is 
rich in agricultural products and deposits of 
coal. A manual training high school, construct¬ 
ed in 1912 at a cost of $285,000, two business 
colleges and a Carnegie Library, in addition to 
the public school system, serve the educational 
interests. The city has six banks and its most 
notable buildings are the post office, the court¬ 
house, erected in 1882 at a cost of $200,000, 
and Saint John’s hospital. An interesting fea¬ 
ture of the vicinity is the Prehistoric Mound’s 
Park. b.f.a. 

AN'DERSON, S. C., a city with a popula¬ 
tion, chiefly American, which increased from 
9,654 in 1910 to 11,124 in 1914. Sixty-five per 
cent of the inhabitants are white. The city 
was founded in 1827 and was incorporated as 
a city in 1882. The area is about three square 
miles. 

Anderson is the county seat of Anderson 
County, located in the heart of a rich agri¬ 
cultural section in the northwestern part of the 
state. Greenville is thirty-two miles north¬ 
east, and Columbia, the capital, is 126 miles 
southeast. The city is served by the Charles¬ 
ton & Western Carolina Railway and the Blue 
Ridge branch of the Southern Railway. There 
is electric railway service to points north, east 
and south. Anderson county ranks second in 
the United States in the production of cotton, 






ANDERSONVILLE 


249 


ANDES 


and the industries of the city are largely de¬ 
pendent on this product. About 4,900 people 
are employed in the cotton and cotton-seed 
oil mills. There are also fertilizer, bed-spring, 
lumber and mattress factories and flour mills 
and machine shops. Electric power is supplied 
by a power house ten miles distant on the 
Seneca River; it is owned by a private cor¬ 
poration. The most notable building is a 
$70,000 Federal building, constructed in 1913. 
The Anderson Female College, the Patrick 
Military Institute, a business college and a 
Carnegie Library supplement the public school 
system. Buena Vista Park, covering sixty 
acres, is the recreation spot of the city. 

Anderson was the birthplace of John C. 
Calhoun. h.b.f. 

AN' DERSONVILLE, Ga., the site of a 
famous Confederate States military prison, in 
which nearly 50,000 Federal prisoners were 
confined during the course of the War of 
Secession. Over one-fourth of these succumbed 
to the terrible conditions of insanitation and 
insufficient food and shelter. After the war 
the superintendent, a Swiss named Henry 
Wirm, was tried and hanged for his persecu¬ 
tion of the prisoners, part of the evidence 
against him having been secured by- a Confed¬ 
erate medical commission. At times there 
were over 33,000 prisoners in the enclosure, 
which contained only twenty-six and a half 
acres, or about thirty-five square feet for each 
man. 

The village of Andersonville contained only 
174 inhabitants in 1910. It is in Sumter 
County, in the southwest part of the state, 
between Americus and Montezuma. 

ANDES, an' deez, called in Spanish Cordil¬ 
lera de los Andes, or simply Cordilleras, is a 
great mountain system of South America, the 
backbone of the continent. The Andes lie on 
or near the west coast, and extend from Cape 
Horn, at the south, to the Isthmus of Panama 
and the Caribbean Sea, at the north. Taken 
as a whole, they comprise by far the highest 
mountain mass on earth; there are occasional 
breaks or divisions, but the total length of this 
system, 4,500 miles, far exceeds that of any 
other in the world. This is about 500 miles 
longer than the Rocky Mountains system of 
North America, and is more than twice the 
distance from London to Constantinople. The 
Andes have a maximum width of 500 miles, 
about the same as that of the Rockies. 

Divisions. The Andes may be divided into 
three sections, the Southern, Central and 


Northern Andes. The Southern Andes consist 
of a lofty main chain, with a minor range 
running parallel to it on the east. They ex¬ 
tend from Tierra del Fuego and the Straits 
of Magellan northward, and rise to their high¬ 
est point, 22,860 feet, at the summit of Acon¬ 
cagua, not far from Santiago, the capital of 
Chile. This is the loftiest peak on the Amer¬ 
ican continent. See Aconcagua. 

Northward lies the double chain of the Cen¬ 
tral Andes, where the mountain system is at 
its broadest, being about 500 miles across. 
Between the two great ranges are the wide, 
elevated plateaus of Peru and Western Bo¬ 
livia. These plateaus are more than 12,000 
feet above sea level. There are also several 
lofty peaks, among them Sorata or Illampu 
(21,484 feet), Sahama (21,054 feet), and Illi¬ 
mani (21,024 feet). Farther north the two 
mountain ranges draw together, the plateau 
becomes narrower, and finally the two par¬ 
allel chains are so close together that they 
form one elevated mass. In this section the 
loftiest summit is that of Chimborazo (20,581 
feet), formerly thought to be the highest in 
South America. Cotopaxi (19,500 feet) is an¬ 
other famous peak. 

The Northern Andes break into three dis¬ 
tinct ranges, none of whose peaks are as lofty 
as those to the south. The westernmost 
range, called the Cordillera Occidental, runs 
parallel to the coast northward through Co¬ 
lumbia to the Isthmus of Panama. To the 
east, and separated from the Cordillera Occi¬ 
dental by the narrow valley of the Cauca 
River is the Cordillera Central, one of whose 
peaks is the famous volcano of Tolima (17,660 
feet). Farthest east, and extending northeast¬ 
ward into Venezuela, is the Cordillera de Bo¬ 
gota. There are many peaks of 15,000 feet 
or more in the Northern Andes, but only one, 
Santa Marta, over 19,000 feet. 

Volcanoes and Earthquakes. All the loftiest 
peaks are either active or extinct volcanoes, 
and their cones give the characteristic appear¬ 
ance to the landscape. The group in Ecua¬ 
dor, including the active Cotopaxi, Tungura- 
gua and Sangai, has been called the most im¬ 
posing collection of active and extinct volca¬ 
noes on earth. All the districts of the Andes 
system have suffered severely from earth¬ 
quakes, and many towns have been entirely 
wiped out. Valparaiso, Lima, Callao, Quito 
and Arequipa have been the worst sufferers. 

Glaciers, Lakes and Rivers. Glaciers exist 
on nearly all of the highest peaks, even at the 


ANDES 


250 


ANDES 


equator; the largest are in Southern Chile, on 
the Pacific slope of the range. Both slopes 
of the Andes, but especially the western, are 
steep, and in the south many of the glaciers 
descend so rapidly that they have cut down 
the mountains far below sea level, thus pro¬ 
ducing a coast like that of Norway, with many 
deep fiords and rocky islands. Many of the 
glaciers in ages past actually cut their way 
back by erosion over the crest of the range, 
so the rivers which rise from them flow from 
the east side of the Andes through depres¬ 
sions to the Pacific. 

The rivers of the western slope are mostly 
short and rapid, but they have little volume, 
as the western slope, except near the equator, 
has little rain. On the eastern slope, however, 
rise two of the greatest river systems of the 
world, the Amazon and the Plata, and in the 
Northern Andes a third great river is the 
Orinoco. 

One of the most remarkable features of 
the Andes is a great section lying between the 
two ranges of the Central Andes in Bolivia 
and Northern Argentina. This is a semi-desert 
region, at an altitude of about 13,000 feet, 
without drainage either to the Pacific or the 
Atlantic. Here is the famous Lake Titicaca, 
with an outlet to Lake Poopo, which once 
emptied into the Amazon system. The level 
of Lake Poopo fell below its outlet and it now 
loses its surplus waters only by evaporation. 

Natural Resources. The Andes have large 
deposits of gold, silver, tin, lead, iron, platinum 
and quicksilver. The name Andes is derived 
by some authorities from anti, the native Peru¬ 
vian word for copper, which is also plentiful. 
The plant life, except in the higher altitudes, 
is like that found elsewhere in South America. 
The Andean rose, like the Alpine rose, is a 
famous mountain flower. The animal life 
shows great variety, including such South 
American animals as the llama, chinchilla, con¬ 
dor, and vampire bat. For further details, see 
South America; also each of the countries 
crossed by the Andes. In these the plant and 
animal life of the various sections of the great 
range are discussed. 

Communication and Travel. Unlike the 
Alps, in Europe, the Andes are not traveled 
by many people. There are few established 
routes, and the wagon roads are almost inva¬ 
riably poor. The inhabitants on the east and 
west slopes have little intercourse with each 
other; there are numerous passes over the 
mountains, but most of them are narrow, steep, 


hard to cross except by experienced travelers, 
and sometimes really dangerous. Nearly all 
of these passes cross at right angles to the 
main axis of the Andes. Another factor con¬ 
tributing to lack of communications has been 
the sparsity of population. 

In the Central Andes the broken character 
of the range has made it possible to connect 
the great interior plateau and the coast by 
two lines of railway, both of which cross the 
mountains at an altitude of about 15,000 feet. 
Here, too, there are more roads and trails 
than elsewhere in the Andes. Nearly all of 
the roads leading from the coast, however, end 
near the summit, and on the eastern slope, 
where the Madeira and the Plata rivers rise, 
there is virtually no method of communica¬ 
tion. There is a short line of railway, 260 
miles long, from Arica, Chile, to La Paz, 
Bolivia. A more important line from Buenos 
Aires, Argentina, to Santiago, Chile, was com¬ 
pleted in 1909, over the Uspallata Pass. Al¬ 
most all transcontinental travel goes over this 
pass, whether by train or wagon. At the sum¬ 
mit of the pass stands the monument of Christ, 
erected by Argentina and Chile to mark the 
settlement of their boundary dispute. See 
Argentina, for illustration of this notable 
piece of statuary. w.f.z. 

Outline on the Andes 

1. Location and size 

(a) West coast of Southern America 

(b) Length—longest mountain system in 

the world 

(c) Average width 

(d) Average altitude 

(e) Comparative height 

2. Divisions 

(a) Southern Andes 

(b) Central Andes 

(c) Northern Andes 

3. Special features 

(a) Volcanoes and earthquakes 

(b) Claciers 

(c) Rivers 

(d) Lakes 

4. Resources 

4 

(a) Minerals 

(b) Vegetation 

(c) Animal life 

5. Communication 

(a) Few routes 

(b) Poor roads and dangerous passes 

(c) Railways in Central Andes 

(d) Railroad between Buenos Aires and 

Santiago 

ANDORRA, an daw' ra, or andahr' a, a re¬ 
public in the Pyrenees Mountains, between 
France and Spain. With the exception of 
San Marino, in the heart of Italy, it is the 


ANDRE 


251 


ANDREE 



making body of the country, called the House of 
Representatives. It typifies the simplicity of the 
people. 

smallest republic in the world. It has an area 
of 175 square miles, and a population of about 
5,500. The Andorrans are a gentle, peace- 
loving people, whose chief occupation is the 
raising of sheep and cattle. Andorra has been 
independent since the days of Charlemagne, 
who thus rewarded its citizens for aid in his 
campaigns against the Moors. The republic 
is governed by a council of twenty-four mem¬ 
bers, who serve for four years. There are two 
judges, one appointed by the French govern¬ 
ment and one by the bishop of Urgel, in Spain, 
in whose diocese Andorra lies. In criminal 
cases the decision of the judges is final, but 
in civil cases appeal may be taken to the 
Court of Cassation at Paris, or to the ecclesi¬ 
astical court at Urgel. Every able-bodied man 
in Andorra is liable to military service. The 
capital of the republic is the village of An¬ 
dorra, with a population of about 1,000. 

ANDRE, ahn' dre, or an' dri, John (1751- 
1780), a British officer hanged as a spy by the 
American Revolutionary army because he was 
the messenger of 
General Clinton 
in the negotia¬ 
tions which were 
to have led to the 
surrender of West 
Point by Bene¬ 
dict Arnold. Like 
Nathan Hale, the 
famous American 
spy, Major An¬ 
dre was a man of 
the most attrac¬ 
tive personality. 

Handsome, witty, 
literary, musical, he was one of the most pop¬ 
ular men in the British army. His youth, his 



calmness and courage in the face of death, his 
innocence of any wrong-doing—he obeyed 
orders though personally opposed to the nego¬ 
tiations with Arnold—make him one of the 
most pathetic figures in the Revolutionary 
War. Even Washington, who ordered him 
tried by court-martial, admitted that he was 
“more unfortunate than criminal.” 

Military law, however, made his execution 
inevitable. Sir Henry Clinton had chosen 
Andre, his personal aide and the adjutant- 
general of the British forces in America, to 
secure from Arnold the plans of the fortifica¬ 
tions at West Point. Andre was conveyed up 
the Hudson River on a British sloop, and 
secretly met Arnold on shore. While the con¬ 
ference was going on, the guns of the fort 
were turned on the ship, which was forced to 
retire, leaving Andre in the American lines. 
Against Clinton’s orders, Andre discarded his 
uniform and attempted to reach New York, 
the British headquarters, in civilian dress. 
Near Tarrytown, only a few miles from th*e 
British outposts, he was stopped by three 
American militiamen, who refused to honor 
his pass signed by Arnold, searched him, and 
in his boots found plans and other papers in 
Arnold’s handwriting. Andre was taken to the 
nearest officer, who was foolish enough to 
notify Arnold, thus giving the latter a chance 
to escape. Andre was tried by military court 
and was hanged on October 2. See Arnold, 
Benedict. 

ANDREE, ahn'dray, Salomon August 
(1854-1897), a distinguished Swedish civil engi¬ 
neer and scientific aeronaut, who sacrificed his 
life in an attempt to reach the North Pole in 



Even the .men who cap¬ 
tured him and those who 
sentenced him to death fell 
under the spell of his charm. 















ANDREWS 


a balloon. He constructed a balloon that was 
buoyant enough to carry three persons, with 
provisions and apparatus. On July 11, 1897, 
Andree with two companions left Spitzbergen, 
on his ill-fated expedition to the pole. The 
balloon carried thirteen buoys which Andre 
planned to drop at intervals. Five of these 
eventually came to shore near Spitzbergen, but 
of Andree and his companions no trace has 
ever been found. 

ANDREWS, an' drewz, Elisha Benjamin 
(1844- ), one of the foremost American 

educators of his day, economist, historian and 
college president, was born at Hinsdale, N. H. 
He fought in the Union army during the War 
of Secession, and lost an eye at the siege of 
Petersburg. After graduating from Brown 
University in 1870 he entered the Baptist min¬ 
istry, but soon gave up this field for teaching. 
He was professor of history and political econ¬ 
omy at Brown from 1882 to 1888, and from 
1889 to 1898 was its president. He was then 
for two years superintendent of schools at 
Chicago, and from 1900 to 1908 was chancellor 
of the University of Nebraska. Andrews was 
a frequent speaker and writer on political, 
educational and economic topics, and was espe¬ 
cially noted as a strong advocate of interna¬ 
tional bimetallism. He is the author of 
Institutes oj General History, Institutes of 
Economics and A History of the United States 
in Our Own Times. 

ANDROMACHE, androm'akee, in Greek 
mythology, was wife of Hector of Troy, whom 
Homer’s Iliad makes one of the most attrac¬ 
tive women of antiquity. The passages de¬ 
scribing her parting with her husband when he 
was setting out for his last battle, and her 
grief at his death, are among the most pa¬ 
thetic in all literature. After the fall of Troy 
- she was taken to Greece by the son of Achilles. 
See Troy; Iliad. 

ANDROMEDA, an drom' e da, one of the 
favorite heroines of Greek mythology. Her 
mother, Cassiopeia, wife of the Ethiopia king 
Cepheus, boasted that Andromeda was more 
beautiful than the Nereids, and the offended 
sea-goddesses induced their father to send a 
frightful monster to ravage the coasts of Ethi¬ 
opia. To secure the country from destruction 
Andromeda was chained to a rock to be de¬ 
voured by the monster, but was rescued by 
Perseus (which see). After her death she was 
changed to a constellation, which may be seen 
in the northern sky. 

Ethiopia actually existed; the southern part 


ANEMONE 

of it is now modern Abyssinia. See Mythol- 

OGY. 

ANDROS, an' drahs, Sir Edmund (1637- 
1714), an English colonial governor in Amer¬ 
ica, w r hose devotion to the interests of his 
king brought him into quite serious conflict 
several times with the colonists. As governor 
of New York from 1674 to 1683 he made an ex¬ 
cellent record. In 1686 he was appointed gov¬ 
ernor of New England, which had just been 
made a single province under the name “Do¬ 
minion of New England.” The colonists, an¬ 
gered by this consolidation, refused to recog¬ 
nize the new governor’s authority. Andros 
then made a journey to Hartford to demand 
the surrender of Connecticut’s charter, but, 
according to the story which was long believed, 
this document was hidden in a tree which has 
ever since been called the Charter Oak (which 
see). In 1688, when news of the revolution in 
England reached the colonies, Andros was 
imprisoned by the citizens of Boston, and was 
even ordered to England to answer charges of 
tyranny. No formal trial, how r ever, was held, 
and Andros returned to America in 1692 as 
governor of Virginia. Here he served for six 
years and was very popular. 

ANE'MIA. See Anaemia. 

ANEMONE, anem' onee, from a Greek 
word meaning wind, is the commonest name 
of those flowers which 
are also known as 
wind flowers; and it 
is believed that both 
names were given 
them because they 
seemed to grow best 
in a breezy location. 

Best known of all 
the species is the deli¬ 
cate wood anemone, 
which with its frail 
white blossoms is one 
of the favorite spring 
wild flowers. Some 
anemones are garden 
or hothouse plants 
which produce beau¬ 
tiful blue, red or pink 
blossoms, and by cul¬ 
tivation may be made 
“double,” like the 
rose. It has been 
adopted as the state 
flower of South Da¬ 
kota. 



ANEMONE 





ANESTHETIC 


253 


ANESTHETIC 


ANESTHETIC, anesthet'ik, (classical 
form, anaesthetic), a medicine or other agent 
which, because of its power to destroy the 
sense of pain, is to be counted among the 
greatest blessings of suffering humanity. The 
word was first used by Dr. Oliver Wendell 
Holmes, and comes from anesthesia, which 
means loss of feeling. Up to the year 1800, 
when Sir Humphry Davy suggested that laugh¬ 
ing gas (nitrous oxide) could be used in sur¬ 
gical operations, little was known about anes¬ 
thetics, though opium had been used for cen¬ 
turies to deaden unbearable pain, and often 
with tragic results. Sir Humphry’s experi¬ 
ments were the beginning of a new era in the 
history of medicine. In 1844 Dr. H. Wells, 
an American dentist, successfully used laugh¬ 
ing gas in pulling teeth, and two years later 
W. T. G. Morton, a Boston dentist, brought 
ether into general use as an anesthetic. In 
1848, Sir James Y. Simpson, a Scotch physi¬ 
cian, made known the anesthetic value of 
chloroform, and since then marvelous progress 
has been made in this branch of medical 
practice. 

General and Local Anesthetics. There are 
two groups of anesthetics, general and local. 
The former cause the patient to lose con¬ 
sciousness, and are of untold value in what 
are known as the “major operations.” The 
general anesthetics most commonly used at the 
present time are nitrous oxide, ether, chloro¬ 
form and mixtures of two or more of these. 
Doctors have made many experiments to dis¬ 
cover the special effects and virtues of these 
drugs. Ether produces disagreeable after¬ 
effects, chiefly intense nausea, but is consid¬ 
ered safer than chloroform. Modern ‘refine¬ 
ments in methods of administering ether prom¬ 
ise to obviate the worst of these evils. Nitrous 
oxide is useful in dental work and minor oper¬ 
ations where the patient need not remain in¬ 
sensible for more than a few minutes. This 
anesthetic has no disagreeable after-effects. 
Experiments in anesthetics are being made 
continually and their use is constantly being 
widened. Physicians are also working on the 
problem of lessening the shock to the nervous 
system, a great danger in all operations. 

Local anesthetics destroy the sense of feel¬ 
ing in that portion of the body to be operated 
upon, but the patient does not lose conscious¬ 
ness. Ice and various freezing mixtures have 
long been used for this purpose, as well as the 
ether spray introduced by Sir Benjamin Rich¬ 
ardson, which chills and freezes the tissues by 


the rapid evaporation of ether. The most 
important agent for producing local anesthesia, 
especially in mucous membranes, is cocaine, 
or one of the various drugs derived from it. 
These drugs are sometimes sprayed upon the 
surface to be operated upon, and sometimes 
they are injected into the tissues. Delicate 
operations on the eye, ear and throat are made 
possible by the use of cocaine or its allied 
drugs, and these anesthetics are widely used 
in dental work. 

The most important development in many 
years in this branch of surgery, however, is 
the perfection of an apparatus for adminis¬ 
tering a mixture of nitrous oxide and oxygen 
for difficult or painful operations, especially the 
extraction of teeth, which removes from the 
latter operation all of its old-time terror. By 
varying the proportion of the two gases the 
patient may remain perfectly conscious and 
yet feel no pain or he may be rendered un¬ 
conscious, according to the will of the opera¬ 
tor. There are no ill after-effects; the pres¬ 
ence of oxygen stimulates the patient while 
under the influence of the mixture. 

Midway between general and local anesthe¬ 
sia is regional anesthesia, in which conscious¬ 
ness is retained, but a large area of the body 
becomes insensible. A very interesting exam¬ 
ple of this is spinal anesthesia, which is brought 
about by injecting the proper drug into the 
sac which contains the fluid that surrounds 
the spinal cord. As a result the patient ceases 
to have any feeling in that part of the body 
below the point of injection. Physicians do 
not fully agree as to the merits of spinal anes¬ 
thesia, though many successful operations of 
this nature have been performed. The future 
promises remarkable discoveries in this par¬ 
ticular field. 

Their Use in War. Anesthetics rank high 
among the agents that serve to lessen the 
horror of modern warfare, but it is impossible 
to have them available at all times, especially 
when the scene of military operation extends 
over many miles. Early in the War of the 
Nations, that set all Europe aflame in 1914, it 
was impossible always to procure anesthetics, 
particularly chloroform, in sufficient quantities, 
and many operations were performed without 
the use of these merciful agents. With the 
perfection of their hospital facilities the na¬ 
tions at war greatly remedied this state of 
affairs. 

Twilight Sleep. This is the popular name 
for a condition resulting from the use of certain 


ANGEL 


254 


ANGELL 


anesthetics in childbirth. The method has 
been most completely tested at the great hos¬ 
pital at Freiburg, Germany, and consists in 
giving at intervals hypodermic injections of 
scopolamin and morphine. The patient is said 
to have all the sensations that ordinarily are 
felt, but when the ordeal is over she retains 
not the slightest memoiy of what has hap¬ 
pened. The great value claimed for twilight 
sleep is that it lessens the terrible shock to the 
nervous system. It should be noted that certain 
conditions as to light, sounds, amount of dose, 
etc., are of highest importance in making the 
treatment successful. Twilight sleep is a fail¬ 
ure when the proper conditions are absent. 
Whether or not the Freiburg method can be 
brought into general use must be left to future 
determination. In 1916 several great hospitals 
announced their abandonment of the method, 
claiming that it had been proven unsuccessful. 
See Ether; Chloroform; Cocaine; Laughing 
Gas; Davy, Sir Humphry; Morton, William 
Thomas Green. w.a.e. 

ANGEL, ayn' jel, a spiritual being who 
enjoys immortal life and dwells in heaven as 
a messenger and minister of God. The angels 
are considered higher than man, and most 
religious peoples believe that the faithful of 
earth become angels after death. There is no 
clear teaching in the Bible on the subject, but 
angels are represented in the New Testament 
as rejoicing over the repentance of sinners, and 
the Apostles expected Christ to return upon 
the clouds of heaven in the company of holy 
angels. Satan and those who joined him in the 
rebellion against God are often spoken of as 
“the devil and his angels.” There are frequent 
references of this kind in the Bible. 

ANGELICO, an jel' iko, Fra (1387-1455), the 
common name of Fra Giovanni da Fiesole, 
the last and greatest of the Italian painters 
who lived in the period between the Middle 
Ages and the Renaissance, and the greatest 
religious painter of all time. He became a 
Dominican friar in 1408. His early paintings 
gained him such renown that in 1455 he was 
summoned to Rome by Pope Eugenius IV to 
decorate his private chapel in the Vatican. 
Fra Angelico also painted scenes from the lives 
of the saints for the chapel of Pope Nicholas 
V. These paintings reveal the highest devel¬ 
opment of his art. 

His works are considered unrivaled in finish 
and in sweetness and harmony of color and 
were made the models for religious painters of 
his own and succeeding generations. He was 


the first to show the real beauty of nature 
in landscape painting. The best of his work 
is now to be seen in the Vatican at Rome 
and in the frescoes at San Marco in Florence, 
and many of his paintings are found in the 
galleries of Europe. The Last Judgment, the 
Madonna of the Star and the Coronation of 
the Virgin are some examples of his art. See 
Madonna. 

ANGELL, ayn' jel, James Burrill (1829- 
1916), an American educator whose name is 
everywhere connected with the development 
of the University of Michigan from a school 
of secondary importance to one of the great¬ 
est American uni¬ 
versities. In ad¬ 
dition to his fame 
as an educator, 
however, he was 
a diplomatist of 
high rank. He 
was born in Scit- 
uate, R. I., was 
graduated in 1849 
from Brown Uni¬ 
versity, and, after 
study and travel 
in Europe and 
the South, re¬ 
turned to Brown in 1853 as professor of mod¬ 
ern languages and literature. He edited the 
Providence Daily Journal from 1860 to 1866 
and served as president of the University of 
Vermont from 1866 to 1871. In the latter year 
he accepted the presidency of the University 
of Michigan. Dr. Angell broadened and 
strengthened the work of that institution, 
raising it to the front rank of American uni¬ 
versities. It has been said of him that “his 
wide culture, his personal kindliness, his cath¬ 
olic intelligence and his general learning have 
had quite as much influence as specific words 
or acts or any university policy.” 

Dr. Angell’s career as a diplomatist began 
in 1880, when he was appointed United States 
envoy extraordinary and minister plenipoten¬ 
tiary to China. In 1887 he was made a mem¬ 
ber of the Anglo-American International Com¬ 
mission on Canadian Fisheries; and in 1896 he 
was made chairman of the Canadian-American 
Commission on a Deep Waterway from the 
Great Lakes to the Sea. In 1897 he was ap¬ 
pointed minister to Turkey, but he gave up 
the position in the following year, and returned 
to the University of Michigan. He wrote a 
Manual of French Literature, Progress in 



JAMES B. ANGELL 


ANGELUS 


255 


ANGLE 


International Law and numerous articles for 
the North American Review and other leading 
periodicals of the country. In October, 1909, 
Dr. Angell retired from active life and became 
president emeritus of the University of Mich¬ 
igan. He received degrees from the leading 
universities, and in 1887 was made a regent of 
the Smithsonian Institution. 

ANGELUS, an’ jelus, The, one of the most 
popular and best-loved paintings in the world, 
of which innumerable copies in all sizes have 
found places in the homes of picture-lovers the 
world over. It shows two peasants stopping 
their work in the field to pray at the sound 
of the angelus bell in the distant church tower. 
They are true peasants, in appearance and 
clothing types of their class, and their rever¬ 
ential attitude has in it an extreme humility. 
By his grasp of the principles of drawing in 
perspective, the artist has given the impres¬ 
sion that the field extends back miles and 
miles to the modest church. 

This picture was painted in 1859, by the 
French artist Millet (which see), and was sold 
by him for 500 francs ($100), but so rapidly 
did it advance in public esteem that $125,000 
was paid for it in 1889 by the American Art 
Association, which brought it to the United 
States. In the next year it was purchased by 
M. Chanchard for $150,000, and taken back to 
France, where it now forms one of the orna¬ 
ments of the Louvre. Although not consid¬ 
ered by critics one of the artist’s greatest pic¬ 
tures, it has a depth of feeling which goes far 
toward accounting for its popularity. 

The Angelus Bell is rung at morning, noon 
and night in Roman Catholic countries, and 
at its call faithful worshippers stop their work 
long enough to repeat the angelic salutation, 
or Ave Maria. The name is taken from the 
opening words of the prayer, “Angelus Domini 
nuntiavit Mariae” (the angel of the Lord de¬ 
clared unto Mary), which is in memory of the 
annunciation to the Virgin Mary by Gabriel 
that she should be the mother of Christ. 

ANGINA PECTORIS, anji'na pec'toris, 
or HEART SPASM, is a symptom of disease, 
rather than a disease. A very acute pain, felt 
over the heart or deep in the chest, extends 
through the left side, shoulder and arm. The 
sufferer is held motionless, feels suffocated and 
fears sudden death. Occasionally the first at¬ 
tack is fatal; if not, other attacks will be likely 
to follow. Men past forty years of age, hav¬ 
ing some organic disease of the heart or arte¬ 
ries, are the principal victims. The immedi¬ 


ate cause is something which impedes the 
heart’s action, such as excitement, emotion, 
worry, or excessive physical exertion. The 
best treatment is a quiet, regular life, with 
freedom from excitement and physical over¬ 
exertion. w. A. E. 

ANGIOSPERMS, an'je o s-purmz. All the 
seed-bearing plants in the world are divided 
into two great groups—one in which the seeds 
are protected by a seed-case, the other in 
which the seeds are naked or exposed. Plants 
belonging to the former of these two classes 
are known as angiosperms, the name being 
taken from two Greek words meaning vessel 
and seed. The most prominent part of the 
vegetation of the earth is included in this 
class, which comprises plants of all sizes, from 
the tiniest forms that float about on the water 
to huge trees. The evergreens, however, be¬ 
long to the other class, for they have their 
seeds exposed. 

In all seed-bearing plants there must be 
what is called cross-fertilization; that is, the 
pollen must be carried from the stamens to 
the pistils (see Botany; Fertilization). Some¬ 
times this is done by the wind, but in the 
angiosperms it is mostly done by various in¬ 
sects; and the way in which the flowers have 
developed bright colors and sweet scents to 
attract the necessary insects is one of the most 
interesting things in all botany. The rose, the 
lily, the orchid, in fact all the plants which 
have noticeable flowers, as well as most trees 
except the evergreens, are members of the 
plant group called angiosperms. 

ANGLE, a word derived from the Latin 
angulus, meaning corner. An angle is formed 
by the meeting of two lines. The term is 
sometimes applied loosely to the space between 
the meeting lines, but is used correctly only 



Straight 



ANGLES 

as the measure of the difference in the direc¬ 
tion of the lines. The corner, or place of 
meeting, itself is the vertex, and the lines are 
the sides of the angle. As the difference in 
direction forms the angle, the length of the 
sides need not be considered. 

An angle is measured in degrees, a degree 









ANGLER 


256 


ANGLIN 


being equal to ^eo of the circumference of a 
circle whose center is the vertex of the angle. 
If the sides of an angle are in the same straight 
line but on opposite sides of the vertex, the 
angle is a straight angle, of 180°. Half of a 
straight angle, or 90°, is a right angle; two 
straight angles equal 360°, or a perigon. Angles 
of less than 90° are acute; between 90° and 
180°, obtuse; between 180° and 360°, reflex. 
If the sides of the angle are straight lines, the 
angle is called rectilinear; if they are curved, 
curvilinear. 

ANGLER, FROG FISH or SEA-DEVIL, a 

strange fish with a wide head; a back set with 
sharp needles; a sort of beard around its head, 
said to resemble seaweed; three brightly col¬ 
ored head tassels which are thought to be its 
bait; and two rows of long in-pointed teeth. 



It is found near the British Isles, and is often 
over five feet long. In American waters a 
somewhat similar fish is known, called Ameri¬ 
can angler, fishing-frog or goose-fish. It is 
from two to three feet long, and has such a 
wide mouth that it can swallow fish nearly as 
large as itself. 

ANGLES, one of the three tribes that in¬ 
vaded Britain during the fifth century and 
united to comprise the people that formed the 
English nation. The other tribes were the 
Jutes and Saxons (see Anglo-Saxons). The 
Angles belonged to the Low German division 
of the Teutonic peoples, and their original 
home was the district of Angeln in Schleswig- 
Holstein. The name England (Anglo-Saxon 
Engla-land ) is derived from the name of the 
Angles. They were the founders of three king¬ 
doms on the island—East Anglia, Mercia and 
Northumbria. See England, subhead History. 

ANGLICAN CHURCH, strictly considered, is 
the name of the established Church of Eng¬ 
land. In the broader and more general sense 
the Anglican Church or Anglican Communion 
includes not merely the Church of England 
but the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Church 
of Ireland and the Church of England in the 
British colonies. The relations of these 


branches to each other and to the whole are 
very loose; as a united body the Church 
throughout the world is represented only at the 
Lambeth Conferences, at which the bishops 
meet. The Lambeth Conferences, so named 
from Lambeth Palace, the residence of the 
Archbishop of Canterbury, only advise; they 
cannot legislate on matters of doctrine or prac¬ 
tice. The Protestant Episcopal Church in the 
United States, though formerly regarded as a 
branch of the Anglican Church, is now in fact 
a separate body. 

The doctrines of the Anglican Church are 
contained in the Thirty-nine Articles, and the 
ritual is in the Book of Common Prayer. The 
membership of the Anglican Church is divided 
into three groups, all of which agree on the 
fundamental belief but differ to a consider¬ 
able degree on questions of ritual and minor 
points of doctrine. These three groups are 
called High Church, Low Church or Evan¬ 
gelical, and Broad Church. 

ANGLIN, ang' glin, Margaret (1876- ), 

one of the most distinguished American 
actresses, was born at Ottawa, Canada. Her 
father, Timothy W. Anglin, a New Brunswick 
journalist and politician, was one of the Lib¬ 
eral leaders in the Dominion House of Com¬ 
mons, and from 1874 to 1878 was its Speaker. 
Margaret Anglin’s first professional appear¬ 
ance was in 1894 in Shenandoah, a melodrama 
of the War of Secession. She made rapid 
progress, and soon became leading lady for 
such well-known actors as James O’Neil, Ed¬ 
ward H. Sothern and Richard Mansfield. She 
appeared as a star in Zira, in 1905, then in the 
leading role in The Great Divide, The Awak¬ 
ening of Helena Ritchie, Green Stockings and 
Beverly’s Balance. In later years she essayed 
classic plays, including English versions of the 
Antigone and Electra of Sophocles, and the 
Medea and Iphigenia in Aulis of Euripides. 
These she presented in the Greek Theater at 
the University of California, the last two for 
the first time in 1915. She also played sev¬ 
eral Shakesperean roles, including Katherine 
in The Taming of the Shrew and Viola in 
Twelfth Night. In 1911 Miss Anglin was 
married to Howard Hull, a dramatic critic. 

Her brother, Francis Alexander Anglin 
(1865- ), one of the foremost Canadian 

lawyers and jurists, was born at Saint John, 
New Brunswick. He was called to the bar in 
1888, became judge of the Ontario High 
Court in 1904 and judge of the Supreme Court 
of Canada in 1909. 





ANGLING 


257 


ANGLING 



art of catching fish with a 
hook or tackle, from the 
earliest times regarded not 
merely as a business but as 
one of the most alluring of sports. There 
are frequent references to this art in Greek 
and Latin authors, it is mentioned several 
times in the Old Testament, and ancient 
mural paintings show that it was practised 
ages ago in Egypt. A fisherman may fish 
for food; his is a vocation. Fishing to an 
angler is a game; he loves the rush of the 
brook or the cold blackness of a deep lake; 
he seeks the odors and the peace of out- 
of-doors; he craves the excitement of the catch, 
to test his skill against that of the fish. 
A perfect angler, says a Greek poet, is “a 
well-made, active man, patient, vigilant, enter¬ 
prising, courageous and full of expedients.” 
Good Izaak Walton, whose little book, The 
Compleat Angler, made him immortal, ex¬ 
pressed himself thus: 

“We may say of angling as Dr. Boteler said of. 
strawberries: ‘Doubtless God could have made 
a better berry, but doubtless God never did’ ; and 
so, if I might be judge, God never did make a 
more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than 
angling.’ ” 

Rod. Of the material appliances needed by 
the angler, the first is the rod. Rods are made 
of various materials and of various sizes. The 
cane rods are lightest, and where fishing tackle 
is sold they most commonly have the prefer¬ 
ence; but in country places the rod is often 
of the angler’s own manufacture. Nearly all 
rods used in fresh-water fishing are made in 
separate joints, so as to be easily taken to 
pieces and put up again. All rods taper from 
the butt end to the top, and are usually 
possessed of considerable elasticity. In length 
they may vary from five feet to more than 
twenty, with a corresponding difference in 
strength—a rod for catching salmon being 


necessarily much stronger 
than one suited for ordi¬ 
nary brook trout. 

Reel. The reel, an ap¬ 
paratus for winding up or 
letting out the line, is attached to the rod 
near the lower end, where the hand grasps 
the rod while fishing. The best reels are 
of simple construction and are so made as 
to run rapidly. Those of the better class 
run on jeweled bearings, and the cranks are 
so geared that when they are turned once 
the barrels on which the lines run turn four 
times. Other reels are only double-multiply¬ 
ing; that is, the spools revolve twice to each 
turn of the handle, while trout reels and 
salmon reels, commonly called “single-click” 
reels, revolve only once to every turn of the 
handle. It is not necessary for these reels 
to be multiplying, as the fish is played by 
stripping the line and not with the reel, as 
in bass fishing. 

Line, Hook and Float. The line is some¬ 
times made of finely-twisted fine silk, but 
more often of braided silk. For trout fishing 
this is stiffened by oiling. To the end of this 
may be tied a piece of fine gut, on which the 
hook or hooks are fixed. For casting heavy 
bait the line is a little heavier and the gut 
leader is discarded. The hook of finely-tem¬ 
pered steel should readily bend without break¬ 
ing and yet should retain a sharp point. It 
should be long in the shank and deep in the 
bend and the barb should be long. In size 
and shape the hooks must be adapted to the 
kind of fish that are angled for. In still-fishing 
from a pier or anchored boat, floats formed of 
cork, goose and swan quills, are often used to 
buoy up the hook so that it may float clear 
of the bottom. For heavy fish or strong 
streams a cork float is used; in slow water and 
for lighter fish, a quill float. 

Bait. Baits consist of a great variety, nat- 



























































ANGLO-SAXONS 


258 


ANGORA 


ural or artificial. Grasshoppers, worms and 
minnows are good bait in trout-fishing, while 
crawfish, small frogs and minnows are best for 
bass. The artificial flies so much used in 
angling for trout and salmon are made of hairs, 
furs and wools of every variety, mingled with 
pieces of feathers and secured together by 
plaited wire, gold and silver thread, marking 
silk or wax. The wings may be made of the 
feathers of domestic fowls, or any others of 
a showy color. Some angling authorities rec¬ 
ommend that the artificial flies should be 
made to resemble as closely as possible the 
insects on which the fish is wont to feed, but 
experience has shown that the most conspicu¬ 
ous and unnatural combinations of feather and 
fur have been often successful where the most 
artistic imitations have failed. Artificial min¬ 
nows and spoon-shaped pieces of metal are 
also used by way of bait, and are so contrived 
as to spin rapidly when drawn through the 
water in order to attract the notice of the fish. 
Angling, especially with the fly, demands a 
great deal of skill and practice. 

Open and Closed Season. The true angler, 
who fishes for love of the sport, is not the 
one against whom the fish must be protected, 
but there are persons who are anglers merely 
in outward appearance, persons who would, if 
unrestrained, exterminate all game fish. Nearly 
every state and province now protects its fish 
by a closed season, during which it is illegal 
to fish. The closed season varies with the 
habits of the fish and the location of the fish¬ 
ing grounds. As a general rule, spawning time 
is a closed season, extending from April to 
June or July. In many states and provinces 
fishing is also illegal during the winter months, 
and non-residents who desire to fish are nearly 
always required to pay a small license fee 
ranging from one to five dollars. The laws 
on this subject are so varied that the angler 
should find out for himself just which ones 
apply to the locality in which he wishes to 
fish. H.K.S. 

ANGLO-SAXONS, ang' glo sax' uns, the 
ancestors of most of the English-speaking 
peoples, a race formed by the union of the 
German tribes who settled in Britain in the 
fifth and sixth centuries after Christ. The 
most important of these were the Angles, Sax¬ 
ons and Jutes. The Jutes, the earliest comers, 
left their original settlements in the regions 
about the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser, 
and took possession of Kent, the Isle of Wight 
and the opposite coast of Hampshire. They 


were followed by the Saxons, who had inhab¬ 
ited the regions along the Baltic Sea, and by 
the Angles, who came from the territory in 
North Germany between the North and the 
Baltic seas. 

Before the end of the sixth century the 
Angles had conquered Southeastern Scotland 
and Eastern and Middle England; the Jutes 
were in possession of Kent and the Isle of 
Wight, and the Saxons held the remainder of 
Southern England west to Devonshire and 
Wales. The conquests of the Angles were the 
most extensive, and from them England, “land 
of the Angles,” took its name. The various 
kingdoms established by these conquerors 
were united into one state in 827 by Egbert, 
king of Wessex. Athelstan, who came to the 
throne in 925, was the first monarch to use the 
title “king of England.” Many modern Eng¬ 
lish terms, such as earl, alderman and sheriff, 
are derived from Anglo-Saxon institutions. 
See England, subhead History; also, Angles. 

ANGOLA, ang go' la, a Portuguese posses¬ 
sion with an area of 500,000 square miles, is 
situated on the southwestern coast of Africa. 
Loanda, the principal town, was long the great 
Portuguese slave market. This trade was 



ANGOLA 

Its territory is marked in black. The area is 
nearly twice as large as Texas or the great 
province of Alberta. 

abolished by law in 1836 but was continued 
for many years after that date, in the interior, 
where men were captured and sold as recently 
as the beginning of the nineteenth century. 
The chief exports of Angola are ivory, palm 
oil, coffee, fish, gum, wax and cotton. Popu¬ 
lation, about 4,000,000. 

ANGORA, ang go' ra, a very old town in 
Asiatic Turkey, capital of the province of the 





ANILINE 


259 


ANIMAL 


same name, 215 miles southeast of Constan¬ 
tinople. It is famous as the original home of 
angora goats, whose long hair forms the town’s 



principal article of commerce. It is connected 
with Constantinople by railroad and has also an 
extensive trade in mohair cloth, dye stuffs, 
gums, wax and honey. Camlet, a costly mate¬ 
rial made from the hair of the angora goat, 
is produced in great quantities. All the ani¬ 
mals of this region have long fine hair, prob¬ 
ably due to some atmospheric influence, for 
if they are removed to any other district the 
hair becomes coarser. The city has many 
remains of Byzantine architecture and relics 
of Greek and Roman periods. Population, 
about 35,000. 

ANILINE, an' il in, a colorless, oily liquid, 
somewhat heavier than water, which by treat¬ 
ment with other substances forms a number 
of brilliant and lasting dyes. Aniline was dis¬ 
covered in 1826, but the discovery was of no 
importance until thirty years later, when a 
young English chemist, Perkin, accidentally 
learned how to make from it a most beautiful 
violet dye. Constant experimenting produced 
other lovely colors, and the dyer’s art at once 
advanced to a higher plane than it had ever 
before reached. Originally obtained directly 
from coal-tar, it is now made chiefly from 
nitro-benzene, which in turn is made from 
benzene, the latter being contained in coal tar 
in much larger proportion than aniline itself. 
Before the War of the Nations, which began 
in 1914, the Germans had almost a world 
monopoly of the coal-tar industry. This was 
partly due to the attention paid to the art 
by their chemists, but partly also to their 
efficient business organization and to skilfully- 
framed laws. The war, by putting a sudden 
stop to the exportation of coal-tar dyes, 
spurred chemists of other nations to intensive 


study; in the United States, especially, what 
had been almost an exclusive German art be¬ 
came firmly established as an American indus¬ 
try. See Coal-Tar. j.f.s. 

ANIMAL. The simplest forms of animal life 
consist of one cell only, and look much like 
the lowest orders of plant life (see Cell). 
Scientists are unable to tell whether some of 
these tiny cells are animal or vegetable. These 
simple cell animals have the power to do in 
themselves, without any special organs, all 
things necessary for their life. The higher 
orders of animals are composed of billions of 
cells, and have many intricate organs,“ each 
with its special work to do. For instance, one 
set of organs is employed in the collection of 
food, another in its digestion, others in carrying 
the food through the body, bringing air into 
the system or carrying off waste and dead 
matter. In different animals these organs vary 
greatly, but their purposes are the same. 

No true distinction can be made between 
plants and animals, even in many of the 
higher organisms, by form alone. Thus it i^ 
impossible to say that the power of motion 
belongs only to animals, for some plants can 
move and many animals are rooted or fixed. 
The great distinction between plants and ani¬ 
mals lies in the way in which they assimilate 
food, that is, change it into such form that it 
is useful in building them up. Almost all 
plants feed on inorganic food, that is, food 
which is neither animal nor vegetable. Ani¬ 
mals, on the contrary, require organic or living 
matter, and so are dependent upon plants or 
upon other animals for food. Again, animals 
are dependent upon a proper supply of oxygen 
for their life, but plants require carbonic acid, 
which is generally poisonous to animals. Ani¬ 
mals receive the food into the interior of 
their bodies and digestion takes place in their 
internal organs, but plants receive the food 
into their external bodies and digest and 
assimilate it in the external parts, for instance, 
in the leaf-surfaces, under the influence of 
sunlight (see Chlorophyll). As plants and 
animals become more complicated in struc¬ 
ture the distinctions between them broaden 
until it is useless to point them out. All the 
hundreds of thousands of animals which in¬ 
habit the globe have been divided according 
to certain traits or peculiarities into great 
groups, which have been again and again sub¬ 
divided, for no matter how many points of 
likeness animals have, their differences are 
even more noteworthy, and but for the char- 



ANIMAL 


260 


ANIMAL 


acteristics pointed out above, no one would 
consider placing a sponge and a man together 
in even the widest of classes. 

Even the most superficial study of the ani¬ 
mal life about one brings up many questions 
and leads into most interesting fields of 
thought. The cat on the back fence, for in¬ 
stance, and the tiger at the zoo—are they 
really related? They look alike, to be sure, 
but is the resemblance just superficial, or is 


it recognized by scientists? Is there any rea¬ 
son why a polar bear is white and the cinna¬ 
mon bear brown? Why, when fish lay so 
many eggs, do not the waters of the earth 
become full of fish? These and many more 
questions are answered by zoologists, and are 
also explained in various articles in these 
volumes. In the article Zoology, there is to 
be found a classification of the animal life of 
the globe. a.mc c. 


Animal Intelligence and Senses 


Occasionally there appears in the papers or 
on billboards the announcement of the won¬ 
derful achievements of an* educated horse or 
dog, and at once the question as to just how 
much intelligence animals do possess comes 
to the fore. Some of the actions of animals 
seem at first sight to argue a high degree of 
intelligence—the setting of sentries by the 
wild beasts, the choice of migration routes by 
the birds, and the almost incredible things 
which the little hive bee accomplishes. But 
conclusions must not be reached too quickly— 
it is unsafe to infer from human-like actions 
the possession of human reasoning powers. 
The whole question as to the intelligence of 
animals really hinges on this: are they capable 
of reasoning? That is, can they figure out or 
argue that because this or that is true, some 
other thing must necessarily be true? And 
the most authoritative writers on the subject, 
those who have given the matter sympathetic 
thought, are inclined to believe that no ani¬ 
mal has the ability to put together facts and 
so work out a conclusion. 

Animals have an instinct which directs them 
under circumstances in which human beings 
would employ long reasoning processes; and 
it is probable that when the mother bird 
“each fond endearment tries, to tempt her 
new-fledged offspring to the skies/’ she is not 
definitely planning for their welfare but sim¬ 
ply following a blind instinct which tells her 
to do thus and so. 

Animal Stories. Among the popular stories 
of animals there are several attitudes to be 
noticed toward this question of intelligence 
in animals. Some tales, like the “Uncle 
Remus” stories of Joel Chandler Harris or 
Kipling’s Jungle Books, are frankly imagina¬ 
tive and give to the animals powers and gifts 
which no one really believes they possess. 
Others treat them simply as animals with in¬ 
stinct, but without anything which resembles 


human intelligence; but perhaps the most 
popular stories of all are those which lie be¬ 
tween these two extremes. These do not give 
their animal heroes the power of speech, or 
even really human reasoning powers, but they 
do endow them with many almost human 
qualities, so they have distinct characters and 
arouse the love and sympathy or the dislike 
of the reader. Of this last-named class of 
stories those of Ernest Thompson Seton are 
probably the best known. See Seton, Ernest 
Thompson. 

Special Senses. When the subject of the 
senses is approached, the student of animals 
finds himself on surer ground, for the fact is 
undisputed that the senses of sight, hearing, 
touch, taste and smell exist in the animals, 
though in widely-varying degrees. No one 
who has heard a horse whinny with joy at 
the approach of his master, or who has read 
the pathetic tale of Rab and His Friends, can 
doubt that animals also experience emotions. 
But as to these, of course less definite infor¬ 
mation exists. 

Sight. No general statement can be made 
about the sense of sight of animals, so wide 
is the range. There is the sightless mole 
which burrows its way through the ground, 
and there is the eagle which, flying high in 
the air, espies the tiny field-mouse on the 
ground. Some animals, as the bat, the mem¬ 
bers of the cat family and the owl, can see 
far better at night than in the daytime, owing 
to a peculiar formation of the eye; but most 
of them resemble men in that they see better 
in the light. With the lower animals it is 
difficult to discern just what part in their 
activities sight plays, for it may be that often 
when they seem to perceive things with this 
sense they are in reality guided by their sense 
of smell. Certain insects which help in the 
fertilizations of flowers apparently distinguish 
colors, for they will neglect one flower and 



Polar Bear 


Musk Ox 


Elephant 


mu s 


Giraffe 


Llama 




katx abelmann 



if 

JLgfe 

% m 


□ l„ - - .. . .— i n 

ll ANIMALS, FROM NORTH TO SOUTH If 






























































ANIMAL 


261 


ANIMAL 


fly to one of another color when there is no 
other difference; but most insects, it is prob¬ 
able, see but poorly. 

Hearing. The sense of hearing is no more 
evenly distributed than that of sight, but in 
general it may be said that the higher animals 
have it in far greater perfection than the lower. 
The horse traveling the flinty road hears the 
hoof-beats of another horse approaching him 
before the sound reaches his driver’s ears; the 
watch dog pricks up his ears at a noise which 
is inaudible to every human inmate of the 
house. It was long believed that fish were 
entirely deaf, but it seems to be an estab¬ 
lished fact that some sounds do reach them, 
though probably not enough to make neces¬ 
sary the “silence” warning to fishermen. 

Touch. The sense of touch does for some 
animals much that the sense of sight does for 
man. The “feelers” of certain insects, the 
whiskers of the cat—these are special touch 
organs developed through long usage. A dog’s 
ears seem to be the most sensitive part of its 
anatomy, w T hile in a bat the wing membrane 
responds to the slightest touch. 

Taste. Here again it is almost impossible 
to speak with accuracy, for while it is certain 
that animals delight in one kind of food and 
reject another, it is probable that smell rather 

Migration 

This is a term used to denote first, the irreg¬ 
ular overflow of such animals as mice, lem¬ 
mings, locusts and chinch bugs from their 
more usual range, and second, the periodic 
movements of fishes, birds, seal and many 
other animals at the changes of season. As 
these two classes of movements are different 
in character, they are discussed separately 
below. 

Irregular Overflows. The movements of the 
lemming, a rat-like animal found mostly in 
Norway and Sweden, furnish a good example 
of this class. At irregular intervals of five to 
twenty years great hordes of lemmings leave 
their homes and travel toward the sea. The 
explanation seems to be that they multiply 
so rapidly that the food supply in the vicinity 
of their homes becomes too small. Then the 
excess of animals must wander off to other 
regions; instinctively they move for the pre¬ 
servation of the species. 

A similar explanation accounts for the 
plagues of mice and Rocky Mountain locusts 
which occasionally ruin thousands of acres of 


than taste guides them. The two are very 
closely connected, even in man; and the per¬ 
son who has absolutely lost his sense of smell 
can distinguish only sweet, sour, bitter and 
salt. That there is some sense of taste even 
in the lower forms of life is proved by the 
fact that insects can tell sweet from bitter— 
a distinction probably not made by the sense 
of smell. 

Smell. Everybody is familiar with the fact 
that some animals have an almost incredibly 
keen sense of smell. That of most dogs is so 
acute as to enable them to recognize people 
whom them have once seen, and certain spe¬ 
cies of dogs can track a person by scent, even' 
when the trail is crossed by numerous others. 
A deer, too, when the wind is right, can detect 
the presence of man before eye or ear makes 
it evident. In no other members of the ani¬ 
mal kingdom is the sense of smell more pro¬ 
nounced than in insects. It is because of this 
fact that flowers have developed fragrance— 
that they may attract to themselves the insect 
visitors so necessary to their complete life. 
A new bee in a hive does not need to be 
guided to the nearest locust-grove; the sweet 
scent is sufficient guide. On the other hand, 
birds, reptiles and most fish depend very little 
on their sense of smell. v.l.k. 

of Animals 

grain on the plains of North America. Flies, 
chinch bugs, army worms, rabbits, antelopes 
and other animals are known to travel far in 
search of feeding grounds, and these acquired 
locations become their new homes. 

Periodic Migrations. Many animals migrate 
two or more times a year, the temperature 
and food supply determining the^ time and ex¬ 
tent of such movements. At the approach 
of spring the mountain sheep and goats leave 
the regions in which they have spent the 
winter and climb upward to the cooler alti¬ 
tudes. Each autumn the caribou travels from 
his haunts near the Arctic Ocean to the warmer 
regions around Hudson Bay, and each spring 
he reverses this course. Years ago, when the 
buffaloes were still plentiful, their herds wan¬ 
dered north or south with the changing sea¬ 
sons. Whales, especially the sperm whales, 
have regular courses along the coasts of North 
America. 

Some of the most remarkable migrations are 
those of fishes, especially the salmon, which 
ascend and descend rivers, even through rapids 



ANIMALS 


262 


ANNAM 


and waterfalls. Many other fishes seek the 
depths of the oceans or lakes when winter 
comes, and return to shallower waters only 
when the sun rays in the next spring and sum¬ 
mer again warm the water. Cod, herring, bass, 
pike and whitefish make longer or shorter 
migrations according to local conditions. 

Most wonderful of all are the migrations of 
birds, some species traveling even 8,000 miles 
twice a year. This absorbing story is told in 
the article Birds, subtitle Migration of Birds. 
See, also, article on each of the animals men¬ 
tioned above. v.l.k. 


Related Subjects. The forms of animal life 
described in these volumes are too numerous to 
be listed here, but they are all carefully classi¬ 
fied and indexed elsewhere. By consulting the 
following articles, with the indexes that follow 
most of them, the student may acquaint himself 
with a classification, not too technical, of the 
important animals of the world: 


Amphibians 
Animal Worship 
Arachnida 
Birds 

Carnivorous Animals 

Cetaceans 

Crustaceans 

Diseases 

Edentata 

Fish 

Insects 


Invertebrates 

Mammals 

Marsupials 

Mollusks 

Primates 

Reptiles 

Rodents 

Ungulates 

Vertebrates 

Zoology 


Animal Products 


Ambergris 

Beeswax 

Bristles 

Buckskin 

Catgut 

Courie 

Gelatin 

Glue 

Glycerine 

Ivory 


Leather 

Mother-of-Pearl 

Musk 

Pearl 

Shell 

Spermaceti 

Tallow 

Wax 

Whalebone 

Wool 


See, also, Animal Products in list of Related 
Subjects at end of article Food. 


ANIMALS, Diseases of. See Diseases, sub¬ 
title Diseases of Animals. 

ANIMAL WORSHIP, a part of the religion 
of very many barbarous and partly-civilized 
peoples. It does not grow out of love for the 
animals, but usually out of fear or a belief 
that the souls of the dead live again in ani¬ 
mal bodies. Just as many heathen tribes 
worship demons because they imagine that 
by so doing they can induce the demons not 
to injure them, so they often worship the 
animals of which they are most afraid, espe¬ 
cially the mysterious ones that prowl about 
at night. 

In India belief in the transmigration of souls 
is very common; that is, most of the people 



imagine that a soul lives many lives, each life 
in a different body, and that some of these 
bodies are those of animals. If, therefore, a 
man hurts a cat or a monkey or even a crawl¬ 
ing bug, he may be injuring his grandfather 
or his mother, and as a consequence the 
greatest reverence is shown to animals. The 
ancient Egyptians held that each god and 
goddess had certain sacred animals, and to 
kill one of these was to offend some deity. 
So strong was this belief that people were in 
some places put to death for killing a sacred 
animal. See Transmigration of the Soul. 

ANISE, an' iss, a plant grown chiefly for its 
seeds, which because of their warm, spicy taste 
are much used to flavor liquors and candies. 
Although a na¬ 
tive to Egypt 
and other East¬ 
ern countries, it 
has been intro¬ 
duced into Italy, 

Spain, France, 

Germany and the 
United States, 
but it can be 
brought to per¬ 
fection only in 
regions which 
have a fairly 
long, hot sum¬ 
mer, The seeds 
as well as the oil, 
which has a sim¬ 
ilar smell and taste, have some value as a 
medicine, especially for children. 


ANISE 

(a) flower; (&) seed. 



ANN, a cape off the coast of Massachusetts, 
thirty-one miles northeast of Boston. It is 
a bold, rocky headland, containing valuable 
quarries of gran¬ 
ite for building 
purposes. The 
towns of Glouces¬ 
ter, Rockport and 
the village of 
Squam are on 
this bluff. 

ANNAM, an 
nam, also spelled 
An am, is a prov¬ 
ince of Indo- 
China between Annam. 

Siam and the 
South China Sea, under French protectio 
since 1884. It has an area of 52,100 squar 
miles and a population of nearly 6,000,00( 


ANNAM 

Black area is location ol 
Compare its siz< 
with remainder of Asia. 






ANNAPOLIS CONVENTION 


263 


ANNAPOLIS 


of whom only 1,900 are Europeans, exclusive 
of the military forces maintained by France. 
It was formerly governed by a monarch whose 
power was absolute, but in 1914 the king was 
compelled to abdicate in favor of his son, a 
boy of fourteen. Though nominally still a 
monarchy, all the power is vested in French 
officials. 

Education and Religion. Under French 
supervision the educational advantages are 
improving, but mostly for the benefit of boys; 
while there are over fifty schools for them, 
there are only seven for girls. The Anna- 
mese are principally of Mongolian stock, but 
are smaller and less robust than the Mongo¬ 
lians found farther north. Their language is 
similar to Chinese, and their religion is Budd¬ 
hism, though the educated classes have largely 
become followers of Confucius. Like the Chi¬ 
nese, the natives do not take readily to Chris¬ 
tianity, but flourishing missions are maintained 
by the Roman Catholics and the leading 
Protestant churches. 

Resources. The mineral wealth of the coun¬ 
try is considerable, and has been greatly devel¬ 
oped recently. Gold, iron, copper and zinc 
are extensively mined, and coal of fair quality 
is found. The soil is fertile and produces rice, 
maize, tobacco, sugar, many kinds of fruit, 
coffee, areca nut and medicinal plants. A 
large area of unprofitable land has been re¬ 
claimed, the Phanrany River being dammed 
to irrigate 10,000 acres, and many other irri¬ 
gation works have been erected elsewhere in 
the province. The mulberry tree is exten¬ 
sively cultivated for its leaves, on which the 
silk worms feed, the raw silk export forming 
one of the most important items of commerce. 
Cattle raising is one of the principal occupa¬ 
tions. 

Imports and Exports. The imports consist 
chiefly of cotton and paper goods, tea, tobacco 
and petroleum. The exports, in addition to 
raw silk (three-fourths of the production of 
w'hich is exported), are sugar, rice, cotton and 
paper. Most of the trade is carried on with 
France and its foreign possessions. The cap¬ 
ital is Hue, with a population in 1912 of 60,611. 
The chief ports are Tourane and Fai-Foo. 

ANNAP'OLIS CONVENTION. Soon after 
the Articles of Confederation were adopted 
by the thirteen American colonies, which had 
been fighting for independence, Virginia and 
Maryland had a dispute about the navigation 
of Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River. 
The difficulty finally led Virginia to ask the 


other states to send delegates to Annapolis, 
Md., to discuss changes in the Articles of Con¬ 
federation, especially to cover defects in those 
parts referring to commerce and navigation. 
The delegates met September 11, 1786, but 
only five states wore represented—New York, 
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Vir¬ 
ginia. 

It w r as evident almost at once that the 
Articles of Confederation were inadequate 
not only in relation to commerce, but in many 
other respects. The convention, urged on by 
Alexander Hamilton and John Dickinson, in¬ 
vited all the states to send delegates to a 
second convention for the purpose of adopting 
a new constitution. This second convention 
met at Philadelphia in May, 1787, and finally 
adopted the present Constitution. The story 
of this immensely important document is told 
in the article, Constitution of the United 
States. See, also, Articles of Confederation. 

ANNAPOLIS, Md., is the state capital and 
the county seat of Anne Arundel County, 
twenty-six miles south by east of Baltimore, 
thirty miles directly east by north of Washing¬ 
ton, D. C. It is on the southwest bank of 
the Severn River, two miles from its entrance 
into Chesapeake Bay, and is served by boats 
to Baltimore and other cities on the bay, and 
by the Maryland and the Annapolis, Wash¬ 
ington & Baltimore electric railways. The 
population in the years 1910 and 1914 was 
8,609 and 8,643, respectively. 

Annapolis is best known as the seat of the 
United States Naval Academy (which see). 
It is a small, quaint place, one-half square 
mile in area, and retains many evidences of 
Colonial days. The state house, the corner 
stone of which was laid in 1772, occupies a 
hill in the center of the town (see Maryland, 
for illustration). Other interesting features 
are the state treasury building, Saint Anne’s 
Protestant Episcopal Church, Saint John’s 
College (founded in 1789), the marine bar¬ 
racks and naval experiment station and 
statues of Chief Justice Taney and General 
De Kalb. Extensive oyster-packing establish¬ 
ments serve a large foreign and domestic 
trade. 

A settlement called Providence was made on 
the site of Annapolis in 1649 by a company 
of Puritans from Virginia. After having 
adopted various names, that of Annapolis was 
chosen in 1694 in honor of Princess (later 
Queen) Anne. The place became the capital 
of the province in 1694, and in 1708 became 


ANNAPOLIS ROYAL 


264 


ANNE 


a city under a charter granted by Queen Anne. 
Congress met in the state house at Annap¬ 
olis from November, 1783, to June, 1784, and 
to this body, on the 23rd of December, 1783, 
General Washington resigned his commission 
as commander-in-chief of the Continental 
Army. 

ANNAPOLIS ROYAL, N. S., a town situated 
on the bay of Fundy, at the mouth of the 
Annapolis River, 130 miles west of Halifax. 
It is famous in history as the Port Royal of 
the Acadians, and is the oldest settlement of 
Europeans in British North America. It was 
founded in 1604, four years before Champlain 
founded Quebec, and sixteen years before the 
Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. During the 
seventeenth century it was the scene of many 
conflicts between the French and English, and 
several times changed hands. Finally, in 1713, 
it was ceded to England, and its name was 
changed from Port Roj^al to Annapolis Royal, 
in honor of Queen Anne. The old fortifica¬ 
tions have been restored by the town with 
financial assistance from the Dominion gov¬ 
ernment, and the memory of Sieur de Monts 
(see Monts, Sieur de), the founder of the 
settlement, is honored by a monument within 
the walls. 

Annapolis Royal is of importance at the 
present time. It is the export center for a 
famous apple-growing region, and also ships 
lumber, canned and preserved fish and bricks. 
The harbor, which is one of the most beauti¬ 
ful in the Dominion, can accommodate ocean 
steamers. Population in 1911, 1,019. 

ANN ARBOR, Mich., county seat of Wash¬ 
tenaw County and the home of the State 
University of Michigan. The city is in the 
southeastern part of the state, situated on hills 
overlooking a great expanse of rich fruit and 
farm lands. To the north is the valley of the 
Huron River. The city is on the Michigan 
Central, the Ann Arbor and the Detroit United 
railways. Interurban lines run to all of the 
larger surrounding towns, and the cement 
automobile road from Detroit part of the way 
to Chicago passes through Ann Arbor. Detroit 
is thirty-eight miles northeast, Jackson is the 
same distance west, and 2.44 miles almost due 
west is Chicago. The population in 1910 was 
14,817; in 1914 it was 14,948. To this number 
over 7,000 students are added during the regular 
university year and a large number during the 
summer session. The area of the city is nearly 
five square miles. 

Ann Arbor’s greatest asset is its university, 


to which have come eminent teachers and 
experts in practically every field. This town 
of beautiful homes and fine churches has grown 
up about the university. The campus is one- 
quarter mile square. The university property 
is worth $4,000,000. The student fraternity 
and sorority houses and such important build¬ 
ings as the Hill Auditorium, costing $300,000; 
the Alumni Hall, $190,000; Martha Cook Dor¬ 
mitory, $500,000; Newberry Dormitory, $300,- 
000; Michigan Union, $700,000, and the 
university Y. M. C. A., add much to the 
architectural features of the town. 

Ann Arbor has eight factories, each capital¬ 
ized for $100,000 or more. The important 
manufactures are steel ball-bearings, machin¬ 
ery, pianos, flour, automobile accessories, laces 
and curtains. The Barton Dam, a mile above 
the city, and the Argo and Geddes plant to¬ 
gether supply 6,000 horse-power a day of 
smokeless energy by which the factories are 
run. 

The city has nine parks, containing over 120 
acres. There are six banks, a Federal building 
costing $60,000, a Carnegie Library and several 
smaller ones, two public and a number of pri¬ 
vate hospitals. Ann Arbor was settled in 1824, 
and was incorporated as a city in 1851. The 
water plant is owned and operated by the 
city. w.m.s. 

ANNE (1665-1714), queen of Great Britain 
and Ireland, famous rather for the events of 
her reign than for what she herself accom¬ 
plished. While a woman of pleasing character 
and much good nature, she had no great force 
or ability. She 
was the second 
daughter of 
James II, then 
duke of York, was 
born at Twicken¬ 
ham, and with 
her father’s per- 
mission was 
brought up in the 
beliefs of the 
Church of Eng¬ 
land. In 1683 she 
was married to 
Prince George of 
Denmark, w h o 
never attempted to influence his wife in affairs 
of state. She was of the type that must be 
influenced by someone, however, and Lady 
Churchill, afterwards Duchess of Marlborough, 
gained such a hold on her as practically to 



ANNE 




ANNEALING 


265 


ANNEXATION 


dictate her course. When in 1688 James II was 
dethroned by William and Mary, Anne was 
induced by Lady Churchill to support her 
sister rather than her father, and in 1702 she 
succeeded William III on the throne. Lady 
Churchill and afterward Mrs. Masham inter¬ 
fered in all government affairs, and the court 
was the scene of constant struggles for supreme 
influence. 

The chief event of Anne’s reign was the 
union of England and Scotland, whereby Anne 
became the first to bear the title of ruler of 
‘‘Great Britain.” During much of her reign, 
also, the Succession Wars were being waged in 
Europe; one of these was called in America 
Queen Anne’s War, resulting from the Euro¬ 
pean War of the Spanish Succession (see Suc¬ 
cession Wars). Strange as it may seem, it 
resulted in France giving up to England practi¬ 
cally all of its northern possessions in America. 
Because of the number of illustrious men who 
lived and wrote during this period, the reign of 
Anne is often known as the Augustan Age; 
and indeed such names as those of Pope, Swift 
and Addison make it worthy of that name. 

ANNEALING, the process of gradually heat¬ 
ing and cooling to which many articles of metal 
and glass are subjected, in order to make them 
less brittle. When metal is cast, rolled into 
plates or drawn into wire, it acquires a certain 
brittleness which lessens its usefulness. In 
general, the more rapidly a metal is cooled, 
the harder and more brittle it is; slow cooling 
makes a softer but more tenacious metal. 
Steel tools, especially those used for cutting, 
are usually immersed in water, which is first 
heated and then allowed to cool; this pro¬ 
duces extreme hardness. Armor plate and can¬ 
non barrels, in which strength is essential 
rather than hardness, are usually annealed in 
oil, which cools very slowly. Boiler plates and 
a fe\y other articles are sometimes allowed to 
cool in the air. 

In the manufacture of glass all the better 
grades are annealed. The articles, usually 
arranged on iron trays, are placed in a long 
furnace, and their temperature is slowly raised 
almost to the fusing point by drawing them 
nearer and nearer the fire. They are then 
slowly cooled by drawing the trays away from 
the fire. See Glass; Iron; Steel; Tempering. 

ANNEXATION, in international law, the 
formal process by which a state acquires 
sovereignty over new territory. Such territory 
may be unoccupied except by aborigines, in 
which case annexation marks the establishment 


of civilized government, merely the closing 
act of discovery and conquest. If, however, 



DOMINION or CANADA 


]fil)!jf(Afextcob 


WAV* 

rePyw! 






leap 




1 ' 


UNITED STATES ANNEXATION MAP 

(a) Including solid black and parallei-lined 
section, original territory after 1783 ; the solid 
portion represents the thirteen colonies which 
fought for independence. ( b ) Purchased from 
Spain, 1819. ( c) Louisiana Purchase, 1803. (d) 

Texas annexation, 1845. ( e ) Mexican cession, 
1848. (/) By discovery, exploration, settlement 

and treaty of 1859. ( g ) Gadsden purchase from 

Mexico, 1853. 


the territory was a part of another civilized 
state, annexation implies that the new ruler 
acquires all rights of ownership and completely 
displaces the previous sovereign. According to 
general usage, annexation includes not only 
the acquisition by one state of territory adjoin¬ 
ing it, such as the transfer of Alsace-Lorraine 
to Germany after the Franco-German War, but 
also the acquisition of lands far removed from 
the boundaries of the nation acquiring these 
new possessions. Examples of the latter are 
the annexation of the Philippine Islands, 
Hawaii and Porto Rico to the United States, 
and of the Boer republics in South Africa to 
the British Empire. 

Annexation may be the result of purchase, 
of peaceful cession, or of conquest. For the 
purposes of international law, however, all 
cessions of territory become annexation, re¬ 
gardless of any pressure brought to bear on the 
ceding country. When the United States first 
acquired new territory, the Louisiana Purchase 
of 1803, there was considerable doubt as to 
the power of the national government to add 
to the nation’s domain, because no such power 
was expressly granted by the Constitution. 
Since then other additions have been made, 
and the government’s right to annex territory 
is generally admitted as a right which naturally 
belongs to a sovereign power. 

The ownership or sovereignty of some parts 
of the world is constantly changing; some of 
the important recent annexations are listed 
below: 







































ANNIE LAURIE 


26G 


ANNISTON 


Territory Annexed 

Original Owner 

Transfer By 

Present Owner 

Date of 
Acqui¬ 
sition 

Alaska. 

Russia 

Purchase 

United States 

1867 

Alsace-Lorraine. 

France 

Conquest 

German Empire 

1871 

Bosnia-Herzegovina. 

Turkey 

Protectorate 

Austria-Hungary 

1908 

California and New Mexico.. 

Mexico 

Conquest 

United States 

1848 

Crete. 

Turkey 

Protectorate 

Greece 

1913 

Cyprus. 

Turkey 

Protectorate 

Great Britain 

1914 

Florida. 

Spain 

Purchase 

United States 

1821 

Gadsden Purchase. 

Mexico 

Purchase 

United States 

1853 

Guam. 

Spain 

Conquest* 

United States 

1898 

Hawaii. 

Native Kingdom 

Republic 

United States 

1898 

Korea. 

Native Kingdom 


Japan 


Louisiana. 

France 

Purchase 

United States 

1803 

Madagascar. 

Native Kingdom 

Protectorate 

France 

1896 

Northwest Terr. (Canada)... 

Hudson’s Bay Co. 

Purchase 

Canada 


Orange Free State. 

Boer Republic 

Conquest 

Great Britain 


Philippines. 

Spain 

Conquest* 

United States 

1898 

Porto Rico. 

Spain 

Conquest* 

United States 

1898 

Samoa. 

Native Kingdom 


U. S. etc.f 


Texas. 

Mexico 

Republic 

United States 

1845 

Transvaal. 

Boer Republic 

Conquest 

Great Britain 


Tripoli. 

Turkey 

Conquest 

Italy 



*Guam, the Philippine Islands and Porto Rico were ceded by Spain as a result of the Spanish- 
Arnerican War, but the United States paid $20,000,000 to Spain in compensation, 
fUnited States, Great Britain, Germany. 


ANNIE LAURIE, law’ ri, a famous Scottish 
song, as beautiful and as popular now as when 
written, in the seventeenth century. William 
Douglas wrote it of a real Annie Laurie, daugh¬ 
ter of Sir Robert Laurie of Maxwelton, with 
whom he was in love, but its charming lines 
evidently did not win her affection, for she 
married another man. 

Lady John Scott Spottiswood, an English 
music writer, loving the old words and feeling 
that they deserved music as beautiful, wrote in 
1836 the tune to which they have ever since 
been sung, and which has become so much a 
part of them that the two can scarcely be 
thought of separately. The first stanza runs 
as follows: 

Maxwelton’s bi'aes are bonnie 
When early fa’s the dew, 

And it’s there that Annie Laurie 
Gie’d me her promise true— 

Gie’d me her promise true, 

Which ne’er forgot will be ; 

And for bonnie Annie Laurie 
I’d lay me doune and dee. 

ANNISTON, an'is tun, Ala., a progressive 
industrial city with a population, chiefly Amer¬ 
ican, of 13,686 in 1914, an increase of 892 


since 1910. It is the county seat of Calhoun 
County, situated in the northeastern part of 
the state, on the Southern and the Louisville 
and Nashville railways. Birmingham is about 
sixty-three miles southwest, Atlanta 104 miles 
east, and Montgomery 148 miles south. The 
city was founded in 1873 by the Woodstock 
Iron Company and was incorporated as a city 
in 1885. Its name was received from the wife 
of one of its founders, whose name was Annie. 
The area of the city^ is about nine and one- 
half square miles. 

Locally, Anniston is known as the Model 
City and is located in the midst of a natural 
park, sheltered by the Blue Ridge Mountains. 
Pulpit Rock, the loftiest peak, 2,400 feet, and 
the highest point in the state, is plainly in view 
from the city. It is also called the City of 
Churches, on account of the number and 
unusual architectural beauty of its religious 
buildings; of these, the Church of Saint 
Michael and All Angels is the most notable. 
Anniston College, for women, the Alabama 
Presbyterian College, for men, the Noble Insti¬ 
tute, for both sexes, the Barber Memorial 
Seminary for colored girls, a normal school and 








































ANNIVERSARIES 


267 


ANNUNZIO 


a high school, offer unusual educational advan¬ 
tages for a city of its size. The Federal build¬ 
ing, erected in 1905 at a cost of $150,000; the 
courthouse, which cost $75,000, and a $100,000 
hotel are buildings worthy of mention. These, 
with the many industries of cast-iron pipe, cot¬ 
ton mills, car works, ordnance works, machine 
shops, steel products and pig-iron furnaces, 
testify to the progress and activity of the city. 

The character of its industries is due to its 
location; it is in one of the most important coal 
and iron mining regions of the United States. 
The product of cast-iron pipe is 200,000 tons 
annually and 25,000 bales of cotton are an¬ 
nually consumed by eight cotton mills. Valu¬ 
able timber tracts in the vicinity are the source 
of an important lumber business and the cotton 
and agricultural products are large. m.c.k. 

ANNIVERSARIES, anivur' sarriz, FOR 
CELEBRATION. There are certain days of 
the year that have a special meaning because 
they are the anniversaries of events that have 
influenced the history of the world. Such dates 
are the birthdays of the world’s great men, and 
the anniversaries of decisive battles or of deeds 
that have made history. In the articles in 
these volumes descriptive of the months of the 
year will be found hundreds of dates of anni¬ 
versaries selected with a view to their fitness 
for celebration. To these the reader is directed. 

ANNUALS, • an yu’ als, plants which spring 
from the seed, blossom, produce fruit and die, 
all in one year. They are distinguished from 
biennials, which take two years to complete 
their life’s course, and from perennials, which 
live indefinitely instead of dying when their 
fruit has been produced. For the most part 
annuals are natives of fairly dry places, but 
they have been introduced into all climates, 
and afford some of the most useful as well as 
ornamental of plants. Thus the pea, the bean, 
the tomato, the nasturtium and the sweet pea 
are all annuals, and must be raised from seed 
each year. In climates which have a cold 
winter there is danger of confusing annuals 
with biennials or perennials, which die down 
to the ground at the close of the growing 
season. Thus the carrot is a biennial, though 
it shows no more life during the winter than a 
dead tomato plant. See Biennials; Peren¬ 
nials. 

ANNU'ITY, from the Latin annus, mean¬ 
ing year, is a sum of money paid annually, but 
not to be confused with interest. A person 
usually is said to buy an annuity; that is, he 
pays a certain sum as consideration, in return 


for which some other person or company agrees 
to pay him or his heirs an annuity. The lump 
sum necessary to secure a certain annual re¬ 
turn is determined by rules and principles 
which have been the subjects of careful 
investigation. If the annuity is to be per¬ 
petual, the present value will evidently depend 
upon the rate of interest on money; if the 
annuity is to be for life, the present value, 
obviously, is dependent upon not only the rate 
of interest, but the number of years the bene¬ 
ficiary will live, which in turn depends upon 
age, sex, climate and other influences. In some 
European countries the granting of annuities 
is conducted by the government; in the United 
States the purchase of annuities is not nearly 

so common a practice as in Europe. Its place 

* 

is taken largely by life insurance, which, 
obviously, is exactly opposite in character, the 
difference being that small annual payments 

are made, with the agreement that at a cer- 

% 

tain time a lump sum will be paid to a desig¬ 
nated beneficiary. 

Under the title Mortality, Laws of, a table 
of probable length of life is given. 

ANNUNCIATION, a nun' si a shun, The, the 
title of several famous paintings which pic¬ 
ture the angel Gabriel announcing to the Vir¬ 
gin Mary that she has been chosen to be the 
Mother of Christ. The story, a favorite with 
religious painters, is told in Luke I, 26-38. The 
Virgin is usually shown with a book or needle¬ 
work; the angel bears a lily or an olive branch, 
for thus the early legends represented these 
characters. Many master artists have been 
attracted by the subject of the Annunciation, 
and their treatment of the story is reverent 
and exalted; the paintings have always the 
spirit of peace, harmony and mystery. Well- 
known paintings bearing this title are those 
by Andrea del Sarto (Pitti Gallery, Florence); 
Fra Angelico (Church of San Marco, Flor¬ 
ence) ; Titian (Venice); and Dante Gabriel 
Rossetti (National Gallery, London). In the 
latter the Virgin is a portrait of the artist’s 
sister, Christina Rossetti. See Painting. 

ANNUNZIO, Gabrielle d’, dahnnoon' dzeo, 
(1864- ), an Italian poet, novelist and dram¬ 

atist, the foremost literary personage in Italy 
at the beginning of the twentieth century. In 
1915 his written and spoken appeals to his 
countrymen were the chief factors in rousing 
their feelings against Austria and Germany, 
thus plunging Italy into the War of the Na¬ 
tions. This intense nationalism was in strik¬ 
ing contrast to d’Annunzio’s early philosophy 


ANSONIA 


268 


ANT 


of life. Though he was born and educated in 
Italy, his early literary works were French in 
spirit, and strongly showed the influence of 
Maupassant, Paul Bourget and Tolstoy. They 
were, to a large extent, psychological studies, 
pessimistic and occasionally frank beyond the 
point of propriety. His later work, especially 
a volume of lyrics, Laudi, has won an enormous 
popularity, and seems a more creditable contri¬ 
bution to Italian literature. 

Of his novels the most important are The 
Child oj Pleasure, The Intruder, The Triumph 
of Death, Virgins oj the Bocks and The Flame 
of Life. His plays are mostly lacking in action, 
and have not been very successful on the stage; 
the best of them are Francesca da Rimini, The 
Daughter of Jorio, The Martyrdom of Saint 
Sebastian, a mystery plaj^, and The Dead City, 
written for Sarah Bernhardt. 

ANSONIA, Conn., is in New Haven County, 
in the southwestern part of the state. It is 


twelve miles west of New Haven, on the east 
bank of the Naugatuck River, and on the 
Berkshire and Naugatuck divisions of the New 
York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad. The 
city has electric interurban service. The pop¬ 
ulation in 1910 was 15,152; in 1914 it had 
increased to 16,204. 

Ansonia was founded in 1840 by Anson Green 
Phelps, and named in his honor. A public 
library, built as a memorial to his memory by 
his granddaughter, Caroline Phelps Stokes; 
the city hall; opera house; Y. M. C. A. build¬ 
ing, and a concrete bridge constructed at a cost 
of $175,000, are the interesting features of the 
town. Ansonia was at first a part of the town¬ 
ship of Derby; it was incorporated as a separate 
township in 188SLand became a city in 1893. 

The important manufactured products of the 
city are heavy machinery, brass and copper 
goods, woolen goods, clocks, electrical appli¬ 
ances, rubber, sugar, etc. 



NT. “Go to the ant, thou slug¬ 
gard,” wrote Solomon thousands of years ago; 
“consider her ways and be wise; which having 
no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat 
in the summer and gathereth her food in the 
harvest.” And Shakespeare put into the mouth 
of his delightful fool in King Lear the words, 
“We’ll set thee to school to an ant, to teach 
thee there’s no labouring i’ the winter.” 

There is a significance about these references, 
made many centuries apart, both before the 
days of systematic nature study. They show 
that the ant has always attracted attention; 
not by reason of beauty, like the birds and 
butterflies, nor because, like the bee, it fur¬ 
nishes man with a delicious food; but because 
its activities suggest in so many w r ays those 
of human beings. In general it is the higher 
animals in which man is most interested—those 
which are structurally not unlike himself; but 
the ant is an exception to this rule because 
it shares with man one dominant trait—it is 
a strongly social being. 

Rank in Insect World. Like the bees, with 
which they have many characteristics in com¬ 


mon, the ants belong to the great order of 
membrane-wings, or Hymenoptera, and by 
some students of insect life they are classed 
at the very top. This does not mean that they 
are more intelligent or more capable than 
all other insects. The social bees, for instance, 
display fully as much ingenuity and build far 
more elaborate homes for themselves; but next 
to man ants are the most adaptable form of 
animal life in the world. Like man, they have 
found their way everywhere. No region is too 
hot or too cold, too dry or too moist to meet 
their demands. Originally flesh-eaters, many 
species have so far adapted themselves to 
conditions that they can live and thrive on 
plant food; and just because of this they can 
maintain large colonies. For in all ranks of 
animal life the flesh-eaters are inclined to be 
solitary, partly because their preying instinct 
makes them savage, but chiefly because animal 
food is nowhere certain enough and plentiful 
enough to furnish unlimited supplies. 

Nor is this the only way in which the ants 
show their adaptability. They can endure 
astonishingly wide temperature changes with- 



























ANT 


269 


ANT 


out apparent suffering, merely digging them¬ 
selves deeper into the ground when extremes 
of heat or cold are to be guarded against. 
Neither drought nor flood, unless too long con¬ 
tinued, can destroy their communities, and 
even food scarcity can be endured for a time. 
The female, indeed, can store up within her 
body enough food so that she does not need 
to eat for the greater part of a year. No 
wonder then, that ants are the “dominant” 
insects, and that, as some authorities hold, 
reptiles have developed scales, caterpillars hair 
and animals fur, partially as defenses against 
the everywhere-present little creatures. 

Ants establish more lasting communities, too, 
than do any other of the lower animal forms. 
A beehive may keep its tenants indefinitely, 
but they are not the same tenants, for bees 
are short-lived, the queen living but three 
years, or thereabouts, and the workers but a 
few weeks. The worker ants, on the other 
hand, live from four to seven years, and it 
is nothing unusual for a queen to attain the 
age of fifteen years. 

The Three Classes. In studying ants, one 
is constantly reminded of the closely related 
bees, and one of the fundamental resemblances 
consists in the number of life-forms. For 
among the ants, as among the bees, there are 
not only males and females, but workers, or 
neuters, as well. These last are but undevel¬ 
oped females, for the most part sterile, but 
occasionally able to perform the important 
function of laying eggs. The workers are by 



FEMALE WORKER 


FEMALE WITH WINGS _ MALE _ 

far the most numerous class, though each 
ant-community has a number of females, and 
not just one queen, as do the bees. The 


females are practically always winged, and 
usually the males, but the workers, which are 
the smallest members of the colony, are wing¬ 
less. There is no romance for them; no flight 
into the air. They are born to work, and 
they remain faithful to their tasks until they 
die and are carried out of the nest. The 
males, on the other hand, do no work, and their 
life-period is short, for the ants are too careful 
economists to support for a long time any 
parasitic members. 

Parts of an Ant. Since it is impossible to 
go anywhere without finding ants of some 
species or other, everybody can recognize them 
at sight. The most noticeable distinguishing 
mark is the sharp differentiation between head, 
thorax and abdomen—in some species so pro¬ 
nounced that it seems strange that the ants 
do not actually break in two. It will be of 
interest here to find out a little more about 
the parts of an ant—a few of the facts that 
can be discovered best by means of a micro¬ 
scope. 

The outer covering of ants is tough and 
horny, in some species shiny, in others dull 
and ridged. One of their chief cares is to keep 
this horny covering spotlessly clean, and much 
time is spent in the nest in polishing each 
other with antennae and with tongue. In the 
accompanying diagram the various parts are 
clearly shown. First, there are the eyes—very 
curious and interesting organs. If examined 
under a microscope, each of these “lateral 
eyes,” as the diagram calls them, is seen to be 
made up of a group of little lenses, or facets, 
fitted into each other like a honeycomb. Now, 
ants cannot turn their eyes about to the right 
or left, but each lens enables them to see in 
a slightly different direction, so that alto¬ 
gether they gain a fairly good all-round view. 
These compound eyes are not the only ones 
possessed by ants, for many of them have, on 
the top of their heads, three ocelli, or little 
eyes. But with all this provision ants do 
not really see well. Why should they, when 
most of their time is spent underground, in 
darkness? 

If eyes, however, are of no use to an ant in 
its home environment, the same cannot be 
said of the other sense organs, the antennae, 
or feelers. These exceedingly delicate “horns” 
are fitted into little sockets at the front of 
the head, and are moved to and fro with 
great rapidity when the ant is exploring or 
finding its way in the dark. The antennae are 
not organs of feeling merely; in some way not 





ANT 


270 


ANT 


understood they are organs of smell as well, 
and many a time when an ant seems to be 
guided by its eyesight it is really dependent 
on its sense of smell. In the diagram the 
word antenna does not appear, but the two 



parts of it are named; the jointed part, which 
looks like a string of little beads, is called the 
flagellum, and the scape is the unjointed part. 

The other names in the diagram may at first 
look forbidding, but a very little study will 
make them clear. Femur, tibia, tarsus —those 
terms are familiar to anyone who has the 
slightest acquaintance with anatomy, for in 
human beings they are the names given to 
the thigh-bone, the lower bone of the leg, and 
the instep, with its many small bones; a glance 
at the illustration will show that they are used 
for corresponding parts of the ant’s anatomy. 
The three names which relate to the thorax 
are very simple when it is understood that pro 
means fore, or front; meso means middle, and 
meta means hind, or after. 

The mandibles, or jaws, are not shown in the 
illustration, but they are by no means unim¬ 
portant in the ant’s scheme of things. Numer¬ 
ous indeed are the parts these mandibles are 
called on to play; they serve as hands, for 
the carrying of prey or other burdens; as 
spades, as saws, as swords, as knives and forks 
—as any sort of implement or weapon, in fact, 
of which the ant has need. 

How Ants Live. All this, while interesting 
enough, is only preliminary to the really fas¬ 
cinating question of the home-life of ants. 
To be sure, all ants have not the same nesting 
habits, any more than all birds; but of the 
5,000 or more species that have been described, 


all are social—that is, they live in colonies. 
Most numerous of the ants in temperate 
regions are those that make their nests in the 
ground, and their mode of life will be described 
here in some detail. 

The Nuptial Flight. Let us suppose that 
we are watching an old, well-established com¬ 
munity on a bright summer day. Some of the 
workers are busy about their regular tasks, 
but many of them are running excitedly to 
and fro, darting into the hole and then out 
with no apparent purpose. Suddenly some¬ 
thing happens. Out of the hole with a rush 
come the gauzy-winged males and females, 
called forth not only by the warmth of the 
sun but by some mysterious instinct which tells 
them that mating time has come. Up and up 
they fly, until they are lost to sight and only 
the strongest males are able to overtake the 
fleeing queens. High in the air the mating 
takes place; and then the joyous hour of flight 
and romance is over, and both return to hum¬ 
drum, earthy life. The male dies almost im¬ 
mediately, and the female, realizing that never 
again will she need her delicate wings, tears 
them off or rubs them off. 

The New Colony. Some of the queens are 
captured by the workers and borne back to 
the communities from which they came, but 
others found new colonies. The wingless 
queen, who has never done any real work in 
her life, now digs for herself a little burrow 
in the soil, perhaps wearing away her mandibles 
and maiming herself for life. Having hollowed 
out a small chamber at the lower end of the 
burrow, she closes the opening completely, and 
remains underground, without food, for month 
after month. The first eggs she lays become 
in time tiny legless grubs, or larvae, which 
are perfectly helpless and must be cared for by 
the queen. She feeds them with secretions 
from her own body, until very slowly they 
pass to the next stage, becoming cocoons, or 
pupae. These in time become worker ants, 
perfectly formed but very small— minims, they 
are called; and the queen’s days of caring for 
her offspring are then over, for the little work¬ 
ers relieve her from all her tasks, save that 
of egg-laying. 

The Nest. They dig a real nest, with branch¬ 
ing galleries leading to chambers of various 
sizes, and there then appears the opening at 
the surface of the soil and the familiar crater¬ 
shaped ant-hill, formed of the tiny pellets of 
soil which are brought to the surface. In some 
of the chambers food is stored; in others are 























ANT 


271 


ANT 


placed the eggs and the larvae and pupae as 
they develop. There is a regular scheme of 
distribution of these, depending apparently on 
temperature and moisture. The duties of the 
workers are not finished when they have placed 
their charges, for the queen and the larvae 
must be fed, and the young in all stages must 
be kept strictly clean. Many workers spend 
most of their time polishing the eggs and the 
larvae with their tongues, while others take 
the part of nurse-maids and carry the young 
about. In the evening, after a hot day, long 
trains of workers can often be seen, bearing 
in their mandibles the little white bodies which 
are usually mistaken for eggs, but which are 
in reality larvae and pupae. Sometimes these 
are deposited on the ground and allowed to 
remain there, but often they are borne to and 
fro by their careful nurses, like children out 
for an airing. 

Just here a word of caution is necessary. 
There is always the danger in studying about 



NEST OF THE COMMON ANT 

any form of animal life that actions may be 
over-interpreted; that the enthusiastic ob¬ 
server may argue that because men when they 


act in certain ways are moved by certain feel¬ 
ings, like actions in animals are to be ac¬ 
counted for by similar impulses. To be sure, 
the ants show what appears to be the tenderest 
affection for their charges, but their movements 
are governed by unreasoning instinct and not 
by conscious solicitude. Many an observer 
has been so misled, and has written tales of 
the joy of ants on meeting after a long separa¬ 
tion or of their grief over their dead, and of 
the elaborate funeral ceremonies—tales which 
seem too good to be untrue, but which never¬ 
theless must be cast into the realm of fable. 

Ant Food. As stated above, the earliest ants 
ate only flesh-food, and there are many species 
which still hold to this original preference. 
Young naturalists have a clever way of taking 
advantage of this fact when they have some 
small animal, as a mouse or a bird, which 
they wish reduced to skeleton form. If a popu¬ 
lous ant nest be chosen, and the little animal 
be left close enough so that it cannot be over¬ 
looked, it does not take long for the perfectly 
clean skeleton to appear. Ants will also empty 
birds’ eggs if the shells are not too tough. 

But a great many species of ants have pro¬ 
gressed beyond this hunting stage, where the 
whole business of life is foraging for prey, and 
are living in what might be called a pastoral 
or agricultural state. Some of them keep herds 
of “ant cows” and “milk” them in most ap¬ 
proved fashion—“cows” which are nothing 
more than plant lice, known as aphides, that 
secrete a sweet juice (see Aphides). The lice 
are “pastured” on some plant and the ants 
stand guard over them, going about from one 
to another and stroking them with their anten¬ 
nae until they yield a clear drop of fluid, which 
is eagerly swallowed. 

Others collect seed or even grain and store 
it in their nests, where it is kept scrupulously 
clean. Certain observers, noticing about the 
nest of seed-eating ants circles of grow¬ 
ing plants, have declared that the ants actually 
planted seed and lay in wait for the harvest, 
but more careful study reveals the fact that 
the plants have sprung up from seed accounted 
useless by the ants and cast out of the nest. 
Then there are the interesting fungus-eating 
ants, which go about securing their novel food 
supply in systematic manner. Each foraging 
worker returns to the nest bearing a leaf, which 
is carried by the stem, with the blade extending 
over the ant’s back. So suggestive is the 
appearance that these ants are commonly 
known as umbrella, or parasol, ants, but it is 







































ANT 


272 


ANT 



Outline 


I. Parts of the Ant 

(1) Head 

(a) Lateral eyes 

(b) Ocelli 

(c) Antennae 

(d) Mandibles 
(2 ) Thorax 

(3) Abdomen 

(4) Legs 

(5) Wings of males and females 

II. Classes of Individuals 

(1) Male 

(a) Usually winged 

(b) Does no work 

(c) Short-lived 

(2) Females 

(a) Largest form 

(b) Winged 

(c) Lays all eggs 

(3) Worker or neuter 

(a) Undeveloped female 

(b) Smallest form 

(c) Most numerous 

(d) Does all work 

(e) Wingless 

III. Rank Among Insects 

(1) Intelligence 

(2) Adaptability 

(a) To climatic conditions 

(b) To food supply 

(3) Length of life 

IV. Mode of Life 

(1) All species social 

(2) Plant-dwellers 

(a) Nests in dead trees 

(b) Nests in living plants 


(3) Soil-dwellers 

(a) Manner of nest 
1. Galleries 

• 2. Chambers 

(b) Mating 

(c) Founding new colony 

1. Queen’s part 

2. Workers’ part 

(d) Regular tasks 

1. Keeping nest clean 

2. Securing food 

3. Feeding young 

4. “Nurse-maids” 

V. Development of Young 

(1) Egg 
( 2) Larva 

(3) Pupa 

(4) Young ant 

VI. Choice of Food 

(1) Flesh-eaters 

(2) “Pastoral” ants 

(a) Plant lice kept as “cows” 

(3) Seed-eaters 

(4) Fungus-eaters 

VII. Relation to Man 

(1) Effect on soil 

(2) Help in decomposition of animal mat¬ 

ter 

(3) Wood-gnawing 

(4) Harm to plants from pastured lice 

(5) Enemies of vermin 

VIII. How to Study Ants 

(1) Making a formicary 

(2) Necessity for darkness 

(3) Furnishing food 

(4) Furnishing “cemeteries” 

(5) Use of magnifying glass 


Questions 


What reason is there for considering the ant as the highest type among the 
insects? 


Are there solitary ants, as there are solitary bees? 

What is a formicariumf 

The first three stages in the life of the race are generally spoken of as the hunting, 
pastoral and agricultural stages. Is there anything in the ant world to correspond to 
these? 

In what ways does the ant resemble man in its mode of life? 

Why are ant communities more lasting than those of any other insect? 

Is there perfect social equality among ants, or is there always an inferior class? 





















ANT 


273 


ANT 



Outline and Questions on the Ant—Continued 

How many kinds of individuals are to be found in each ant colony? 
Which is the longest lived? The shortest lived? 

Has an ant more or fewer eyes than a man? 

What did all ants originally eat? 

Why has their broadening taste made possible larger communities? 

Does the female ever do any work? The male? 

What are the little white burdens which the workers sometimes bring to the 
surface of the soil? 

What function do the antennae fulfil? 

What are the three divisions of the thorax called? 

What connection have ants, according to some authorities, with the fact that 
reptiles have scales? 

To what other insect is the ant closely related? 

What is the meaning of the name of the order to which both belong? 

Are ants widely spread over the earth or restricted to a few places? 

Give several proofs that the ants are thoroughly sanitary in their home life. 

What is the most noticeable difference between the workers and the other two 
classes of ants? 

Why is it wise to use a red light when examining ants in a temporary nest? 

Why does the eye of an ant have more than one lens, or facet? 

What are the two parts of the antenna called? 

What three names, used in human anatomy, are applied to the three parts of the 
leg of an ant? 

Which are an ant’s most delicate sense organs? 

About how many species of ants have been described? 

Why does the female tear off her wings? 

How is the queen supplied with food after she has shut herself up in her burrow 
to begin a new colony? 

What are the first little workers that hatch out called? 

To which class of ants does the institution of slave-holding really do harm? 

How do the ants repay the acacia tree for the board and lodging furnished them? 
Into what error have sympathetic observers of ants frequently fallen? 

Are the young in their various stages of development kept jumbled together in 


the nest? 

To what characteristic of the ant do most literary allusions have reference? 


Is an ant’s skeleton on the inside or the outside? 

What is the origin of the “gardens” which sometimes grow about ants’ nests? 
Which ants are called the “Huns and Tartars of the insect world”? 

What is their method of crossing a stream? 


Do the slave-holders capture full-grown ants and force them into servitude? 


What effect does the nest-digging have on the soil? 

Is the farmer who grows corn glad to have colonies of black ants in his fields? 


What special provision does the acacia described by Belt make for its ant-guests? 


Why are the ants that live on fungi commonly known as parasol ants? 

What is a neuter? 

Where is the ant’s sense of smell located? 

In what way can the amateur naturalist profit by the presence near his home of 
an ant-community? 

What functions have the mandibles? 












ANT 


274 


ANT 


not as a protection that the leaves are wanted. 
Once in the nest, the leaves are cut by the 
jaws of the ants into tiny pieces, and on the 
molding heap so formed grow fungi, the 
favorite food of these ants. The heap is kept 
very clean, so that no bacteria ever grow 
upon it. 

Certain ants, particularly in the tropics, de¬ 
pend on plants not only for food but for 
dwelling places as well. The rotting stump 
of a tree, the hollow stem of a weed, or the 
capacious trunk of a tulip tree affords them a 
comfortable home; but perhaps the most at¬ 
tractive type of plant home is that described 
by Thomas Belt in his Naturalist in Nica¬ 
ragua. 

One low tree, very characteristic of the dry 
savannahs, is a species of acacia, growing to a 
height of fifteen or twenty feet. The branches 
and trunk are covered with strong curved spines, 
set in pairs, from which it receives the name of 
the bull’s-horn, they having a very strong re¬ 
semblance to the horns of that quadruped. These 
horns are hollow, and are tenanted by ants, that 
make a small hole for their entrance and exit 
near one end of the thorn, and also burrow 
through the partition that separates the two 
horns ; so that the one entrance serves for both. 
Here they rear their young, and in the wet 
season every one of the thorns is tenanted, and 
hundreds of ants are to be seen running about, 
especially over the young leaves. These ants 
form a most efficient standing army for the plant, 
which prevents not only the mammalia from 
browsing on the leaves, but delivers it from 
the attacks of a much more dangerous enemy— 
the leaf-cutting ants. For these services the 
ants are not only securely housed by the plant, 
but are provided with a bountiful supply of 
food ; and to secure their attendance at the right 
time and place, this food is so arranged and 
distributed as to effect that object with won¬ 
derful perfection. The leaves are bipinnate. At 
the base of each pair of leaflets, on the mi Irib, 
is a crater-formed gland, which, when the leaves 
are young, secretes a honey-like liquid. Of this 
the ants are very fond; they are constantly 
running about from one gland to another to sip 
up the honey as it is secreted. 

But this is not all; there is a still more won¬ 
derful provision of more solid food. At the end 
of each of the small divisions of the compound 
leaflet there is, when the leaf first unfolds, a 
little yellow fruit-like body united by a point at 
its base to the end of the pinnule. Examined 
through a microscope, this little appendage looks 
like a golden pear. When the leaf first unfolds, 
the little pears are not quite ripe, and the ants 
are continually employed going from one to an¬ 
other, examining them. When an ant finds one 
sufficiently advanced, it bites the small point of 
attachment; then, bending down the fruit-like 
body, it breaks it off and bears it away in 
triumph to the nest. All the fruit-like bodies 
do not ripen at once, but successively, so that 
the ants are kept about the young leaf for some 


time after it unfolds. Thus the young leaves 
are always guarded by the ants; and no cater¬ 
pillar or large animal could attempt to injure 
them without being attacked by the little war¬ 
riors. The fruit-like bodies are about one-twelftli 
of an inch long, and are about one-third of the 
size of the ants; so that the ant bearing one 
away is as heavily laden as a man bearing a 
large bunch of plantains. I think these facts 
show that the ants are really kept by the acacia 
as a standing army, to protect its leaves from 
the attacks of herbivorous mammals and in¬ 
sects. 

Studying Ants. Many forms of animal life 
which it is interesting to read about cannot 
be studied at close range, but this is not true 
of ants. With very little trouble anyone may 
observe for himself the habits of these little 
creatures. The materials needed are simple— 



A FORMICARIUM 

A simple suggestion for a temporary home for 
ants while they are being studied. 

an ordinary tumbler, a saucer or plate, and, 
if possible, a small magnifying glass which may 
be purchased for fifty cents. 

Into the tumbler put part of an ants’ nest, 
such as may be found in any open, sandy 
stretch. The tumbler should be about half 
full, and as many of the ant colony as possible 
should be included. Then place the tumbler 
in the plate or saucer and pour water around 
it, or your ant visitors may have escaped by 














































































































ANT 


275 


ANTANANARIVO 


the next morning. This nest with which you 
have provided the ants—indeed, any ants’ nest 
—is called a jormicarium, or formicary , from 
the Latin word formica, meaning ant. It still 
differs in one important particular from a true 
ants’ nest, for that, being underground, is in 
total darkness; and total darkness is very 
grateful to ants. Wrap a dark cloth, therefore, 
around your tumbler, and remove it only when 
you wish to make your observations. There 
is one curious fact about ants’ sensitiveness to 
light—it disappears in the case of red light, 
to which they seem almost totally blind. If, 
therefore, you can take your formicary for 
study into a room with a red light, you will 
disturb the little inhabitants far less than if 
you subject them to untempered sunlight. 

Probably, in taking up the material for your 
formicary, you have included no food, so it 
will be necessary for you to “board” } r our 
visitors as well as house them. Bread crumbs, 
broken rice, a little honey or sugar or a 
crumbled nut meat or two will prove quite 
satisfactory to them. Something else, also, 
you may provide them with—something which 
the old-time observer with his over-interpreta¬ 
tion of facts called cemeteries. An ant com¬ 
munity is kept strictly sanitary, and no refuse 
of any sort is allowed to accumulate in the 
chambers or galleries. Thus the bodies of dead 
ants are carried out immediately, and if you 
will place on the nest a paper box about an 
inch square and a quarter of an inch in height 
you will find that it will probably be made use 
of as a repository for the dead. 

Watching closely, you may see the worker 
ants reconstructing the nest which has been 
disturbed in process of transference to the 
glass. Winding avenues and spreading cham¬ 
bers will appear, and you may know that the 
part of the soil which you cannot see is tun¬ 
neled in the same manner. You may occasion¬ 
ally see, too, the larvae and pupae brought up 
to the air and warmth; and if you have been 
fortunate enough to take up with the nest all 
three kinds of ants, you may discover with 
your magnifying glass the winged males and 
females. No matter how long and how care¬ 
fully you watch, however, you will never see 
an ant with wings doing any sort of work. 

Beneficial or Harmful? Nobody doubts that 
earthworms really do good by stirring up the 
surface soil, but seldom are the ants given 
credit for any such helpfulness. They are, 
however, valuable in much the same way, and 
they are useful also in hastening the decompo¬ 


sition of organic matter. One large colony it 
was estimated, brought into the nest daily 
about 100,000 dead insects. But not all ants 
do more good than harm. Many a garden spot 
has been rendered unattractive by their nests; 
many a house has suffered real damage from 
their gnawing. Perhaps the most troublesome 
habit of the ants, however, is that of pasturing 
plant-sucking insects. The common black ant 
is very fond of the fluid secreted by the corn- 
root louse, and does not trust to chance to find 
it. Collecting all the eggs it can, it bears them 
to its nest, and there cares for them during 
the winter and until the young hatch out in 
the spring. These young lice it carefully places 
on the roots of the corn, where they may do 
great harm to the farmer’s prospects. 

Further Interesting Facts. One of the most 
curious things to be observed in connection 
with some species of ants is their habit of 
keeping slaves. From some nest not far from 
their own they capture eggs, larvae and pupae, 
which they care for until these have developed 

into full-grown ants. Then the “nurses” cease 

• 

their labors, and the “foreign” ants are com¬ 
pelled to do all the work. But it is the slave¬ 
holders and not the slaves who suffer from this 
custom, for the lazy captors lose in time all 
capacity for work and become degenerate. 

Much has been told about the wonderful 
customs of the driver ants—those “Huns and 
Tartars of the insect world” which dd not hesi¬ 
tate to prey on animals thousands of times 
larger than they are. Sometimes, in the trop¬ 
ical or subtropical regions in which they live, 
they invade a house, and promptly all vermin 
take leave. Bugs, mice, even the largest and 
fiercest rats, dare not enter into contest with 
them, and thus far the householder is the 
gainer. But the cure speedily proves worse 
than the disease, for the ants infest everything. 
Beds may be placed with their legs in pans of 
water, but the little pests drop down from the 
ceiling. It is these driver ants which form the 
living bridges so often referred to, clinging to 
each other with feet and mandibles until there 
is a chain long enough to reach from one side 
to the other of a stream. v.l.k. 

This article has been able merely to touch on 
the outstanding points in this fascinating sub¬ 
ject. The reader who is sufficiently interested 
to desire further information will find W. M. 
Wheeler's book on Ants most helpful. 

ANTANANARIVO, an tan an ar i' vo, the 
older form of the word Tananarivo (which 
see). 


ANTARCTIC CIRCLE 


276 


ANTARCTIC LANDS AND SEAS 


ANTARCTIC, ant ark' tic, CIRCLE, an imag¬ 
inary circle parallel to the equator, 23 Mj° 
north of the South Pole. The name is derived 
from the Greek words meaning opposite the 
bear, in allusion to the Great Bear, the most 
conspicuous constellation within the Arctic 
regions (see Bear, Great). Polar conditions 
of climate exist considerably north of the 
Antarctic Circle, though it is usually consid¬ 
ered the northern limit of the Antarctic Ocean. 
When the sun reaches the Tropic of Capricorn 
on its southward journey, the regions south 
of the Antarctic Circle have no night. When 
on the Tropic of Cancer, the limit of its north¬ 
ern progress, darkness prevails in that desolate 
area, which thus has six months day and six 
months night in the year. The Antarctic 
Circle is represented in the map on this page 
by the dotted line. 


vast Antarctic continent, but its area is yet 
the merest surmise. It may be as large as 
Australia; it may be slightly larger. A large 
part of it is a high, ice-covered plateau, at 
an elevation ranging from 7,000 to 10,000 
feet. The South Pole itself lies at an altitude 
of 10,200 feet above the level of the seas. 
Amundsen, its discoverer, ascertained this fact 
(see Amundsen, Roald). 

Most of the Antarctic continent, so far as 




ANTARCTIC LANDS AND SEAS 

To the left is the map of the region as it was known before the adventurous explorations of 
Amundsen and Scott. The map at the right pictures the known lands in 1917. 


ANTARCTIC, ant ark'tic, LANDS AND 
SEAS, the part of the earth which surrounds 
the South Pole. Strictly considered, this re¬ 
gion is bounded by the Antarctic Circle (which 
see), but in a wider sense it includes the entire 
area in which Antarctic influences are felt. 
This area extends to latitude 60° and in some 
sections to latitude 50°. Great ice fields drift 
northward as far as Cape Horn and beyond, 
and single icebergs float even farther. 

The Lands. The remoteness of the Antarc¬ 
tic region from Europe, the home of the early 
explorers, for centuries prevented its explora¬ 
tion, and it is only in the twentieth century 
that rumor and imagination have yielded to 
knowledge. It is now known that there is a 


it has been explored, has high coasts, covered 
with snow and ice, which sometimes extend to 
the water’s edge. In many regions the actual 
shore line is hidden by masses of ice which 
rise perpendicularly from the water. The 
largest of these is the Great Ice Barrier, 
also known as the Ross Barrier, from the 
name of its discoverer. The Ross Barrier 
extends from Ross Island to King Edward VII 
Land, a distance of 400 miles. This wall of 
ice, from 200 to 300 feet high, was discovered 
in 1842, but for years no explorer found a way 
to cross it. Back of the ice barrier the land 
rises to a plateau 4,000 feet above the sea. 
In the interior, especially in South Victoria 
Land, are high mountain ranges, at least one 
















































































ANTARCTIC LANDS AND SEAS 


277 


ANTELOPE 


of which, Mount Erebus, is an active volcano. 
Recent explorations point to the possibility 
that these mountains are a part of a great 
range or series of ranges which extend to West 
Antarctica. 

Climate. The temperatures in the south 
polar region seem to be warmer in winter and 
colder in summer than those in the north 
polar region. The coldest temperature seems 
to be about —70°, and the summer tempera¬ 
ture occasionally rises to —20°. Sudden bliz¬ 
zards, with terrific winds and blinding snow, 
are frequent at all seasons. Such a blizzard 
caused the death of Captain Robert Scott and 
his three companions after they had succeeded 
in reaching the Pole. The winds in the inte¬ 
rior of the Antarctic continent are mainly 
southeast, but farther from the Pole the pre¬ 
vailing winds are from the west or northwest. 
Near the Pole itself the snowfall is compara¬ 
tively light, the annual precipitation being 
less than ten inches. The heaviest precipita¬ 
tion, about twenty-five inches, seems to be 
near the coasts of the Antarctic lands. 

Plant and Animal Life. Vegetation is 
scantjq but there are a number of species of 
grasses, mosses and lichens. The coal depos¬ 
its which have been discovered at several 
points indicate, however, that the South Pole 
was in a past geologic age in a warm region 
with abundant vegetation. Among animals 
there is a great variety of birds, including 
penguins, petrels and fulmars, but there are 
no land mammals. The sea teems with an 
astonishing number of seals, sea-lions, whales, 
dolphins, sponges, mollusks, echinoderms and 
many species of fishes. (Each animal named 
is described in these volumes.) 

Antarctic Seas. The name Antarctic Ocean 
is usually given to the waters surrounding the 
Antarctic continent, but many modern geog¬ 
raphers prefer to consider these waters as the 
southern ends of three separate bodies, the 
Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. Between 
the Antarctic lands and the southern ends of 
the other continents is an unbroken belt of 
water, varying in width from 600 miles, off 
Cape Horn, to 2,400 miles, off Cape Agulhas, 
the southern extremity of Africa. 

There are two great currents in the Antarctic 
waters. One flows northward, between longi¬ 
tude 120° and 140° W., across the Antarctic 
Circle. As it approaches South America it di¬ 
vides into two; one part goes northward along 
the west coast, while the other continues east¬ 
ward past Cape Horn and returns to the Ant¬ 


arctic near longitude 70° E. The second great 
current crosses the Antarctic Circle near longi¬ 
tude 90° E., and bending eastward, forms the 
west Australian current (see Currents, 
Ocean). The water in the Antarctic Ocean 
has an average temperature, taking the year 
as a whole, of 29.8° at the surface and from 
32° to 35° F. on the ocean floor. 

Ice Formation. In the main, the ice forms 
of the Antarctic do not differ from those in 
north polar regions (see Arctic Lands and 
Seas). The ice sheet covering the great land 
mass is more extensive and probably thicker 
than that which covers Greenland. The ice¬ 
bergs are great floating blocks, some of them 
several acres in extent. Several have been 
seen having a thickness of a thousand feet or 
more. See Polar Exploration. j.r. 

ANT-EATER, a South American animal, 
harmless and solitary, which sleeps during the 
day and seeks its tiny prey at night. Its long, 
tapering head, small eyes, and short, round 
ears, in contrast with its bushy, black tail, 



SOUTH AMERICAN ANT-EATER 

give it a weird appearance. Its tongue is long, 
and can be thrust out; it is covered with a 
sticky saliva which holds fast any ants which 
it touches—a sort of natural “sticky fly paper.” 
The animal has no teeth. 

The ant-eater, from tip to tip, is from four 
to seven feet long. Its head and tail form 
much more than half this length. It has pow¬ 
erful, long claws, with which it digs into ant 
hills. Most of its body is covered with fur. 

The name ant-eater is sometimes given to 
the aard-vark, and porcupine ant-eater, to the 
Australian echidna. Both these animals are 
described elsewhere in this work. See, also, 
Armadillo. 

ANTELOPE, an' te lope, the name given to 
a very large group of animals that are found 
in great numbers, especially in Africa and Asia. 
They belong to the same family as sheep, 
goats and oxen, but differ greatly from any of 














ANTELOPE 


278 


ANTENNAE 



THREE OF THE ANTELOPES 

(a) Male pronghorn ; (&) female pronghorn ; (c) chamois; (cl) ejand. 


these animals. Antelopes are the most grace¬ 
ful and fleetest of animals, are shy and timid, 
quite defenseless against flesh-eating animals 
and trust only to their speed when attacked. 
They possess slender, usually cylindrical, horns, 
which, unlike those of the deer, are not shed 
annually, but are permanent (see Molting). 

Antelopes differ greatly in their manner of 
life. Some live on open plains, some in for¬ 
ests and shady nooks. Mountainous regions 
are the favorite haunts of some species, and 
others are found only in well-watered valleys. 
As regards size, they vary from a foot in height 
to nearly the size of a horse. These animals 
are not so numerous as formerly, for they are 
everywhere in danger of being hunted out of 
existence. In many parts of Africa whole 
herds numbering many thousands have been 
destroyed as recklessly as the bison was exter¬ 
minated in North America. Some of the most 
beautiful species are found only on private 
estates. 

Most Important Species. The most widely 
known and characteristic species are the bush- 
buok, also called the harness antelope, because 
of a peculiar white stripe on the body, resem¬ 


bling a harness; the steinbok, common in 
South Africa, a small, alert antelope, reddish 
in color and having short, ringed horns, curved 
forward; the bluebuck, or blaaubok, the most 
diminutive species, a dainty, timid little crea¬ 
ture about as large as a hare; the koodoo, or 
kudu, one of the largest, with long, twisted 
horns and vertical stripes on the sides of its 
body; the sable antelope, of South Africa, 
remarkable for its shiny black coat; the oryx, 
also a native of Africa, with large, sword-like 
horns, curving backward; and the saiga, one 
of the few antelopes occurring in Europe, found 
in Southern Russia. 

The true antelope family is not represented 
in North America, but the pronghorn and the 
Rocky Mountain white goat are locally called 
antelopes. The flesh of all antelopes is con¬ 
sidered a delicacy, and the hides of the larger 
animals make good leather. See Addax; 
Gazelle; Gnu; Pronghorn; Chamois; Rocky 
Mountain White Goat. In connection with 
these articles are illustrations of the various 
types. f.st.a. 

ANTENNAE, an ten' nee, the plural of an¬ 
tenna, are feelers with which insects and othef 






































ANTHOLOGY 


279 


ANTHRAX 


animals are provided, and with which they 
smell, feel, distinguish between friends and 
enemies, and, in some cases, hear what is going 



ANTENNAE 

A few of the different forms, highly magnified. 

on around them. Some insects are compelled 
to trust to their antennae instead of the usual 
power of sight, not being provided with eyes. 
Others are provided with both eyes and feel¬ 
ers. Insects have only one pair of antennae, 
while crustaceans, such as lobsters, have two 
pairs. They consist of long, extremely delicate, 
jointed appendages projecting from the head, 
supplied with numerous nerve branches con¬ 
nected with the brain. The shape and size of 
antennae vary considerably. Those of butter¬ 
flies and moths are graceful and feathery; in 
mosquitoes they are long and very thin; cov¬ 
ered with minute hairs. Animals and insects 
are rendered peculiarly helpless by the loss of 
their antennae as they are deprived of all the 
senses except, in some cases, that of sight. 

ANTHOLOGY, anthol' o ji, from the Greek 
for a flower-gathering, is a book made up of 
selections from the best writings of many au¬ 
thors. It was this meaning of the word which 
suggested to Montaigne the following lines 
in the preface to a miscellaneous collection of 
poems: 

I have gathered me a posie of other men’s 
flowers, and nothing but the thought that binds 
them is mine own. 

Though the great historic anthologies have 
been collections of poems, the term as popu¬ 
larly used includes both prose and poetry. 

The word anthology was first applied to a 
collection of Greek poems selected by Melea¬ 
ger, a Syrian, about 80 b. c., but the Chinese 
Book of Songs, supposed to be the work of 
Confucius, is said to be the oldest anthology 
known to man. The Arabs, Persians, Turks, 
Japanese and Hindus have numerous anthol¬ 
ogies, some of which are of veiy early date. 

The standard English anthology is F. T. Pol- 
grave’s Golden Treasury, Other valuable collec¬ 


tions are Trench’s Household Book of English 
Poetry, Emerson’s Parnassus, Quiller-Couch’s 
Oxford Book of Verse and Stedman’s Victorian 
Anthology and American Anthology. 


AN'THONY, Saint, of Thebes (about 251- 
356), one of the greatest of the early fathers 
of the Catholic Church, revered as the founder 
of the first monastery. Born of wealthy par¬ 
ents in Upper Egypt, he early obeyed the 
divine call to give up a worldly life, and, hav¬ 
ing given to the poor all that he possessed, 
retired to the deserts near Thebes. After 
spending many years in fasting, prayer and 
meditation he was asked to leave his retreat 
in order that others might live under his direc¬ 
tion, and in the year 305 he founded a monas¬ 
tery at Fayum, near Memphis, the beginning 
of the monastic system of the Catholic Church. 
At his death his disciples numbered 15,000. 
See Monachism. 

ANTHONY, Susan Brownell (1820-1906), 
an American reformer, one of the great lead¬ 
ers of the cause of woman’s advancement, 
founder of the first state Women’s Temper¬ 
ance Society and one of the founders of the 
National Wom¬ 
an’s Suffrage As¬ 
sociation. She 
was born at 
Adams, Mass., of 
Quaker parents, 
taught school for 
fifteen years, and 
in the meantime 
became active in 
the temperance 
and anti-slavery 
movements. In 
1868 she founded 



SUSAN B. ANTHONY 


Revered pioneer in the now- 
. popular cause of woman suf- 
I he Revolution, frage. 

a periodical devoted to women’s rights, and 
in 1869 organized, with Mrs. Elizabeth Cady 
Stanton, the National Woman’s Suffrage 
Association, of which she was president for 
many years. Miss Anthony was arrested, 
tried and fined in 1872 for attempting 
to vote, under the Fifteenth Amendment, in 
New York. As a lecturer and advocate she 
spoke to vast audiences in all parts of Eng¬ 
land and the United States, and she was a 
frequent contributor to magazines. See 
Woman Suffrage. 

ANTHRAX, an' thraks, an acute infectious 
disease to which cattle, horses, sheep and other 
animals are subject. It is the first disease 
traced to the action of bacterial generation 



ANTHROPOLOGY 


280 


ANTI-CIGARETTE LEAGUE 


and is always associated with the presence of 
an extremely minute micro-organism in the 
blood. Anthrax frequently extends over large 
districts, affecting all classes of animals, both 
wild and domestic. It is also called splenic 
fever. In man, it appears as a carbuncle, a 
malignant pustule, or as wool-sorter’s disease. 
Thorough disinfection should follow every case 
of the disease. If the bodies of animals dy¬ 
ing of anthrax are not burned, water and soil 
are liable to be contaminated, the poison to 
be carried by birds or flies, and the terrible 
disease communicated to human beings. Ani¬ 
mals may be rendered immune by proper 
veterinary treatment. 

ANTHROPOLOGY, an thro pol' o ji, literally, 
is the science of man, the word being derived 
from the Greek anthropos, meaning man, and 
logos, meaning science. The term has been 
given various meanings, as the study of man’s 
past has developed, but it now includes the 
development of man as a race, his appearance 
on the earth and his progress toward modern 
culture; in other words, the distribution of 
man over the earth and the results of the dis¬ 
tribution. The departments of anthropology 
are archaeology, ethnology and ethnography 
(which see). 


Related Subjects. The following list does 
not attempt to exhaust the possibilities of an¬ 
thropology, but it includes all of the peoples 
separately treated in these volumes, as well as 
a number of articles on manners and customs 
in all parts of the world. The sections on 
People in the articles on the various countries 
should also be read in connection with this 
study: 

PEOPLES 


Aborigines 

Aino 

Aleuts 

Angles 

Arab 

Aryan 

Aztec 

Bantu 

Basque 

Bedouins 

Berber 

Boer 

Bushmen 

Cannibal 

Cave Dwellers 

Celts 

Cimbri 

Circassians 

Cliff Dwellers 

Copts 

Cossacks 

Czech 

Dyaks 

Eskimo 


Gael 

Goths 

Gypsy 

Helvetii 

Hottentots 

Huns 

Igorrote 

Indians, American 

Jews 

Jutes 

Kaffirs 

Kalmucks 

Kanakas 

Kirghiz 

Letts 

Lombards 

Magyars 

Mahrattas 

Man dingo 

Maoris 

Matabele 

Maya 

Mongols 

Moors 


Mound Builders 
Mulatto 
Negritos 
Negro Race 
Piets 

Ruthenians 

Sabines 

Samnites 

Saracens 

Saxons 

Semites 


Slavs 

Slovaks 

Tartars 

Teutonic Races 

Tree Dwellers 

Turanian 

Turks 

Vandals 

Walloons 

Zulus 


The various Indian tribes are listed in an index 
with the article Indians. 


MANNERS AND CUSTOMS 


Ban 

Barbecue 

Blood-money 

Cannibal 

Caste 

Family 

Fetish 

Harem 

Marriage 


Names, Personal 

Nomad Life 

Polygamy 

Salutations 

Suttee 

Taboo 

Tattooing 

Vendetta 

Zenana 


The following general articles will also be 
found helpful and interesting: 


Archaeology 
Bronze Age 
Ethnography 
Ethnology 
Folklore 
Iron Age 


Kitchen Middens 
Lake Dwellings 
Man 

Races of Men 
Stone Age 


ANTI-CIGARETTE LEAGUE OF AMER¬ 
ICA, an organization with branches in most 
of the large cities of the United States, Can¬ 
ada and the Panama Canal Zone. Its mem¬ 
bership includes more than 500,000 boys and 
men who have pledged them¬ 
selves to abstain from liquor 
and tobacco in every form 
“and to use their influence 
to induce others to abstain.” 

The pledge may be made 
binding for life, or only until 
the age of twenty-one. 

This great organization, international in its 
scope, is the outgrowth of a local league started 
in Chicago in 1899 by Miss Lucy Page Gaston. 
Miss Gaston’s work among the boys of .that 
city attracted the attention of certain business 
men who offered her financial assistance if 



BADGE 


she would undertake similar work on a na¬ 


tional scale. The league is supported by 
membership fees of ten cents each and by 
voluntary contributions. The league’s active 
members are entitled to wear a button, which 
is reproduced in the accompanying illustra¬ 
tion. Girls and women are invited to join the 
league as auxiliary members and to throw 
the weight of their influence against cigarette 
smoking and other vices. 

The league publishes a monthly magazine, 



ANTICOSTI 


281 


ANTIDOTE 


Boy’s Companion, and a variety of other lit¬ 
erature in furthering its work. It does not 
confine itself to educational campaigns among 
boys, but takes an active share in promoting 
legislation against the sale of tobacco to 
minors and in influencing public opinion to 
demand rigid enforcement of such laws. It 
also has free clinics at which those who can¬ 
not rid themselves of the cigarette habit may 
find aid, without expense. Medical treatment 
and diets which will help to do away with 
the craving are recommended by able physi¬ 
cians, and representatives of the league visit 
schools and churches for the purpose of offer¬ 
ing such aid to boys. 

The treatment suggested by the league as a 
cure for the cigarette habit is given in the 
article Cigarette (which see). l.p.g. 

ANTICOSTI, antikahs' ti, a rocky island in 
the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, one of the largest 
private game preserves in North America. 
Geographically it is a part of the Province 
of Quebec, but in 1895 it was leased by the 
government to M. Menier, the French manu¬ 
facturer of chocolate, who made it a game 
preserve and attempted to develop its re¬ 
sources. The fact that the island was in the 
possession of a private individual caused much 
criticism at the beginning of the War of the 
Nations in 1914, for its position at the mouth 
of the Saint Lawrence River makes it of great 
strategic importance. The use of the island as 
a base for enemies is a remote possibility, 
however, because of the lack of good harbors. 
The north shore is high and rocky; the south 
shore has shoals and submerged rocks. 

Anticosti is a favorite resort for seal, bear 
and other wild game, and the adjacent waters 
are filled with salmon, trout, cod and herring. 
The climate is severe, frosts being common 
even in midsummer. Extensive agriculture 
is impossible, for the interior for the most 
part is either swampy or rocky. Even where 
the soil is otherwise suitable for crops the 
prevalence of frosts in midsummer limits agri¬ 
cultural development. Marl is found at many 
points along the coast, and the peat-bogs are 
the most valuable in the Dominion. The 
island is of interest to geologists as one of 
the best examples of the transition between 
the Ordovician and Silurian systems (see 
Geology). Its area is 3,147 square miles, about 
one and a half times as large as the state of 
Delaware. There are numerous lighthouses, 
whose keepers, with their families, comprise 
most of the population of 250. 


ANTIDOTE, an’ ti dote, a substance which 
will neutralize the effect of a poison. Thus, 
an acid is an antidote to an alkali and an 
alkali to an acid, because chemically each de¬ 
stroys the effect of the other. Morphine and 
atropine are not chemically opposed to each 
other, but they are antidotes each for the 
other, because their action upon the body is 
opposite. There are many poisons for which 
no antidote is known, and in cases where these 
have been taken, the stomach pump and 
emetics furnish the only method of combat¬ 
ing their evil effects. In many cases of poi¬ 
soning, promptness of relief measures is the 
most important consideration, and it is often 
necessary to give some help before a doctor 
can arrive. A general rule is to empty the 
stomach at once with a pump except when 
the poison taken is lye, caustic potash or soda, 
or mineral acids. The following list gives the 
names of many of the ordinary poisons, with 
their antidotes and some means of counteract¬ 
ing their injurious effects. In every case, how¬ 
ever, a doctor should assume charge as soon 
as possible: 

Alcohol: Use an emetic or stomach pump 
as quickly as possible; then give aromatic 
spirits of ammonia till the pulse is rapid and 
full; then apply heat to the extremities and 
cold to the head. 

Ammonia: See Caustic Potash, below. 

Arsenic: Give to the patient every half- 
hour, for four doses, a tablespoonful of dia¬ 
lyzed iron, a substance which may be obtained 
at any drug store. Follow this treatment by 
a strong dose of castor oil. 

Bedbug Poison: See Corrosive Sublimate, 
below. 

Bichloride of Mercury: See Corrosive Sub¬ 
limate, below. 

Carbolic Acid: Give Epsom salts, the chem¬ 
ical name of which is magnesium sulphate, or 
any other soluble sulphate. At the same time 
give large doses of sweet oil, whites of eggs 
and stimulants. 

Carbonic Acid Gas, or Asphyxiation: Give 
plenty of fresh air at once. If necessary, in¬ 
duce respiration artificially, as described in the 
article Drowning. Give thirty drops of aro¬ 
matic spirits of ammonia at half-hour intervals 
for three doses; and then every three hours 
for three doses give an ounce of diluted 
whisky. 

Carbonic Oxide: See Carbonic Acid Gas, 
above. 

Caustic Potash: Give diluted lemon juice, 


ANTIDOTE 


282 


ANTIETAM 


or mix two parts of vinegar with one of water 
and give with freedom; then give large 
amounts of sweet oil. 

Chloral: Give the patient an emetic con¬ 
sisting of thirty grains of ipecac in water, and 
inject under the skin one-twentieth of a grain 
of strychnine. Apply warmth, induce artificial 
respiration (see Drowning) and rub the body 
thoroughly to stimulate circulation. 

Coal Gas: See Carbonic Acid Gas, above. 

Cocaine: Lay the patient on his back and 
give whisky, with hypodermic injections of 
one-fortieth of a grain of strychnine. 

Corrosive Sublimate: This is bichloride of 
mercury. The mercury salt dissolves in an 
excess of albumin. As soon as you have formed 
an albuminate try to induce vomiting. For 
this purpose give an emetic of thirty grains 
of powdered ipecac in warm water; then give 
the white of an egg. Wash out the stomach, 
and later use sedatives. 

Knock-out Drops: See Chloral, above. 

Lye: See Caustic Potash, kbove. 

Matches: See Phosphorus, below. 

Morphine: See Opium, below. 

Nicotine: Use emetics; give strong tea and 
stimulants, and then lay the patient flat on 
his back. 

Nux Vomica: See Strychnine, below. 

Opium: Empty the stomach as quickly as 
possible, by means of emetics or stomach 
pump; cause the patient to inhale ammonia, 
and give him every hour a half-grain of per¬ 
manganate of potash. Induce artificial res¬ 
piration (see Drowning) and keep the patient 
awake; if necessary, shake him or even whip 
him severely about the body and the calves 
of the legs. Atropine injected under the skin, 
or tincture of belladonna given by the mouth, 
has a powerful effect in stimulating breathing. 
Coffee should also be given to a person who 
has taken opium. 

Oxalic Acid: Chalk, whiting or even white¬ 
wash scraped from the wall should be given 
in quantities of water. Follow this by a dose 
of castor oil or Epsom salts. 

Paris Green: See Arsenic, above. 

Phenacetin: Give whisky and digitalis. 

Phosphorus: Give an emetic promptly, and 
follow with a large quantity of mucilage from 
gum arabic; then give a strong dose of Epsom 
salts. Do not give fats or oils. 

Poison Ivy: Bathe the affected parts re¬ 
peatedly with lead acetate dissolved in alcohol. 
Wash well with laundry soap and water. 

Prussic Acid: This is one of the deadliest 


of poisons, and death usually results at once. 
If the quantity taken is small enough, how¬ 
ever, good many be done by emptying the 
stomach and administering ammonia with water 
and a small dose of opium. Artificial respira¬ 
tion (see Drowning) and the injection of 
strychnine are also effective. 

Rough-on-Rats: See Arsenic, above. 

Strychnine: Employ the stomach pump at 
once; give twenty grains of zinc sulphate or 
thirty grains of powdered ipecac as an emetic; 
then twenty grains of chloral and thirty grains 
of bromide of sodium dissolved together in 
two ounces of hot water should be injected 
into the rectum. Convulsions may be stopped 
by the use of chloroform. Twenty grains of 
sodium bromide should be taken internally 
every hour. 

Sulphonal: Empty the stomach and use 
artificial respiration (see Drowning). Give 
plenty of hot coffee as soon as possible. 

Tansy: Give an emetic of thirty grains of 
ipecac in warm water, and follow with a dose 
of castor oil. 

Turpentine: Give an emetic; then give 
plenty of mucilage from gum arabic, Epsom 
salts and finally a hypodermic injection of 
morphine. 

Unknown Poison: Of course there can be 
no veiy intelligent treatment when the nature 
of the poison is unknown (see Poison). If 
the poison has been introduced by way of the 
mouth, use the stomach pump or an emetic. 
Induce artificial respiration if necessary (see 
Drowning), and give two teaspoonfuls of 
chalk in water, four eggs beaten up with a 
glass of milk and some whisky. 

Washing Soda: See Caustic Potash, above. 

White Precipitate: See Corrosive Sublimate, 
above. w. a. e. 

ANTIETAM, an tee' tarn, Battle of, the 
bloodiest battle in the War of Secession, and 
the crucial battle in Lee’s first attempt to 
invade the North. Lee saved his army from 
what seemed at one time inevitable destruc¬ 
tion, but his invasion ended in failure. It was 
fought near Antietam Creek, in Maryland, 
about fifty miles northwest of Washington, 
D. C., on September 16 and 17, 1862. The 
Confederate forces of 40,000 men, under the 
command of General Lee, were opposed by a 
Federal force of nearly double that number 
under General McClellan. 

On the whole the honors rested with Lee, 
whose generalship was of the highest order, 
whereas the tactical blunders of McClellan 


ANTI-FEDERALISTS 


283 


ANTILLES 


and his generals were the cause of much sub¬ 
sequent criticism. The fighting on the first 
day was a preliminary skirmish, but on the 



CONFEDERATE MONUMENT 

Erected to commemorate Antietam, at Shep- 
pardstown. 

second day the Federal dead numbered 12,400 
and the Confederate dead about 10,000, a 
greater total than on any other single day of 
the war. Hooker, Burnside, Sedgwick, Slocum 
and Meade were the leading Federal generals; 
Longstreet, “Stonewall” Jackson, Hood, Early, 
A. P. Hill and D. H. Hill were Lee’s chief lieu¬ 
tenants. The retreat of the Confederates on 
the 18th gave the North the shadow of victory, 
for which Lincoln had waited before issuing 
the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation 
(which see), on September 22. 

ANTI-FEDERALISTS, a political party 
formed in the United States when the adop¬ 
tion of the Constitution was an issue before 
the people. Those favoring the adoption of 
the Constitution took the name of Federal¬ 
ists. The Anti-Federalists opposed the Consti¬ 
tution in the form in which it was presented 
for acceptance, because they believed that it 


called for too strong a central government, one 
which would deprive the states of freedom of 
action in many directions (see States Rights). 
After the adoption of the Constitution, they 
favored a strict construction, or strict inter¬ 
pretation, of that instrument, and declared for 
strong state governments. Thomas Jefferson 
was their leader. Later the name of the party 
was changed to Republican, Democratic- 
Republican and finally Democratic. See 
Democratic Party. 

ANTIGONE, an tig'one, one of the most 
attractive characters of Greek mythology, the 
constant devoted attendant of her father 
Oedipus (which see). When her brother 
Polynices was put to death she was ordered 
not to bury his body, and because she dis¬ 
obeyed she w’as shut up alive in a tomb. Her 
story is told in the Antigone of Sophocles. 

ANTIGONISH, antig'onish, N. S., the 
county town of Antigonish County, situated 
on Saint George’s Bay, a navigable arm of the 
Gulf of Saint Lawrence, and on the Interco¬ 
lonial Railway. It is the seat of a Roman 
Catholic bishop, of Saint Francis Xavier Col¬ 
lege, with about 250 students, and of Saint 
Bernard’s convent, and has churches of sev¬ 
eral other denominations. Industrially the 
town is important for cheese, wood products 
and grist mill products, and the neighborhood 
has a few minerals, including oil shale, iron 
and a little gold. Antigonish is a favorite 
resort for sportsmen, who come for the excel¬ 
lent bass, trout and salmon fishing. Popula¬ 
tion, largely of Highland Scotch descent, in 
1911, 1,787; in 1916, about 2,000. n.g.m. 

ANTILLES, antil'leez, another name for 
the West Indies, or, more usually, for all of 
the islands except their northernmost portion, 



The principal islands of the Antilles are shown 
in black. 


the Bahamas. The Greater Antilles are Cuba, 
Jamaica, Haiti, Porto Rico and the less im¬ 
portant neighboring islands like the Isle of 












































ANTI-MASONS 

Pines. The Lesser Antilles include the neck¬ 
lace of islands from Porto Rico to the South 
American coast, among them Martinique, 
Saint Thomas, Trinidad and Barbados. See 
West Indies, and the colored map, under the 
heading North America. 

ANTI-MASONS, a short-lived American 
political party which was of considerable im¬ 
portance about 1830. As its name implies, its 
fundamental principle was opposition to the 
order of Free-Masons, but this was merely one 
of a number of factors which united several 
discontented elements, notably the anti-Jack¬ 
son men and the advocates of high tariff and 
internal improvements. The party sprang up 
in 1827 and 1828 as the result of the anti- 
Mason agitation following the disappearance 
of William Morgon (1776-1826). 

Morgan claimed to be a Mason and to be 
writing a book exposing the secrets of the 
Order. He said he had been threatened with 
a dire fate if he finished the book; he sud¬ 
denly disappeared and never w T as found. The 
public immediately accused the Masons of 
his murder, which was denied and never 
proved. Public excitement in Batavia, N. Y., 
where Morgan lived, was tremendous, and 
quickly spread throughout the state. The 
Anti-Masonic party cast 33,000 votes in 1828 
and 120,000 votes in 1830 in New York State 
alone. The attempt to organize a national 
party on this basis was not successful, as 
William Wirt, the candidate for president in 
1832, received only 33,000 votes. Many men 
later prominent in public life, including Thur- 
low Weed, Millard Fillmore and William H. 
Seward first attracted public notice as Anti- 
Masons. 

ANTIMONY, an' timoni, a brittle, metallic 
element, of a silver-white color, which does not 
rust or tarnish when exposed to the air. Pure 
antimony is from 6.6 to 6.7 times as heavy 
as water, and melts at a temperature of 830° 
to 840° F. When alloyed with other metals 
it hardens them, and it is therefore used in 
the manufacture of such materials as Britan- 
nia-metal, type metal and pewter. It renders 
the sound of bells more clear and sonorous; it 
makes tin whiter as well as harder, and makes 
the types for printing firmer and smoother. 
The ancient Egyptians and other people of 
the east used antimony for painting their eye¬ 
brows and eye lashes, and certain brilliant red 
pigments or colors used in oil painting, in 
dyeing, and in the manufacture of safety 
matches and fireworks are still made from it. 


ANTIPODES 

The salts of antimony are very poisonous, and 
have an effect similar to that of arsenic. Anti¬ 
mony is used in the preparation of tartar 
emetic and other medicines. 

Antimony is sometimes found in its pure 
state. For commercial purposes, how r ever, it 
is derived chiefly from stibnite, which is about 
seventy-two per cent antimony and twenty- 
eight per cent sulphur. Stibnite is mined in 
Austria, France, Germany, Italy, China, Japan 
and other countries. It is also found in the 
United States, but is not profitable to mine 
because of the low price of the metal. Most 
of the antimony used in Canada and the 
United States is imported, but small quanti¬ 
ties are obtained in the smelting of lead-ores, 
which frequently contain it. 

ANTIOCH, an'tiock, a famous city of 
ancient times, the capital of the Greek kings 
of Syria, called by the ancients the “Crown of 
the East.” It was situated on the left bank 
of the River Orontes, twenty miles from the 
Mediterranean Sea, resting on a beautiful, fer¬ 
tile plain or climbing the rugged vine-clad 
slopes that stretched southward. Antioch was 
founded in 300 b. c. by Seleucus Nicator, who 
ruled over a part of the divided empire of 
Alexander the Great, and was named in honor 
of his father, Antiochus. At the height of its 
glory it rivaled Rome and Alexandria, having 
a population estimated at 400,000, and was the 
center of an extensive commerce. Its public 
buildings were magnificent. Under the Ro¬ 
mans the Syrian governors resided there, and 
it was the Eastern headquarters of Julius 
Caesar, Augustus, Herod and other rulers. 

Antioch became the cradle of Christianity 
for the Gentiles; there the Christians first re¬ 
ceived that name (Acts XI, 26); Paul set out 
on his first missionary journeys from this city, 
and in it were held many Church councils. 
Its later history was troubled. It was seized 
by the Persians in 538, by the Saracens in 635 
and by the Seljuk Turks in 1084. In 1098 the 
Crusaders captured it after a memorable siege. 
Is was almost entirely destroyed by the Egyp¬ 
tians in 1268, and at the present time only 
the ruins of its walls and aqueducts remain. 
On the site of the ancient city is the modern 
town of Antakiyeh, an important American 
missionary station, with Antioch College, an 
institution of renown. The town has a pop¬ 
ulation of about 30,000. 

ANTIPODES, an tip' o deez, the name given 
people who are on exactly opposite parts of 
the earth. The name means feet to feet. Our 


284 


ANTIPOPE 


285 


ANTISEPTIC 


antipodes have their feet pointing toward us 
and their heads away from us. To find the 
antipodes of any point, take a globe and see 
where the axis inserted at that point and ex¬ 
tended through the center of the globe will 
appear on the opposite side. 

Antipodes Island, a small island in the 
South Pacific Ocean, 460 miles south by east 
of New Zealand. It is so called because it is 
almost directly opposite London, England. 

AN'TIPOPE, a person chosen or claiming 
to have been chosen Pope, in opposition to 
the Pope regularly chosen in accordance with 
canon law. For political reasons, or some¬ 
times for religious reasons, certain factions in 
the Roman Catholic Church or certain Euro¬ 
pean rulers opposed the authority of the Pope 
and supported an antipope in opposition. In 
the days when the Pope had temporal as well 
as spiritual authority political considerations 
often played the most important part in the 
election of the Supreme Pontiff. Otho I, Holy 
Roman Emperor, displaced two Popes for per¬ 
sonal reasons; later emperors used military 
force to displace Popes or set up antipopes; 
the kings of France frequently interfered, and 
even the kings of Sicily, a comparatively un¬ 
important kingdom, sometimes set up anti¬ 
popes in opposition to the Popes supported by 
the emperors. 

The first antipope was said to be Laurentius, 
elected in 498 in opposition to Symmachus, 
and the last was Felix V, a duke of Savoy, 
who was elected in 1439. The most famous 
of the antipopes was elected after the death 
of Gregory XI, in 1378. Gregory was a 
Frenchman, but he removed the papal see 
from Avignon back to Rome, where the car¬ 
dinals proceeded to elect an Italian, Urban VI, 
as Pope. Shortly afterward the College of 
Cardinals was induced to elect the antipope 
Clement VII, a Frenchman, who was recog¬ 
nized as Pope by France and Spain, while 
Italy, Germany and the whole north of Europe 
except Scotland supported Urban. This rivalry 
produced the “great schism,” or “great schism 
of the West,” which divided the Church for 
half a century. 

ANTIPYRENE, an ti py' rin, a white pow¬ 
der, given often as a medicine to relieve pain 
or to lower fever temperature. As it makes 
the heart beats slower and causes the pulsa¬ 
tions to be weaker, it should not be taken 
except upon the advice of a physician, espe¬ 
cially if the patient has a tendency to heart 
disease. Some physicians use it as a substi¬ 


tute for morphine in trying to cure the drug 
habit, but its value for this purpose is by no 
means well established. 

ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE, an organization 
for stopping the liquor traffic, first through 
education of the people regarding the effects 
of liquor, and then by legislation of a prohib¬ 
itory character. The anti-saloon league was 
first organized as a state body in Ohio in 1893, 
and it is now found in every state in the 
Union. It includes members of all political 
parties and all religious denominations. Its 
method is to unite all organizations and influ¬ 
ences that are opposed to the liquor traffic 
and to use their combined influence to secure 
laws that will greatly restrict the use of intox¬ 
icating liquors or entirely stop their sale. 
There is a national organization, fully officered, 
with headquarters at Westerville, Ohio, and 
Washington, D. C. Each state has a state 
superintendent and a board of managers, which 
usually includes representatives from all polit¬ 
ical parties and religious denominations. Since 
its organization the league has been very suc¬ 
cessful in securing the passage of prohibition 
laws. See Prohibition; Temperance; Local 
Option. s.e.n. 

ANTISEPTIC, an ti sep' tik, any agent which 
prevents or stops the decay of vegetable or 
animal matter, septic being derived from the 
Greek word for rotting or decay. Literally, 
therefore, the term antiseptic is general in its 
meaning, but in popular speech it is so com¬ 
monly associated with medicine and surgery 
that it seems best to discuss the subject under 
two headings—first, in the arts generally; sec¬ 
ond, in medicine and surgery. 

In the Arts. A distinction should be made 
between a true germicide, that is, germ-killer, 
and an agent which merely prevents the devel¬ 
opment of germs. Thus, cold storage prevents 
the growth of bacteria in meat, but it does 
not destroy all of them, and if meat is re¬ 
moved from cold storage undestroyed germs 
will develop. On the other hand, extreme 
heat, whether wet or dry, kills bacteria. Bac¬ 
teria grow only under certain favorable con¬ 
ditions of moisture, temperature and food sup¬ 
ply; if these are removed they cannot develop. 
Canned meats, fruits and vegetables, for 
example, are first cooked and then sealed while 
hot in air-tight vessels to prevent them from 
“spoiling”; this is merely an application of 
antiseptic principles. 

Occasionally such active antiseptics as boric 
acid and formaldehyde are mixed with foods. 



ANTISEPTIC 


286 


ANT-LION 


but as these are harmful their use is gener¬ 
ally prohibited (see Pure Food Laws). The 
packing of fish in ice and the curing of cod 
and herring with salt are familiar antiseptic 
processes. Alcohol is an excellent antiseptic, 
especially for household use. It is a good 
gargle, is useful for external applications, and 
either in its pure or diluted forms is frequently 
used in cooking and preserving foods. "Wood 
may be preserved by treatment with creosote 
or tar, and many other substances maj^ be 
saved from decay by antiseptics. 

In Medicine. The use of antiseptics in 
medicine is related to the germ theory of dis¬ 
ease. According to this theory, many diseases 
are caused by foreign organisms, called bac¬ 
teria. To kill these bacteria or prevent their 
growth is the function of antiseptics. The 
term disinfectant, while popularly used in vari¬ 
ous senses, should be applied only to a special 
agent used to destroy a definite infection. 

The most important antiseptics now in use 
are iodine, carbolic acid, peroxide of hydrogen, 
iodoform, formalin, salicylic acid, bichloride of 
mercury, arsenic, hypochlorite and various 
preparations of coal-tar, including lysol. 
Nearly all of these substances, if taken inter¬ 
nally, are extremely poisonous, and if applied 
externally in too strong solution or too large 
quantities may cause more harm than good. 
For these reasons they should be kept in bot¬ 
tles or boxes labeled poison, and should be 
placed where children cannot reach them. 

Pure carbolic acid is sometimes applied to 
infected living flesh; it completely destroys 
foreign organisms and even burns away part 
of the flesh. Surgeons use a solution of one 
part carbolic acid to twenty parts of water 
to sterilize their instruments. Bichloride of 
mercury is usually the last antiseptic applied 
to the hands of a surgeon before he begins 
an operation; so powerful is it that a solution 
of 1 to 2,000 is sufficiently strong to kill any 
germ. Surgical instruments are also disin¬ 
fected by boiling in water or exposure to 
steam. Iodine is most frequently used as an 
antiseptic on the patient. For ordinary cuts 
or wounds, such as those caused by a rusty 
nail or knife, tincture of iodine is a good 
remedy. The secret of preventing infection is 
prompt action. 

The use of antiseptics was introduced in the 
last quarter of the nineteenth century, chiefly 
through the efforts of Sir Joseph Lister, Rob¬ 
ert Ivoch and Louis Pasteur (see the records 
of these men in articles bearing their names). 


Their work, however, has led to the so-called 
aseptic method of surgery, which aims to pre¬ 
vent transmission of germs to a patient rather 
than to kill them after they have developed. 
The reason for this process is that every anti¬ 
septic causes some irritation, slight or serious, 
of the normal tissues of the body, besides de¬ 
stroying the infection. Modern aseptic sur¬ 
gery, therefore, attempts to eliminate infection. 
See Surgery; also Bacteria and Bacteriology; 
Disease, subhead Germ Theory of Disease; 
Putrefaction. w.a.e. 

ANTITOXIN, antitok' sin, meaning, liter¬ 
ally, against poison, is a substance formed in 
the blood which possesses the power of neu¬ 
tralizing or destro}dng some particular toxin, 
or poison. Usually antitoxins are developed 
by the body as a result of the presence of poi¬ 
sonous disease bacteria in the blood, and they 
are the result of the body’s effort to fight off 
disease. The injection of antitoxin into a 
healthy person as a protection against a dis¬ 
ease sometimes renders him temporarily im¬ 
mune from it. For use in medicine antitoxins 
are usually developed in animals and then 
injected into human beings. In this case they 
give the body an extra stimulus in its combat 
with disease. They have proved of great serv¬ 
ice in the treatment of diphtheria and lockjaw. 
See Bacteria and Bacteriology; Serum Ther¬ 
apy; Vaccination. w.a.e. 

ANTI-TRUST LAWS, the name popularly 
given to those laws passed for the purpose of 
regulating or suppressing trusts. The tremen¬ 
dous power of some modern monopolies, with 
the frequent abuses of this power, aroused 
public opinion to demand that some curb be 
placed on them. Practically every civilized 
nation now restricts the powers of trusts. For 
further details, see Trust, subhead Trust Reg¬ 
ulation. 

ANT-LION, the name given to the larvae 
(young) of an insect which in its perfect state 
resembles a large, four-winged fly like a dragon 
%. It is remarkable on account of the ingen¬ 
ious method by which it catches ants and 
other insects on which it feeds. The ant-lion 
has a large head, somewhat flattened, its hind- 
body is broad and oval, and its whole body 
is covered with short, stiff bristles. The mouth 
is always closed and is provided with strong 
nippers, the tips of which are perforated. 
Down the center of each of the jaws runs a 
groove or a tube along which the juices of the 
victim pass into the mouth. Ants or the other 
insects caught are impaled by the sharp points 


ANTWERP 


287 


ANTONY 

of these jaws and their juices sucked through 
the tubes. 

ANTONY, an'toni, Mark, in Latin, Mar¬ 
cus Antonius (83-30 b.c.), a great Roman 
orator, soldier and statesman, the friend and 
lieutenant of Julius Caesar, and himself the 
ruler of half the Roman world after Caesar’s 
death. Yet this 
man, before 
whom the noble 
“conscript 
fathers” of the 
Roman Senate 
trembled, to 
whom millions 
of people looked 
as their lord and 
master, could not 
command him¬ 
self. He gave 
free reign to his 
baser impulses, 
was untrue in 
turn to each of 
his four wives, Vatican, Rome, 
and finally lost power and honor as the result 
of his infatuation for Egypt’s queen, Cleopatra. 
He was probably the greatest of his day in 
everything he undertook, soldier, statesman, 
ruler, debauchee—he ran the gamut of the 
vices and virtues. 

Rise to Power. Mark Antony belonged to 
an ancient and powerful patrician family, and 
before he was thirty he had been raised to an 
important position under Caesar, who was then 
in Gaul. After several years in Gaul he 
returned to Rome and was elected tribune of 
the people; when civil war broke out he was 
expelled from the city as an adherent of Caesar. 
At the battle of Pharsalia, by which Caesar 
became master of Italy, Antony was second in 
command, and on several later occasions he 
was left in supreme control at home while 
Caesar was in Gaul. In 44 b.c. he was consul 
with Caesar, and on Caesar’s death was easily 
the foremost man in Rome. He sought to 
make himself a ruler as great as Caesar, and 
led his soldiers, many of them veterans of 
Caesar’s campaigns, against Brutus. While 
Antony was absent from Rome, young Octavius, 
later called Augustus Caesar, secured the sup¬ 
port of the Senate, and leading new forces to 
aid Brutus, drove Antony across the Alps. 

The Triumvirate. Octavius, however, an¬ 
gered by the Senate’s action in giving Brutus 
supreme command, made terms with Antony, 


and with Antony and Lepidus, a wealthy patri¬ 
cian, agreed to divide among the three the 
Roman world. Antony was to receive Gaul; 
Lepidus, Spain; and Octavius, Sicily, Sardinia 
and Africa. In the next year, 42 b. c., the 
triumvirate established its power in Italy by a 
victory at Philippi. 

Antony went to Greece, and then to Asia 
Minor, to complete the dominion of the trium¬ 
virate and arrange for payment of tribute. At 
Tarsus there came to do him homage Cleo¬ 
patra, queen of Egypt, whose charms com¬ 
pletely conquered him. He followed her to 
Egypt, where he spent the winter in luxury, 
flattery and self-admiration. He was roused 
from his dream by hostilities between his own 
brother and Octavius, and hurried to Rome 
only to find Octavius victorious. The great 
leaders again became reconciled; Antony mar¬ 
ried Octavia, the sister of Octavius, and a new 
division of the world was arranged. Lepidus 
was disregarded, Antony taking the East, and 
Octavius the West. 

Antony then spent several years in the East, 
without adding in any way to his fame. The 
call of Egypt then became irresistible, and 
he returned to Cleopatra, on whom he lav¬ 
ished kingdoms and provinces, to the disgust 
of Octavius and the Senate. Finally, in 32 b. c. 
the Senate declared war against Cleopatra, and 
after two years of preparation its forces were 
victorious in the battle of Actium. The queen 
fled to Egypt, followed by Antony, and soon 
the two were pursued by Octavius. When the 
false rumor came to him that Cleopatra was 
dead, Antony threw himself on his sword. 

The story of Antony has been told by Shake¬ 
speare in Julius Caesar and in Antony and 
Cleopatra, many lines of which are often 
quoted, especially the beginning of Antony’s 
masterly oration to the people at the funeral of 
Caesar: 

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your 
ears ; 

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” 

ANTWERP, ant'werp, in French, Anvers, 
is the principal maritime city of Belgium and 
one of the greatest ports in the world, situated 
on the right bank of the river Scheldt, about 
fifty miles from its mouth. During the twenty- 
five years preceding 1914, when the War of the 
Nations began, its trade increased at a faster 
rate than that of any European port. Its 
growth and development dates from 1863, when 
the tolls levied by the Netherlands on the 



MARK ANTONY 
From a bust now in the 






ANTWERP 


288 


ANTWERP 


shipping going up the Scheldt were abolished 
(it must be remembered that the estuary of 
the river is part of the territory of Holland). 
Population, 1912, 312,884; including suburbs, 
about 400,000. 

Chief Buildings. Among the buildings that 
have been preserved from the period of its 
greatness the most important is the cathedral. 
The Antwerp cathedral is the largest, and 
many people consider it the most beautiful, 
Gothic church in Belgium. Its graceful and 
lofty tower, over 400 feet high, is seen for a 
long distance as a conspicuous landmark in 
the flat, surrounding plain. The cathedral has 
only one tower, for a second tower which 
formed part of the original plan has never 
been completed. It is famous for its artistic 
treasures, among which are the three celebrated 
masterpieces of Rubens—the Descent from the 
Cross, the Elevation of the Cross and the 
Assumption. These great masterpieces were 
removed from the city for safety when the 
German “drive” through Belgium began in 
August, 1914. 

The most important secular building is the 
town hall, built in the sixteenth century in the 
Renaissance style; it is rich in carved wood 
panel-work, mural decorations and other works 
of art. Antwerp has a picture gallery which 
contains a fine collection of paintings of the 
Flemish school, the most famous being the 
priceless collection of paintings by Rubens and 
Van Dyck. One of the most interesting mu¬ 
seums in the whole world is the Museum Plan- 
tin-Moretus. It was the house and workshop 
of the great printer Plantin and contains a 
collection of everything pertaining to printing 
in its early stage. The library contains a col¬ 
lection of the artistic works issued from this 
great printing establishment, including the 
famous Biblia Polyglotta, published from 1568 
to 1573. Among its numerous educational 
establishments Antwerp contains a good school 
of arts and a well-known conservatory of music. 

Commerce and Industry. The harbor is spa¬ 
cious and is one of the finest in the world. 
The Belgian government did not spare any 
expense in order to improve and equip it with 
all the most modern facilities for accommo¬ 
dating the largest steamers. When the war 
broke out in 1914 work was nearly finished on 
a vast program of improvements which had 
cost $50,000,000. Before 1914 nearly 17,000,000 
tons of shipping entered and left Antwerp 
yearly. Besides its vast trade Antwerp has 
numerous and varied industries, among which 


are sugar refining, diamond cutting, lace mak¬ 
ing, brewing, distilling and shipbuilding. 

History. Antwerp began to attain a promi¬ 
nent position during the fifteenth century, 
when it became the chief port of the Hanseatic 
League (which see) and the great port of 
entrance for trade between the various parts 
of the Continent and England. It was at that 
time the chief money market in the world. 
It reached the height of its prosperity in 1560, 
when frequently as many as 500 ships entered 
the port in one day. Soon afterwards the 
struggle of The Netherlands to gain their reli¬ 
gious and political freedom from Spain, in 
which Antwerp took a prominent part, ruined 
its trade. 

Antwerp declined continuously until 1800, 
when its population was below 40,000. Na¬ 
poleon, realizing both the strategical and com¬ 
mercial value of its situation, decided to open 
and improve its harbor and to set it up as a 
rival to London. He considered that Ant¬ 
werp in the hands of a powerful enemy would 
be “a revolver held at the breast of England.” 
The trade of Antwerp began to grow very 
rapidly, but this lasted only until 1830; then 
Belgium became separated from Holland, and 
the latter country imposed heavy tolls upon 
the shipping of the Scheldt. These tolls were 
finally abolished in 1863. 

Captured by the Germans in 191J+. Antwerp 
was the pivot of the national defense of Bel¬ 
gium, and was one of the strongest fortresses 
in Europe. It was encircled by a great number 
of detached forts and other works, skilfully 



THE DEFENSES OF ANTWERP 

It was thought the fortifications could protect 
the city against any enemy, for any length of 
time. 

constructed, which transformed it into a great 
fortified camp. The city was considered almost 
impregnable, and in any case able to resist 
a long siege. This was before the War of the 









ANUBIS 


289 


APACHE 


Nations, which changed all former ideas as 
to the value of fortifications. The develop¬ 
ment of modern artillery enabled the Germans 
to capture Antwerp after a short ten-days’ 
contest. The large forty-two centimeter Ger¬ 
man siege guns simply pounded the forts to 
bits. The Germans began their attack on the 
forts on September 28, 1914. It was not neces¬ 
sary for them to surround and besiege the 
city. The destruction of the forts by artillery 
compelled the Belgian army, which was rein¬ 
forced by a number of hastily-gathered and 
ill-equipped British marines and naval reserv¬ 
ists, to abandon the place on the night of 
October 8. The following day the Germans 
entered the town. o.b. 

ANUBIS, an early Egyptian diety, who was 
assistant to Osiris (which see) at the final judg¬ 
ment, at which time his duty was to weigh in 
the scale of justice the heart of the deceased, 
balancing it against the feather, the symbol of 
truth and right. The fate of the dead was 
determined as the scale tipped in either direc¬ 
tion. 

AN'VIL, a block upon which pieces of metal 
are laid to be hammered into different shapes. 
The smallest anvils are those of the gold and 
silver smiths; they are simple blocks of steel 
or marble. Anvils for machine-driven ham¬ 



mers are set on anvil-blocks often weighing 
several tons. The anvil that we all know, 
however, is that on which the blacksmith 
shapes the glowing iron into horseshoes, bolts 
or rings. It is ordinarily of cast or wrought 
iron with a coat of hard steel, and weighs 
from 100 to 500 pounds. The rounded pro¬ 
jection at one end is called the beak. The 
two holes shown at the other end in the illus¬ 
tration are to hold the blacksmith’s tools. 

Longfellow’s poem, The Village Blacksmith, 
lias at its close the famous lines: 

Thus at the flaming forge of life 
Our fortunes must be wrought; 

Thus on its sounding anvil shaped 
Each burning deed and thought! 


AORTA, a or' ta, the great artery which car¬ 
ries the purified blood from the heart, and 
through its 
branches dis- 
tributes it to the 
body. It rises from 
the left ventricle 
of the heart to¬ 
ward the top of 
the breast-bone 
and there makes a 
curve, called the 
arch of the aorta, 
whence it gives off 
branches to the 
head and arms. 

Then going down¬ 
ward through the 
chest, it gives off 
branches to the (aa) AORTA 

trunk, and passing through the diaphragm 
finally divides into two branches which supply 
the pelvis and the lower limbs. See Heart, in 
connection with which the aorta is illustrated; 
also Arteries ; Circulation. 

APACHE, ayah' chay, but commonly pro¬ 
nounced a patch' ee, the Zuni Indian word for 
enemy, is applied by the Zuni especially to the 
Navaho (who are closely related to the 
Apache), with whom they were almost con- 




AN APACHE WAR-BONNET 

Worn by the “braves” on their exploits as late 
as 1866 . 


tinuously at war. The Spaniards adopted the 
name to designate a number of warlike In¬ 
dians of Northern Mexico and the territory 
now included in New Mexico and Arizona. 
The true Apaches belong to the great Athapas¬ 
can family. They were among the most power¬ 
ful tribes of the Southwest, and were con- 





















































APALACHICOLA 


290 


APELLES 


stantly raiding the white settlements as well 
as the weaker Indian tribes on both sides of 
the Mexican borders. 

Their feelings towards the United States 
were not unfriendly until after the Mexican 
War, when several unprovoked attacks on them 
led to a change of attitude. There was hos¬ 
tility of varying degrees until 1860, when war¬ 
riors of a number of the Apache tribes went 
on the warpath. Except in the neighborhood 
of Tucson, they practically drove the white 
men out of Arizona in the next five or six 
years. In 1886 several bands of Apaches, prin¬ 
cipally of the Chiricahua tribe, went on the 
warpath for the last time. After causing much 
loss of life and property they were captured, 
and their leader, Geronimo (Spanish for 
Jerome), and many others were imprisoned. 
Most of the Apaches now live on reservations 
in Arizona and New Mexico, but a band of 
about 270 Chiricahua are in Oklahoma. They 
make excellent baskets, and on the whole 
have taken kindly to the white man’s civiliza¬ 
tion. Their total number is about 5,000. See 
Indians, American. 

The Paris Apaches. The Apache Indians 
were a brave, warlike people, but judged by 
civilized standards they were often merciless 
robbers and murderers. To be taken prisoner 
by the Apaches meant torture and almost 
certain death, and in the books written by 
white men the Apache was a bad Indian. For 
some reason this name was transferred to the 
underworld of Paris, where the thieves and 
cutthroats, in loosely-organized bands, are 
proud to be Apaches. e.s.c. 

APALACHICOLA, ap a latch i ko' la, or AP- 
PALACHICOLA, a river formed by the union 
of the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers at the 
southwest border of Georgia. It flows through 
Florida in a southerly direction for ninety 
miles, and enters the Gulf of Mexico through 
Apalachicola Bay. It is navigable throughout 
its course for large steamboats and is impor¬ 
tant in the transportation of the products of 
the neighboring region, chiefly fruit and cotton, 
to the sea for distribution to the markets of 
the world. The town of Apalachicola is sit¬ 
uated on the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of 
this river. 

APE, the animal that is most like a man. 
The gorilla, the orang-utan, the chimpanzee, 
and most of the monkeys are properly termed 
apes, but not the lemur, the loris, the aye-aye 
or others which bear more resemblance to tho 
lower orders of mammals than to man, 


The principal differences in make-up between 
apes and men are matters of proportion. Both 



THE APE 

have practically the same organs, muscles and 
nerves, but the ape has longer arms, shorter 
legs, a square jaw and a thicker skull, a 
thumbed foot which can do the work of a 
hand and a spinal column which does not 
curve at the base and sometimes is prolonged 
into a tail. The ape’s brain is much smaller 
than man’s though many of the gorillas and 
orang-utans are larger and more powerful than 
man. Except for the face, the palms of the 
hands and the soles of the feet, an ape’s body 
is covered with coarse black or brown hair. 
Its diet consists largely of fruits, and its home 
is built on a rude platform constructed in the 
trees of the tropical forests. All species of 
apes and monkeys are so imitative that the 
expression to ape, meaning to imitate, has 
become quite common. See Chimpanzee; Go¬ 
rilla; Orang-utan; Gibbon; Baboon; Mon¬ 
key. 

APELLES, apel'leez, the most famous 
Greek painter of ancient times. He was born 
in the fourth century b. c., probably at Colo¬ 
phon in Asia Minor. He became the close 
friend of Alexander the Great, and his portrait 
of the latter, with the thunderbolt in his hand, 
is celebrated. Apelles used to place himself 
behind a picture in the public exhibitions, in 
order to hear the criticisms of the common 
people. His pictures were simple and natural, 
and his coloring delicate and beautiful. Lucian, 
a Greek writer of the second century a. d., 
wrote a description of the paintings of Apelles 
that inspired many later artists. 






























APENNINES 


291 


APOCRYPHA 


APENNINES , ap' e nynz, the mountain range 
that forms the “backbone” of Italy. It extends 
from the head of the Gulf of Genoa to the 
toe of the “boot” and covers about two-thirds 
of the area of the peninsula. The central divi¬ 
sion extends to the coast of the Adriatic Sea, 
but on the west the mountains are separated 
from the Mediterranean Sea by the Apennine 
Forelands. 

The Apennines are divided into three divi¬ 
sions, the Northern, the Central and the South¬ 
ern Apennines; each division includes a num¬ 
ber of smaller mountain ranges. The sides of 
the mountains are covered with vegetation, 
but their summits are bare. They are low 
mountains, having an average altitude of 4,000 
feet. The highest peak, the Gran Sosso, is 
9,583 feet; the most noted is Vesuvius (which 
see). The Apennines contribute much to the 
scenery of Italy, and furnish her with beauti¬ 
ful marble for which the country has been 
noted from most ancient times. The Arno 
and the Tiber are celebrated rivers rising 
within these mountains. 

APHASIA, aja'zhia, a Greek word mean¬ 
ing specchlessness, is used in English to de¬ 
scribe a curious result of certain nervous dis¬ 
orders. The patient loses the power of 
expressing ideas by means of words, or loses 
the appropriate use of words, though the vocal 
organs may be in perfect condition and the 
mind clear. There is sometimes a total loss 
of words and sometimes the loss of a few onh-. 
In one form of the disease, called aphemia, 
the patient can think and write, but cannot 
speak; in another, called agraphia, he can 
think and speak, but cannot express his ideas 
in writing nor understand anything which he 
sees written. In a great majority of cases, 
where examinations after death have been 
made, changes have been found in the brain 
areas which preside over speech. w. a. e. 

APHIDES, aj'ideez, very small greenish or 
brown bugs, commonly known as plant lice, 
that live on the tender shoots of plants, sucking 
the sap through long, sharp beaks. Most of 
these insects discharge from the alimentary 
canal a sweet liquid, the “honey dew” so much 
liked by ants and other insects (see Ant). 
Aphides do great harm to growing crops, gar¬ 
den vegetables and hothouse plants, but they 
are themselves the prey of birds, ants, spiders 
and ladybird beetles. 

APHRODITE, afrodi ' te, the Greek goddess 
of love and beauty. She is far better known 
by her Roman pame of Venus (which see). 


APIA, ape' ah, the principal town of the 
Samoan Islands. It lies on the north side 
of the island of Upolu, and its fine harbor has 
made it the commercial center of the islands 
of the South Pacific Ocean. The town con¬ 
sists practically of a single street running along 
the harbor, which is the best in the islands. 
On the division of the islands betw'een Ger¬ 
many and the United States in 1900, Apia 
became the capital of German Samoa, but in 
1914 it was captured by Australian troops and 
became a British possession. Near Apia is 
Vailima, once the home of Robert Louis 
Stevenson, and on the summit of Mount Vaea, 
which overlooks the town, Stevenson lies 
buried. Population in 1915, about 1,500, one- 
t.hird of whom were Europeans. 

A'PIS, a sacred bull that was worshipped 
by the ancient Egyptians, and kept in the 
temple of Osiris at Memphis. The bull se¬ 
lected possessed certain very special and dis¬ 
tinguishing features, such as a black hide with 
certain marks on the forehead and back and 
other distinguishing marks. The birthday of 
the bull Apis was celebrated every year by 
the people. When he died he was embalmed 
and buried in a splendid sarcophagus in a 
special part of the temple and his death was 
followed by a period of public mourning. 

APOCALYPSE, a pahk' a lips. The last book 
of the New Testament, the work of the Apostle 
John, opens with these words: “The revelation 
of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to 
show unto His servants things which must 
shortly come to pass.” In the Greek language 
the word for revelation is apocalypse, from a 
verb meaning to uncover, and thus the book 
of prophecies came to be known, from its first 
word, as the Apocalypse oj John. This name, 
while still retained in works on theology, is 
changed in the English version of the Bible to 
the Revelation oj Saint John the Divine. For 
its contents and interpretation, see Revelation. 

APOCRYPHA, a pole' rifah, a term applied 
to various sacred books which were written 
between the writing of the books of the Old 
Testament and the beginning of the Christian 
dispensation. The term means hidden or con¬ 
cealed. The books of the Apocrypha are not 
accepted as authorized books of the Bible by 
the Protestant churches, but they are accepted 
by the Roman Catholic Church. The term 
is specially applied to the following books, 
written during the two centuries preceding the 
birth of Christ: The first and second books 
of Esdras, Tobit, Judith, the latter part of the 


APOGEE 


292 


APOSTLES 


book of Esther, the Wisdom of Solomon, the 
Wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach, or Ecclesi- 
asticus, Baruch the Prophet, the Song of the 
Three Children, Susanna and the Elders, Bel 
and the Dragon, the Prayer of Manasses and 
the first and second books of Maccabees. See 
Bible. 

APOGEE, ap' o jee. See Apsides. 

APOLLO, a pol ' o, among the Greeks, the 
radiant god of light, driver of the chariot of 
the sun. He was the son of Jupiter and Leto, 
and the twin brother of Diana, the moon- 
goddess, and at first was the god of light and 



purity merely in 
a physical sense. 
From this he 
came to be re¬ 
garded as god of 
spiritual light, 
and so of politi- 

APOLLO BELVEDERE ca ^ P ro ’g ress - He 
From statue in the Vati- also presided over 
can, Rome. song and proph¬ 

ecy, inspiring whom he would with musical 
ability or with the true prophetic fervor. 

In general, he was a kindly deity, smiling 
upon all, but stories are told of him which 
show that he had a sterner side. Thus when 
he was but five days old he killed the dreadful 
serpent Python (which see), and afterward, 
w T ith Diana, put to death the children of the 
boasting Niobe (see Niobe). The Cyclops, also, 
felt his vengeful spirit because they had forged 
the thunderbolts with which Jupiter killed 
Aesculapius, Apollo’s son. Among the ancient 
statues of Apollo, the most remarkable one 
is the Apollo Belvedere, in the Belvedere Gal¬ 
lery in the Vatican. 


In modern times the name Apollo is used as 
the symbol of manly strength and good looks, 
and the phrase “handsome as an Apollo” is a 
very common figure of speech. 

APOPLEXY, ap' oplexi, the name rather 
loosely applied to various brain diseases w T hich 
have symptoms much alike but are due to 
different causes. The word means literally a 
stroke, and it is under this name that apoplexy 
is frequently spoken of. In complete apoplexy 
the person falls suddenly, is unable to move 
his limbs or to speak, and gives no evidence 
of seeing, hearing or feeling. His breathing 
is noisy, much like that of a person in deep 
sleep, and his face is congested and purple. 
Apoplexy is most frequent between the ages 
of fifty and seventy, and stout people with 
short necks and full chests are generally con¬ 
sidered to be more liable to it than thinner 
persons. The immediate cause is either the 
bursting of a blood-vessel in the brain, or the 
presence in such a vessel of some small foreign 
substance, which brings on congestion. 

Disease of the blood-vessel wall, such as 
causes rupture and, secondarily, apoplexy, is 
caused by syphilis, tobacco, alcohol, indulgence 
in too much meat or too much salt, heavy 
eating, lack of exercise, etc. The immediate 
causes of the rupture are high blood pressure, 
over-exertion, straining, outbursts of passion, 
vomiting and the like. Attacks of apoplexy 
are often followed by complete or partial 
paralysis of one side of the body. The para¬ 
lyzed limbs of a victim of apoplexy should be 
exercised and massaged eveiy day, and if there 
is any tendency to contracture the drawing 
limb must be pulled straight and be put in 
splints. Exercise and massage of splinted limbs 
must be persisted in. A third attack of apo¬ 
plexy is usually fatal. w.a.e. 

APOSTLES, apos' els, the tw T elve disciples 
chosen by Christ to preach His doctrine to 
the world. The story of their selection is 
given in the Gospels, the best account being 
found in Matthew. They were Simon Peter, 
and Andrew, his brother; James, and John, his 
brother, sons of Zebedee; Philip; Bartholo¬ 
mew; Thomas; Matthew; James, the son of 
Alpheus, and Lebeus, his brother, called Judas; 
Simon, the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot. Ex¬ 
cepting Matthew, who was a publican tax 
collector, all were laboring men of the most 
humble class. After the betrayal, Matthias 
was chosen by lot in place of Judas Iscariot. 
The Bible also gives the name of apostle to 
Paul and to Barnabas. 















APOSTLES’ CREED 


293 


APPENDICITIS 


The term apostles is applied generally to 
the first Christian missionaries in all parts of 
the world, and to leaders in any great moral 
reform; as Saint Boniface, the apostle of Ger¬ 
many; Saint Augustine, the apostle of Eng¬ 
land; John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians; 
John B. Gough, an apostle of temperance. 

APOSTLES’ CREED, a statement of Chris¬ 
tian faith which has been traced back to about 
A. D. 150, so named because it is supposed to 
have originated with the apostles themselves 
(see Apostles). It is as follows: 

“I believe in God the Father Almighty and in 
Christ Jesus His Son, who was born of Mary 
the Virgin, was crucified under Pontius Pilate 
and buried ; on the third day rose from the dead, 
ascended into Heaven, sittetli on the right hand 
of the Father, from whence He cometh to judge 
the quick and the dead ; and in the Holy Ghost, 
and resurrection of the body.” 

The above is not exactly the form used by 
the churches of the present day; the original 
Creed has been modified, as follows: 

“I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker 
of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ His 
only Son, our Lord; who was conceived by the 
Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary; suffered 
under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and 
buried; He descended into Hell; the third day 
He rose again from the dead ; He ascended into 
heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the 
Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to 
judge the quick and the dead. 

“I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy Catho¬ 
lic Church, the Communion of Saints; the for¬ 
giveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; 
and the life everlasting. Amen.” 

APOTHECARIES’, a poth' e ka riz, 
WEIGHT, the system of weights used by drug¬ 
gists when preparing prescriptions. The pound 
is divided into 12 ounces, the ounce into 8 
drams, the dram into 3 scruples and the scruple 
into 20 grains. In both apothecaries’ and troy 
weight there are 5,760 grains to the pound, 480 
grains to the ounce. The avoirdupois pound 
contains 7,000 grains; the ounce, 437% grains. 
The grain, the smallest unit, is the same in 
all three weights above named, the difference 
in the size of the pound being due only to a 
difference in the number of grains it contains. 

APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS, ap a latch' 
ian, or ap ala' chian, the great mountain sys¬ 
tem occupying the eastern part of North 
America and extending from the Gulf of Saint 
Lawrence into Alabama, a distance of over 
1,300 miles. The Appalachians form the east¬ 
ern highlands of the continent, and include a 
number of parallel ranges, all extending in a 
southwesterly direction. They form the water¬ 


shed separating the rivers that flow into the 
Atlantic from those flowing into the Gulf of 
Mexico (see Watershed). 

Description. In general the Appalachians 
are low mountains with rounded summits and 
even crests, or ridges. With few exceptions 
their sides are clothed with forests. Between 
the ranges are many highly-fertile and densely- 
populated valleys, and the foothills and uplands 
support a large agricultural population. These 
mountains are noted for a number of deep, 
narrow valleys with almost perpendicular sides, 
through which rivers wend their way to the 
sea; the most noted of these valleys are Craw¬ 
ford Notch in the White Mountains, the 
Highlands of the Hudson and Delaware Water 
Gap. They add much to the scenery of their 
regions. The highest peaks are Mount Wash¬ 
ington in New Hampshire (6,293 feet) and 
Mount Mitchell in North Carolina (6,6S8 feet). 
Lake Champlain is the only lake of impor¬ 
tance in the system. 

Minerals and Water Power. These moun¬ 
tains contain an abundance of iron ore, coal, 
fire-clay, marble, gypsum and salt, and exten¬ 
sive oil fields occur in many of the valleys. 
Many rapid streams flow down their eastern 
slopes, and where the foothills descend to the 
low coastal plain there are hundreds of excel¬ 
lent sites for water-power. Along this line we 
find many manufacturing cities (see Fall 
Line). The forests are a valuable source of 
lumber. For the products of the Appalachian 
system, see the articles describing the regions 
through which they pass. See, also, Adiron¬ 
dack Mountains; Blue Ridge; Cumberland 
Mountains. 

APPEAL, appeel' , in law, the removal of a 
suit from a lower to a higher court for the 
purpose of securing a reversal or modification 
of the decision of the lower court. Each sys¬ 
tem of courts has particular rules upon which 
appeals may be granted, usually requiring the 
presentation of additional material evidence, 
or the certification of an error in the conduct 
of the trial by the court. An appeal allows 
the higher court to reconsider the facts of the 
case, to reverse the decision, or in some cases 
to remand it to the lower court for a new 
trial, whereas a writ of error merely allows 
it to rule on points of law. See Procedure. 

APPENDICITIS, apendisy' tis, an infec¬ 
tion of the vermiform appendix, is one of the 
commonest diseases to which mankind is sub¬ 
ject. It has been estimated that one-third of 
all human beings who reach adult age have had 


APPENDICITIS 


294 


APPERCEPTION 


appendicitis in some form. Until almost the 
end of the nineteenth century thousands of 
people died every 
year from “in¬ 
flammation of 
the bowels’’ and 
various other dis¬ 
eases which are 
now recognized 
as forms of ap¬ 
pendicitis. 

The appendix 
is a small, tube¬ 
like organ which 
projects from the 
caecum (blind 
pouch or sack) of 
the large intes¬ 
tine. The vermi¬ 
form, or worm¬ 
like, appearance 
of the appendix 
has given it the 
qualifying part of 
its name. It is 
usually three to 



LOCATION OF VERMI¬ 
FORM APPENDIX 


Arrow at a points to ap¬ 
pendix. It is at the right of 
the exit from the small 

. intestine and at the base of 

four inches long, large ascending colon (see 

and from one- Intestines). 

quarter to one-half an inch thick. It is nor¬ 
mally located on the right side of the abdomen, 
midway between the crest of the ileum and the 
navel, but as the closed end is free its position 
frequently varies. The organ seems useless in 
man, though in some of the lower animals it is 
more highly developed and apparently aids the 
process of digestion. 

It was once thought that grape seeds, cherry 
stones and other foreign substances lodged in 
the appendix were the chief causes of inflam¬ 
mation. Such cases are now believed to be 
rare, but wounds, strains, bruises and the ac¬ 
cumulation and hardening of undigested food 
are common causes. It is probable that in a 
majority of cases the prime factors are bac¬ 
teria acting upon an injured or weakened 
mucous membrane, and a condition of lowered 
vitality of the organism. 

Among the symptoms of appendicitis are 
sharp, colic-like pains, varied by dull aches, 
which gradually localize themselves in the re¬ 
gion of the appendix. Fever usually follows, 
and is sometimes accompanied by nausea and 
vomiting. Neither fever nor vomiting, how¬ 
ever, are sure indications, but tenderness and 
stiffness in the region of the appendix are 
almost certain indications. The diagnosis of 


appendicitis is so complicated that a physician 
should always be called whenever this disease 
seems to make its appearance. 

A large proportion of all cases recover, but 
in severe cases the tissue of the appendix 
ulcerates and becomes perforated, causing 
peritonitis, or inflammation of the whole ab¬ 
dominal cavity. In cases of perforation death 
is almost certain to follow unless prompt sur¬ 
gical measures are taken. In fact, the surgical 
operation has come to be considered the only 
certain cure for the disease, and so well known 
are the method of operation and the subse¬ 
quent treatment of the wound that the opera¬ 
tion is not now regarded as difficult or danger¬ 
ous. W.A.E. 

APPERCEPTION, ap ersep' shun. When 
we see a new object, when we hear a new fact, 
when we read a new idea—in fact, when we 
meet with any new kind of experience—the 
mind refers it to the store of knowledge already 
possessed. It compares this new experience 
with the old, tries to explain it and to assimilate 
it by interpreting it in the light of previous 
experiences. This mental process is known in 
the science of psychology as apperception. If 
an idea is closely related to something already 
well understood, the effort of apperception is 
so slight that we scarcely recognize it, or we 
may be entirely unconscious of it; but if the 
experience is new and important all ideas which 
relate to it are brought into consciousness and 
applied to the new object or phenomenon. 

Before a new experience can be apperceived, 
we must obtain data concerning it. If it is a 
new sort of fruit, we bring to bear upon it all 
the senses, such as sight, touch, taste, smell. We 
then attempt to learn of its manner of growth, 
whether the plant is annual, biennial or per¬ 
ennial; whether it is an herb, shrub or tree, 
and whether it thrives in a warm or temperate 
climate. When these items of information are 
obtained, we are prepared to classify properly 
the new specimen and add it to our idea of 
fruit. 

Its Value in Education. The proper un¬ 
derstanding of the processes of apperception 
is very important in the formulation and appli¬ 
cation of sound methods of teaching. For in 
this connection it is well to remember the 
following important facts: 

(a) The mind in mastering any new idea does 
it by going from what is known to the nearest 
related unknown. If a new kind of fruit is pre¬ 
sented to the child, his first act is to discover 
its known qualities. It follows therefore that 
in teaching new subjects one has to take into 









APPETITE 


295 


APPLE 


consideration the knowledge the child already 
possesses. Each bit of information or new 
knowledge must be so presented as to show the 
relation that exists between it and the facts 
already known and the relation of each of them 
as a whole. Only knowledge presented in such 
a way is of value because it can be thoroughly 
assimilated and combined with previous knowl¬ 
edge. 

(b) When ideas are presented, the memory of 
past similar ideas will exert a modifying influ¬ 
ence, and the tendency is to interpret the new 
idea by the old ideas which first come into con¬ 
sciousness. Every one interprets new ideas in 
the light of his special experience. The artist 
sees in a landscape material for a beautiful pic¬ 
ture, while the farmer sees in the same landscape 
so much fertile soil suitable for cultivation. 

See Association, Laws of ; Interest ; Per¬ 
ception. O.B. 

APPETITE, ap' etite. This word, which in 
Latin means desire in general, is in English 
most commonly used to mean desire for food 
and drink. Just what is the physical cause of 
this craving which is felt at fairly regular 
intervals is not known, but physicians agree 
that in a healthy person it is the very best 
guide as to the time of eating and the amount 
to be eaten. One of the new health crusades 
is based on the principle that one should eat 
only when hungry, and then only just enough 
to appease the appetite. It is a good rule for 
anyone to eat slowly, so as to give the appetite 
a chance to become satisfied before too much 
has been eaten. Physicians hold that most 
people who are not engaged in hard manual 
labor stimulate their appetite artificially, and 
in this manner they overload the body and 
reduce their efficiency. 


APPIAN, ap'ian, WAY, called the Queen 
of Roads, a famous highway of ancient times, 



APPIAN WAY 

Drawn from a photograph, showing its appear¬ 
ance in the twentieth century, twenty-two hun¬ 
dred years after its construction. 

named from the Roman censor Appius 
Claudius, who began its construction in 312 b. c. 
Leading directly from the gates of Rome to 
Capua, in Campania, it was afterward extended 
to Beneventum, Tarentum and thence to Brun- 
dusium, on the southeast coast of Italy. This 
broad, historic highway, the Via Appia that 
the Latin student so often comes upon in his 
reading, was paved with huge blocks of lava, 
laid on a bed of broken stone cemented with 
lime, and it formed the chief thoroughfare 
for travelers from points east and south of 
Rome. Portions of the road are yet in use, 
and there still may be seen the ruins of many 
of the magnificent tombs that were built along 
its sides in the vicinity of Rome. 



and the Greeks also made an apple, the famous 
Apple of Discord (which see), the cause of a 
great disaster. In general, however, it has 
received more favorable notice, for poets have 
loved to sing not only of the “apple blossoms 
white” which “hung in rich profusion” but of 
the “alluring fruit” as well. Bryant’s Planting 
of the Apple Tree is a much-loved poem which 
sings of the beauties and uses of the tree itself. 

The name is used, in combination, for various 
fruits which are not at all related to the apple. 
Rather startling, at first, seems Whittier’s— 


PPLE, the most profitable fruit of 
the temperate regions, and according to many 
authorities the most valuable in all the world. 
It is also the commonest and one of the oldest 
known; references to it are frequent in the 
literature of all countries and all ages. Pop¬ 
ularly, it is identified with the “fruit of the 
tree of knowledge” eaten by Adam and Eve in 
Eden— 


****** whose mortal taste 
Brought death into the world, and all our woe, 
With loss of Eden; 


























APPLE 


296 


APPLE 


Let other lands, exulting - , glean 
The apple from the pine, 

until there comes the realization that what is 
meant is the familiar pineapple, which is not 
an apple at all. The tomato was long known 
as a “love apple,” and the “apple of Sodom” 
had an unenviable reputation which still per¬ 
sists. Just what this fruit was is not known, 
but ancient travelers in the East told of a 
beautiful, luscious-looking fruit which tempted 
the sight, but was but dust and ashes to the 
taste. 

Related to the Rose. Like the peach, the 
cherry, the strawberry and the plum, the apple 
belongs to the rose family, and its exquisite 
blossoms, white or pink-tinted, are much like 
the first of the roses, the wild rose (see illus¬ 
tration later in this article). The smooth- 
skinned, juicy fruit, with its hard pulp and 
its core containing the horny seed cells is too 
well known to need description. Authorities 
tell of thousands of varieties which differ in 
color, in shape and in taste, but all these 
have been developed from two species—the 
common apple and the wild crabapple. 

Beginnings of Apple Culture. The devel¬ 
opment has been slow, for remains of pre¬ 
historic civilization show that even in those 
far-distant times the apple was cultivated. The 
Romans knew and prized it, and probably 
introduced it into England. One of the early 
governors of Massachusetts Bay Colony per¬ 
formed a signal service to his newly adopted 
country by introducing the apple in 1629; for 
North America, the greatest apple-producing 
region in the world, had no native apples. As 
the colonists in the years that followed pushed 
their way westward they planted apple 
orchards everywhere; and a certain eccentric 
character earned fame and the name of Johnny 
Appleseed by traveling over Western Pennsyl¬ 
vania and Ohio scattering apple seeds. 
Wherever he came upon a fertile, well-watered 
spot, there he planted his seed, and the little 
orchards which sprang up he tended on his later 
visits. Fantastic as were his methods, certain 
parts of Ohio look upon him as a very real 
benefactor. 

An Apple Orchard. The old unkempt 
orchards with their spreading, gnarly-limbed 
trees, thick with blossoms in the spring and 
shining with their oval, bright-green leaves, 
are most picturesque, but it is the carefully 
tended orchard that produces the best yield. 
The trees should be planted in rows from thirty 
to fort}- feet apart each way, that the full-grown 


branches may not interfere with one another. 
Careful pruning is an important factor, but 
one about which no specific directions can be 
given, as it differs according to the variety of 
apple and the locality. In general, the trees 
should not be allowed to attain a greater height 
than twenty-five feet, and the tops should be 
rounded and spreading. 



THE APPLE 

Below is the typical form of apple tree, as 
seen in winter. Above, shape of fruit and leaves 
and section showing - core and seeds. 

All about the roots of the trees the soil 
should be carefully cultivated until about the 
middle of July, but then tillage should cease. 
No attempt should be made except on richest 
soil to raise regular crops on orchard land, 
or to graze animals there, but it is well, at 
the time cultivation is abandoned, to plant 
clover, cowpeas, alfalfa or some such crop 
which, by demanding the strength of the soil, 
will stop the growth of the trees and allow the 
fruit to mature more slowly. 

Where Apples Are Grown. No fruit in the 
world is more widespread than the apple, and 
no other can be successfully grown so far 
north, for its blossoms appear late in the 
spring and thus escape the frosts. Europe 
grows apples as far north as Scandinavia, and 
the temperate regions of the Southern Hemi¬ 
sphere have been found to be well adapted to 
their production, but it is North America 
which, as stated above, is the real home of the 
apple. 




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APPLE 


297 


APPLE 


United States. The United States is the 
greatest apple-growing country in the world, 
and produces annually over 200,000,000 bushels, 
of which by far the larger proportion is used 
within the country. New York produces 
almost a fifth of the total crop, Michigan 
ranks second among the states, Pennsylvania, 
third and Missouri fourth. The apples of the 
Piedmont valley in Virginia have long been 
celebrated for their juiciness and their excel¬ 
lent flavor. Of late years the Northwestern 
states, notably Montana, Oregon, Washington 
and Idaho, have made vast strides in the indus¬ 
try ; if the increase continues the Eastern states 
will not long be sure of their supremacy. The 
proportion of apples harvested to the number 
of trees is low as yet in these Western states, 
for many of the orchards there are young, and 
some varieties do not produce fruit until they 
are ten years old. The western apples are 
of a beautiful rich color, so dark at times as to 
look almost black. The finest apples are raised 
in irrigated regions, and they are as carefully 
harvested, graded and packed as are oranges 
in California or Florida. 

Canada. In Canada the apple is rapidly be¬ 
coming the chief fruit. In 1871 the apple crop 
amounted to but 6,000,000 bushels, while in 
1915 it was over 21,000,000. Ontario leads in 
apple production, its orchards yielding more 
than half of the crop of the Dominion. A 
considerable part of the Ontario apples is sent 
to the Western province, though some of these 
are developing a rapidly-increasing industry 
of their own. Ontario also exports to Great 
Britain more apples than any other province 
or state in North America. 

How Grown. Apple seeds, if planted in the 
proper soil, will grow and produce apples, but 
the fruit will not be the same kind as that 
from which the seed was taken, and will, 
moreover, be decidedly inferior. Good varie¬ 
ties of apples, therefore, are usually secured 
by grafting (which see) and by far the larger 
part of this is done in nurseries. The plants 
to be grafted upon are raised from seed, but 
the buds to be grafted are taken from a tree 
that is known to produce excellent fruit of the 
variety desired. No matter of what kind the 
seedling is, if a northern spy bud be grafted 
upon it the full-grown tree will produce north¬ 
ern spies; if the bud be from a maiden blush 
tree, maiden blush apples will develop. A 
farmer wishing to start an orchard buys from 
a nurseryman trees which are one, two or 
more years old. These, if properly cared for, 


will live and produce for a long time, an 
orchard thirty years old frequently being still 
in fine bearing condition. 

Kinds. Of the very numerous varieties of 
apples produced in North America, not more 
than one hundred are really profitable, and 
usually not over twenty varieties are successful 
in any one region. The kinds which do well 



RELATED BLOSSOMS 

The apple belongs to the rose family. The 
flowers prove the relationship; a is the apple 
blossom ; l>, the wild rose. 

in Canada and the northern part of the United 
States usually do not thrive in Missouri and 
Southern Illinois, and those which yield plenti¬ 
fully in Virginia seem ill-adapted to the irri¬ 
gated Western lands. Whenever apple culture 
is begun in a new locality, trials have to be 
made to determine which varieties best suit 
the peculiar soil conditions of the region. 
In general, the warmer apple-growing regions 
succeed best with the early fruit, while the 
colder regions produce the best late fruit, or 
winter apples. The larger number of apples 
in the market to-day are of this latter variety— 
that is, they are left on the trees as long as 
there is no danger of their being frozen. They 
do not, like the softer peaches and plums, rot 
on the trees. 

It is impossible to mention all or even many 
of the common varieties of apples, but a few 
of the favorites are the northern spy, the pip¬ 
pin, the russet, the Jonathan, the Spitzenberg, 
the winesap, the bellflower, the snow apple, 
the Baldwin, the greening, the duchess and the 
maiden blush. The two last named are tart 
summer apples, not as good as some others for 
eating. The Ben Davis is raised in great 
quantities because it is easy of cultivation 


APPLE 


298 


APPLE 


and keeps well, but it is not the best variety 
either for eating raw or for cooking. 

Uses and Food Value. Since winter apples 
may be kept in cold storage, or even in cool, 
dry cellars until the earliest summer apples 
are on the market, it is possible to have apples 
the entire year. And no fruit is more gener- 



The figures show the percentage each ingredi¬ 
ent bears to the whole. See Food, subtitle Chem¬ 
istry of Food. 


ally welcome. The choicest apples are for the 
most part eaten raw, but the housewife finds 
almost innumerable uses for them in cookery, 
delicious jelly, sauces, pies, puddings and 
dumplings being produced from them. The 
inferior grades are either canned or dried 
before being placed on the market, or are made 
into cider, from which in turn the best vinegar 
is made. 

Apples are one of the most wholesome of 
fruits—a fact that is recognized in the old 
rhyme— 

An apple a day 

Keeps the doctor away. 

This does not mean that they have high nutri¬ 
tive value, for like most fresh fruits they are 
largely water. To replace one egg in food value, 
fully two and one-half pounds of apples would 
be needed. The water which they contain, 
however, and the vegetable acid make them 
excellent regulators of the system. Dried or 
evaporated apples, like most dried fruits, have 
a higher nutritive value than fresh, but they 
have not the refreshing, tonic qualities. 

Seedless Apples. Two scientists, John F. 
Spencer of Grand Junction, Col., and Luther 
Burbank, have worked successfully to produce 
an apple in which there is no core. The seed¬ 
less apples are firm, juicy and of good color, 
and lack entirely the horny receptacles that 
surround the seeds in ordinary apples. But it 
is not merely this that makes this new fruit 
valuable and bids fair to make it very im¬ 


portant in apple-culture in the near future. 
The tree is blossomless, having only stamens 
and a small quantity of pollen, and while this 
fact robs it of its springtime glory of white 
and rose, it frees it also from one of the 
worst apple pests—the codling moth (which 
see), for it is on the blossom that the moth 
lays its eggs. Thus wormless apples are prac¬ 
tically assured. g.f.c. 

Diseases of Apple Trees. Apple rust and 
apple scab are the most troublesome diseases 
to which apples are subject. The former is 
caused by a fungus which appears as yellow 
spots on the leaves and also attacks the little 
apples in May and June, and. the only safe 
method of prevention is a thorough spraying 
of the trees with Bordeaux mixture as soon 
as the leaves appear (see Insecticides and 
Fungicides). Cedar trees should not be al¬ 
lowed to exist in the neighborhood of apple 
orchards, for the rust fungus develops on the 
cedars. 

Apple scab, the result of another fungus, 
produces dark spots on leaves, flowers and fruit, 
the growing apples often becoming ill-shaped 



APPLE SCAB 

Appearance of diseased fruit and leaves. 


and cracked. This is the most serious of the 
apple diseases, and the most widespread in 
its scope, appearing everywhere in apple 
regions. Bordeaux mixture is the remedy for 
this, too, but one spraying is not sufficient. 
Beginning at the season when the flower buds 
are swelling, there should be three applica¬ 
tions at intervals of ten days. If these can be 
given in rainy weather results are better, for 
it is the dampness which destroys the fungus. 

Insect Pests. The codling moth, referred to 
above, is the most destructive enemy of the 
apple, but the apple-tree borer is a close sec¬ 
ond. There are two kinds of beetle grubs that 
go by this name—a round-headed borer and a 




APPLE 


299 


APPLE 


OUTLINE AND QUESTIONS ON THE APPLE 


Outline 


I. Plant Family 

(1) The most important fruit of the rose 

family 

(2) Blossoms 

(3) The crab apple and common apple 

II. Apple Culture 

(1) Cultivated by earliest historic peoples 

(2) Popularly known as the fruit of the 

Garden of Eden 

(3) Prized by Greeks and Romans 

(4) Widely cultivated throughout Europe 

as far north as Scandinavia 

(5) Introduction into the United States 

(6) Growth of apple culture in the United 
States 

(7) Cultivation in Canada 

III. Methods of Cultivation 

(1) The planting of trees 

(2) Pruning 


(3) Cultivation of the soil 

(4) Grafting 

(5) Seedless apples 

IV. Varieties 

(1) Differ in various localities 
( 2 ) Common varieties 

V. Diseases and Pests of Apple Trees 

(1) Apple rust 

(2) Apple scab 

(3) The codling moth 

(4) The round-headed borer 

(5) The flat-headed borer 

(6) Means of prevention 

VI. Uses and Food Value 

(1) Eaten raw 

(2) Cooked in various ways 

(3) Dried 

(4) Canned 

(5) Cider and vinegar 

(6) Wholesomeness 


Questions 

What relatives of the apple appear on our tables? 

Which would you rather have, all the apple orchards in the world or all the 
orange groves ? Why ? 

If you save the seeds from your choicest Jonathan apples and plant them, will 
you in time have an orchard of Jonathan apples? 

Why can apples be grown farther north than any other kind of fruit? 

What is a “love apple”? 

If you went into an orchard early in June and saw the ground heavily carpeted 
with alfalfa, would you think the farmer knew his business? 

Who was Johnny Appleseed? 

Why are the trunks of apple trees sometimes whitewashed? 

If you had an apple tree that produced very satisfactory fruit and wanted others 
like it, how would you go about securing the same kind? 

What has the apple to recommend it as a food besides its flavor? 

Is an orchard in which seedless apples are produced as beautiful in the spring 

as an ordinary orchard? Why? 

What are the peculiar advantages of the seedless variety? 

What drink is made from apples? 

Describe briefly the process of manufacture. 

Which province of Canada produces the largest apple crop? Which state of the 
American Union? 

Were apples native to the continent which is now foremost in their production? 
What part did the apple play in the legends of the Hebrews and in those of 


the Greeks? 

















APPLE OF DISCORD 


300 


APRICOT 


flat-headed borer, and the former is the greater 
pest. If the beetles can be prevented from 
laying their eggs on the bark, the danger is 
prevented, for the grubs do not themselves 
seek out the trees. Painting the lower part 
of the tree during the egg-laying months of 
June and July with whitewash or with fish-oil 
soap is usually effective. No spraying can rid 
trees of the borers once they have been 
hatched; they must be dug out patiently one 
by one. a.mc c. 

Consult Waugh’s The American Apple Orchard; 
Woolverton’s Canadian Apple-Growers’ Guide. 
An older work, but standard, is Bailey’s Field 
Notes on Apple Culture. 

APPLE OF DISCORD, the wonderful golden 
apple, in the tales of mythology, destined to 
be the real cause of the Trojan War. It bore 
the words “For the fairest/’ and was thrown 
by the goddess of discord into an assembly 
of the gods. Juno, Venus and Minerva all 
claimed it, and when the Trojan Paris, chosen 
judge, gave it to Venus, Juno became so jealous 
that she determined to destroy the Trojan race. 
Nor did she cease her plots until she had done 
as she planned. See Paris ; Troy. 

APPLETON, ap' ’l ton, Wis., the county seat 
of Outagamie County, noted for its large paper 
and paper-pulp mills. It is situated on the 
Fox River, in the eastern part of the state 
about midway between the northern and south¬ 
ern state lines. Green Bay is thirty miles 
northeast, Fond du Lac is thirty-nine miles 
south and Milwaukee is 100 miles southeast. 
Railway transportation is provided by the Chi¬ 
cago & North Western and the Chicago, Mil¬ 
waukee & Saint Paul railways; trolley lines 
communicate with cities in the Fox River 
Valley as far as Green Bay and there is 
steamer connection with Lake Winnebago, 
south, and with Lake Michigan through Green 
Bay. The place was settled in 1845 and was 
incorporated as a city in 1857. It was named 
in honor of Samuel Appleton of Massachusetts, 
who owned part of the original town. The 
commission form of government was adopted 
in 1910. The population increased from 16,773 
in 1910 to 17,492 in 1914, Germans forming the 
greater part of the foreign element. The area 
is six and one-half square miles. 

Appleton is located near the rapids called 
Grand Chute, which at this point have a de¬ 
scent of fifty feet and furnish ample power 
for manufacturing purposes. By a series of 
dams the river is made navigable for steam¬ 
boats. The city ranks with the leading paper 


producing centers of the United States; be¬ 
sides this industry it is extensively engaged in 
making farm implements, furniture, dyes, knit 
and woolen goods. Appleton was one of the 
first cities in the United States to have electric 
street railways. Besides its public schools it 
has Appleton Collegiate Institute, Lawrence 
College (changed from a university in 1908) 
and a public library. The city owns its water 
works and has five parks. g.f.c. 

APPRENTICE, apren' tis, one who is bound 
by an agreement to serve another for the pur¬ 
pose of learning a trade. When Benjamin 
Franklin was a boy his father made an agree¬ 
ment with Benjamin’s older brother that the 
latter should take the boy, give him a home 
and teach him the printer’s trade. By this 
agreement Benjamin became an apprentice to 
this brother, who in law would be known as 
his master. Such instances were extremely 
common in the day in which Franklin lived. 

By the terms of an apprenticeship agreement, 
the master furnishes the apprentice with a 
home, and teaches him the trade in which 
the master is engaged. The apprentice is 
to obey the master and to give him his 
services as long as the agreement lasts. A 
person under age, that is, a minor, may of his 
own accord agree to become an apprentice, but 
his parents or guardian must consent to the 
agreement. An agreement for apprenticeship 
cannot be bought or sold. The time for which 
the agreement is made depends to some extent 
upon the trade to be learned; seven years was 
the maximum. Former^ nearly all trades were 
learned in this way, but the introduction of 
machinery has practically set aside this method 
of learning trades in England, Canada and the 
United States. 

Naval Apprentice. There is a system of 
apprenticeship in the United States navy, by 
which boys fifteen and seventeen years of 
age may be admitted to the navy and serve 
until they are twenty-one. During the first 
year the naval apprentice receives $9 a month; 
during the second year he receives $15 and 
during the third and following years $21. 

APRICOT, ay' prikot, one of the fruits con¬ 
taining stony seeds, grown on a tree belonging 
to the same family as the rose, and cultivated 
in all temperate regions. It is a native of 
Armenia and other parts of Asia, also of Africa. 
The tree is low and has heart-shaped leaves; 
the fruit is sweet, juicy, of a yellowish color, 
a little smaller than a peach, which it resembles 
in delicacy of flavor. Apricots are extensively 


APRIL 


301 


APRIL 


grown in the United States, especially in Cali¬ 
fornia, where vast quantities are sent fresh to 



APRICOT, FRUIT AND LEAVES 

market, the bulk of the crop being preserved 
in cans. The average value of the annual apri¬ 


cot crop in the United States is $3,000,000, 
California alone producing about 4,070,000 
bushels valued at $2,800,000. The combined 
crops of all the other states of the Union 
total only about 100,000 bushels. 

Apricot trees are subject to a disease known 
as leaf rust, which if not checked, entirely de¬ 
stroys fruitfulness. Careful spraying with 
germicides is the safest remedy. The stone 
of the fruit contains a bitter kernel, from 
which oil is extracted and from which the 
French make a liqueur. Fresh apricots have a 
fuel value of 270 calories per pound; as a heat 
producer their value is greatly increased when 
dried, being then equal to 1,290 calories per 
pound (see Calorie). The actual food value 
of dried apricots exceeds that of dates, which 
have long enjoyed the reputation of being the 
most nutritious of fruits. Apricots contain 
4.7 per cent protein, while dates only contain 
1.9 per cent. See Protein. 



PRIL, one of the loveliest months of 
the year, has a name that is especially fitting, 
for it comes from a Latin word meaning to 
open. It is the time of opening buds. Some 
learned scholars declare that the Romans never 
named their months in this poetic manner; 
but those who defend the theory are just as 
learned, and the beautiful idea may have the 
benefit of the doubt. The special flower of 
April is the daisy, and its gem is the diamond. 

April's Place in the Year. April is the 
fourth month in the year. Originally, in the 
time of the Romans, it had but twenty-nine 
days, but when the calendar was revised in 
the time of Caesar it was found that there 
were ten extra days to be distributed among 
the months, and of these April received one 
(see Calendar). It is thus one of the thirty- 
day months, and so crowded is it with nature’s 
activity that not a month in the year makes 
a greater change in the appearance of the out- 
of-door world. At the beginning of April in 
northern climes snow is often lingering in the 
hollows, and frequently a sharp frost comes 


and binds fast the little brooks that have 
been striving so hard to throw off winter’s 
shackles. But April’s sun is warm and bright, 
and no frost and snow can long hold out 
against it. 

It is a season of new life everywhere. Grass 
grows freshly green; trees and shrubs that have 
seemed dry and dead put out tiny leaves, and 
little twigs can no longer be snapped off 
sharply, for the sap is flowing in them and they 
have acquired a new strength and a new resist¬ 
ance. Early wild flowers push their way 
through the grass of the meadow or the thick 
forest carpet of last year’s dead leaves, and on 
lawns and in gardens the crocuses and snow¬ 
drops appear. The birds have set out on their 
northward journey, and almost everything 
which makes summer delightful has at least 
started. 

This transition month is specially known for 
its changing weather. Occasionally there are 
days so cold that they seem to have been left 
behind by winter, or days so hot that they are 
advance-couriers of summer; but the most 





































APRIL 


302 


APRIL 



APRIL CALENDAR 


Birthdays 

19. Roger Sherman, 1721. 

20. Sir John Eliot, 1592. 

21. Friedrich Froebel, 1782. 

22. Henry Fielding, 1707. 

23. William Shakespeare, 1564 (uncertain). 
James Buchanan, 1791. 

Stephen A. Douglas, 1813. 

24. Anthony Trollope, 1815. 

25. Oliver Cromwell, 1599.^ 

26. Alice Carey, 1820. 

27. U. S. Grant, 1822. 

28. James Monroe, 1758. 

29. Duke of Wellington (perhaps May 1), 
1769. 


Events 


1. Construction of first railroad in United States begun, 1826. 

Four provinces of British India officially reconstituted, 1912. 

2. United States mint established, 1792. 

Richmond, Va., evacuated by Confederates, 1865. 

3. Bismarck resigned his office, 1877. 

4. Henry Hudson sailed on third voyage, 1609. 

United States flag adopted by Congress, 1818. 

5. British Museum originated, 1753. 

6. Washington elected President of United States, 1789. 

Olympic games revived in Greece, 1896. 

7. Canada defeated reciprocity with United States, 1888. 

8. Legislature of British Columbia passed anti-Japanese immigration law, 1905. 

9. Charleston, S. C., captured by British, 1780. 

10. Napoleon abdicated French throne, 1814. 

Huge fire in Toronto, Canada, 1904. 

11. William and Mary Crowned in London, 1689. 

Hudson Bay, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia surrendered to England, 1713. 

12. Union Jack made English national flag, 1606. 

13. Edict of Nantes signed by Henry IY of France, 1598. 

14. First anti-slavery society in United States, formed by Quakers, 1775. 
President Lincoln shot by J. Wilkes Booth, 1865. 

15. Titanic sank, and about 1,600 persons were drowned, 1912. 

16. First railroad in India opened, 1853. 

18. Paul Revere made his famous ride, 1775. 

Earthquake and fire in San Francisco, 1906. 

19. Battle of Lexington, 1775. 

20. Bacon’s Rebellion began, 1676. 

21. Canada forbade seal-catching in certain areas, 1894. 

Spanish-American War began, 1898. 

22. Contract signed for transfer of Panama Canal to the United States, 1904. 

2 4. Russia began war against Turkey, 1877. 

Battle of Fish Creek, Canada, 1885. 

25. Japan opened Yeddo and other ports to trade, 1867. 

Allied forces landed on both sides of the Dardanelles, 1915. 

26. Great plague in London began, 1665. 

Hull, Canada, nearly destroyed by fire, 1900. 

28. Napoleon exiled to Elba, 1814. 

30. George Washington inaugurated as President of the United States, 1789. 
Louisiana Purchase made, 1803. 

Louisiana admitted to the Union, 1812. 


1. Prince von Bismarck, 1815. 

2. Hans Christian .Andersen, 1805. 

3. Washington Irving, 1783 

5. Charles A. Swinburne, 1837. 

6. Elihu Yale, 1649. 

7. William Wordsworth, 1770. 

10. William Hazlitt, 1778. 

11. George Canning, 1870. 

12. Henry Clay, 1777. 

13. Thomas Jefferson, 1743. 

15. Bliss Carman, 1861. 

16. Charles W. Peale, 1741. 

17. J. Pierpont Morgan, 1837. 

18. George H. Lewes, 1817. 


For Study 


1 . 

Arbor Day. 

11. Crocus. 

21. 

Landscape-gardening. 

2. 

Arbutus. 

12. Daffodil 

22. 

Leaf Buds. 

3. 

Audubon, John James. 

13. Dandelion. 

23. 

Paul Revere’s Ride . 

4. 

Bird Day. 

14. Earthworm. 

24. 

Rain. 

5. 

Bird Houses. 

15. Easter. 

25. 

Rainbow. 

6. 

Bluebird. 

16. Frog. 

26. 

Robin. 

7. 

Bulbs. 

17. Hepatica. 

27. 

Roots. 

8. 

Clouds. 

18. Hyacinth. 

28. 

Tree-planting. 

9. 

Cocoon. 

19. Insecticides. 

29. 

Tulip. 

10. 

Corn-planting. 

20. Jac-k-in-the-pulpit. 

30. 

Wren. 

















APRIL 


303 


APRIL 



1. The first of April, some do say, 

Is set apart for All Fool’s day; 

But why the people call it so 

Nor I, nor they themselves, do know. 

—Poor Robin's Almanac. 

2. April cold with dropping rain 
Willows and lilacs bring again, 

The whistle of returning birds 
And trumpet-lowing of the herds. 

— Emerson. 

3. Dare to be true; nothing can need a 

lie ; 

A fault which needs it most, grows 
two thereby. •— Herbert. 

4. April is here ! 

Listen, a bluebird is caroling near ! 
Low and sweet is the song he sings, 
As he sits in the sunshine with folded 
wings. — Rex ford. 

5. If a task is once begun, 

Never leave it till it’s done; 

Be the labor great or small, 

Do it well, or pot at all. 

—Phoebe Cary. 

6. I have found violets, April hath come 

on, 

And the cool winds 'feel softer, and the 
rain 

Falls in the beaded, drops of summer 
time. — Willis. 

7. I wandered lonely as a cloud 

That floats on high o’er vales and hills, 
When all at once I saw a crowd, 

A host of golden daffodils. 

— Wordsworth. 

8. Gladness is born of the April weather, 
And the heart is as light as a wind- 

tossed feather. — Rexford. 

9. Now the bright crocus flames, and now 
The slim narcissus takes the rain, 
And, straying o’er the mountain’s brow, 
The daffodillies bud again. — Long. 

10. Let us then be up and doing. 

With a heart for any fate; 

Still achieving, still pursuing, 

Learn to labor and to wait. 

— Longfellow. 

11. A gush of bird song, a patter of dew, 
A cloud and a rainbow’s warning, 
Suddenly sunshine and perfect blue— 
An April day in the morning. 

— Spofford. 

12. I would rather be right than be Presi¬ 
dent. — Clay. 

13. The God who gave us life, gave us 
liberty at the same time. 

— Jefferson. 

14. Every tear is answered by a blossom, 
Every sigh with songs and laughter 

blent; 

Apple-blooms upon the breezes toss 
them 

April knows her own and is content. 

— Coolidge. 


15. He who feeds men, serveth few; 

He serves all, who dares be true. 

— Emerson. 


16. Sweet April showers 
Do bring May flowers. 


— Tusser. 


\ 


17. Truth crushed to earth shall rise again ; 
The eternal years of God are hers. 

— Bryant. 

18. April’s coming up the hill! 

All the spring is in her train, 

Led by shining ranks of rain. 

— Dodge. 

19. -that soft time of sunny showers, 

When the wide bloom, on earth that 

lies, 

Seems of a brighter world than ours. 

— Bryant. 

20. Truth is as impossible to be soiled by 
any outward touch as the sunbeam. 

— Milton. 

21. Sweet April! many a thought 

Is wedded unto thee, as hearts are wed. 

— Longfellow. 

22. When proud-pied April, dress’d in all 

his trim, 

Has put a spirit of youth in everything. 

— Shakespeare. 

23. If I say that Shakespeare is the great¬ 

est of intellects, I have said all con¬ 
cerning him. — Carlyle. 

24. When wake the violets, Winter dies; 
When sprout the elm-buds, Spring is 

near ; 

When lilacs blossom, Summer cries, 
“Bud, little roses, Spring is here.” 

— Holmes. 

25. Speak ye every man the truth to his 

neighbor. — Bible. 

26. I hold that man had better be dead 
Than alive when his work is done. 

—Alice Cary. 

27. I propose to fight it out on this line 
if it takes all summer. — Grant. 

28. The' sweet hepatica has heard, 

And troops of daffodils 

Are throwing kisses to the light, 

And nodding to the rills. — Wilson. 

29. The ill-timed truth we might have 

kept, 

Who knows how sharp it pierced and 
stung? 

The word we had not sense to say, 
Who knows how grandly it had rung? 

— Sill. 

30. Observe the postage stamp! Its use¬ 
fulness depends upon its ability to 
stick to one thing until it gets there. 

— Billings. 












APSIDES 


distinctive feature of April is its showers. 
Changes from flashing sunlight to pouring rain 
are frequent, and William Watson’s lines— 

Api'il, April, 

Laugh thy golden laughter, 

But, the moment after, 

Weep thy golden tears ! 

give a good picture of the month. 

April has played a curious part in United 
States history, for nearly every war in which 
the country has been involved has begun in 
this month—the Revolution, the Mexican War, 
the War of Secession, and the Spanish-Amer¬ 
ican War. The offense in 1912 against the 
American flag which in 1914 so nearly brought 
on war with Mexico also occurred in April. 

Special Days. April has several special 
days. The first day is April Fools’ Day, or 
All Fools’ Day (which see); it is not a holiday, 
but a time dear to children by reason of the 
sanction it gives to mischievous, harmless 
pranks. Almost always Easter falls in April, 
and fittingly, too, for it is the symbol of that 
broader new life of which April represents one 
phase. Canada has no fixed days in this month 
for celebration, but many states in the Amer¬ 
ican Union have set aside one day for the 
planting of trees and have called it Arbor Day 
(which see). 

APSIDES, ap'sideez, in astronomy, two 
points in the orbit of a heavenly body, one 
farthest away from, the other nearest to the 
body about which it revolves. This is most 
clearly illustrated by the point at which the 



moon is at its greatest distance from the earth 
and the point at which it is nearest. An imag¬ 
inary line drawn between these two points is 
called the line of apsides. The accompanying 
diagram shows the apsides at a a. 

When the moon is at its nearest approach 
to the earth it is said to be in perigee (mean¬ 
ing around or near the earth); when most 
distant, in apogee (meaning away from the 


304 AQUAPLANING 

earth). The earth is in perihelion (meaning 
around or near the sun) when nearest the sun; 
in aphelion (meaning away from the sun), 
when at its extreme distance from it. The line 
of apsides has a slow forward and westward 
motion in the plane of the orbits of all planets, 
except in that of Venus, when the motion is 
reversed. This is due to what is called pre¬ 
cession (see Precession of the Equinoxes). 

APTERYX, a bird about the size of a hen, 
without wings or tail and having a long, slender 
beak, with nostrils near the tip. Its plumage, 
of. a grayish brown color, is more like hair 
than feathers. It is a very timid bird, hiding 



It is about seven inches in height. 

by day and feeding at night on worms, insects 
and seeds. In a burrow it scratches a nest, 
where it lays two large, white eggs. The 
natives of New Zealand call it kiwi-kiwi, on 
account of its peculiar cry. It is fast becoming 
extinct, as it breeds very slowly and great 
numbers are destroyed by natives, who are 
particularly fond of its flesh. 

AQUAMARINE, a fine and transparent 
variety of beryl much prized as a gem, of a blue 
or sea-green color. The stone is found in 
Siberia and Brazil, and in the United States in 
Colorado and North Carolina. According to 
an old superstition the aquamarine was worn 
to counteract the effects of poison. With the 
bloodstone it is a birth gem for March. See 
Beryl. 

AQUAPLANING, ak’ waplayning, a new 
and exhilarating sport enjoyed by water en¬ 
thusiasts who desire something more exciting 
than swimming. The aquaplane is a small 
raft attached by a rope to the stern of a 
swiftly-moving motor boat. Another rope, the 
ends of which are fastened to the front corners 
of the raft, serves as a driving rein and sup- 



















AQUA REGIA 


305 


AQUARIUM 



AQUAPLANE AND RIDER 
Picturing a delightful summer sport 

port for the aquaplanist, who stands upright on 
the back edge of the plane. Only experienced 
swimmers should attempt this sport, which 
grows more and more fascinating but also more 
dangerous as the speed of the boat is in¬ 
creased, for whenever the aquaplanist loses his 
balance he is thrown at once into the water. 
Both men and women enjoy this method of 
bounding over the waves, which may have been 
suggested by the “shoot-the-chutes,” so pop¬ 
ular in pleasure parks, or by the more pic¬ 
turesque sport of the Hawaiians—riding the 
surf. 

AQUA REGIA, the name applied to a mix¬ 
ture of nitric and hydrochloric acids. Its name 
(from the Latin), meaning royal water, refers 
to its property of dissolving gold, the royal 
metal of the alchemists. The mixture is usually 
made by combining one part of nitric acid with 
from three to four parts of hydrochloric. 

AQUARIUM, akwa'rium, a tank or basin 
in wfiich are kept living specimens of marine 
or fresh-water plants and animals. The sides 


are usually constructed of glass. No water 
animals will live long in a vessel containing 
only water, as the supply of oxygen, on which 
they live, soon becomes exhausted; therefore 
when plants and animals are put together into 
an aquarium they help each other to live. 
Animals inhale oxygen and breathe out car¬ 
bonic acid gas. Plants inhale this gas and 
throw off oxygen. This exchange balances the 
life of the aquarium, as long as there are not 
too many of either plants or animals; too many 
of either produces an unhealthful condition. 

The first illustration shows an aquarium of 
simple construction which would prove of great 
benefit to anyone wishing to study the habits 
of water plants and animals. It must be kept 
in a well-lighted place, as darkness promotes 
the growth of parasites which quickly destroy 
life. Since it has sides of glass and an open 
top, the inhabitants can be studied from all 
points. Each fish three inches long requires 
one gallon of w T ater. Two or three very small 
fish will find one gallon sufficient, but the 
aquarium must not be overcrowded. The bot- 



AN EASILY BUILT AQUARIUM 

Even the smallest schools can afford an 
aquarium of this simple construction. 

tom should be covered with an inch of clean 
sand, and plants should be placed appropri- 



































































































































































































AQUARIUS 306 AQUEDUCT 


ately, usually near the corners of the aquarium. 
If the fish move about quietly below the 



An aquarium any mother can easily provide 
for the children at home. 


surface they are comfortable, but if they come 
to the surface and gasp, the water does not 
contain enough oxygen and some animals must 
be taken out or more plants must be put in. 
The second illustration shows what may be 
accomplished in any home in the study of 
small water life and what may result from it. 

The following is a reliable recipe for making 
a cement that will render an aquarium water¬ 
tight. Mix one-third litharge to two-thirds red 
lead (powdered) with raw linseed oil to the 
consistency of putty. The litharge and red 
lead should be thoroughly mixed and freed 
from all lumps before mixing the oil. 

Public Aquariums. Many large cities now 
have large aquariums where aquatic life may 
be studied and which attract large numbers of 
visitors. One of the largest aquariums in the 
world is in New York, in the famous building 
on the Battery, formerly known as Castle 
Garden, where millions of emigrants to the 
United States have landed. It contains 150 
tanks for small fish and a number of big pools 
for sharks and other large and dangerous fish. 
The aquariums of the American Fish Com¬ 
mission at Washington, and those at Naples, 
Petrograd, Paris, Hamburg and Brighton (Eng¬ 
land), are also of great educational value. The 
one at Petrograd has been maintained for more 
than 150 years. g.w. 

AQUARIUS, akwa'rius, meaning water 
bearer, is the name given in astronomy to a 
constellation and the original eleventh sign of 
the zodiac, which now occupies the position of 
the twelfth sign, owing to the forward motion 
of the equinoxes (see Precession of the Equi¬ 
noxes). The sun is in the zodiacal sign Aqua¬ 
rius during parts of January and February. 
The name was given on account of the rains 
that fall so plentifully in Italy during that 


season. The symbol of Aquarius is signi¬ 
fying running water. See Zodiac, for illustra¬ 
tion. 

AQUATIC, a kwat ' ic, PLANTS. See Water 
Plants. 

AQUEDUCT, ak'wedukt, an artificial chan¬ 
nel for the conveyance of water from one 
place to another. In general use, however, the 
term is restricted to a system for supplying a 
city with water from a distance, and to a stone, 
concrete or metal channel in which the down¬ 
ward grade is sufficient to cause the water to 
flow by gravity. Modern aqueducts frequently 
combine such gravity channels with other sec¬ 
tions in which water is pumped or forced 
through other pressure. 

Aqueducts were in use among the ancient 
Egyptians, Phoenicians, Persians and Greeks, 
but they were most common in the Roman 
Empire, where they reached astonishing pro¬ 
portions. Ancient Rome was supplied with 
water by eleven great aqueducts, parts of which 
were carried on high bridges which still stand 
as monuments of Roman art and engineering. 
Two of these are used to-day to supply water 
to the modern city of Rome. In many other 
parts of Europe, from Constantinople to 
Nimes, France, are ruins of aqueducts built 



AT NIMES 


by the Romans. The Pont du Gard, fourteen 
miles from Nimes, is unrivalled for boldness 
of design. It is built of huge blocks of stone, 
and consists of three tiers of arches across the 
valley of the River Gardon. Each large arch 
in the two lower tiers has a span of sixty and 
seventy-five feet, respectively, and the height 
of the structure is 160 feet. The aqueduct at 
Segovia, Spain, built by the Romans in the 
first century after Christ, has two tiers of 
arcades, which reach a height of 102 feet. It 
is 2,400 feet long, and is one of the most 
admired works of antiquity. 

The Story of Modern Aqueducts. During 







































































CROTON AQUEDUCT 


Upper picture, main dam at Croton Falls Reservoir. Lower 
new Croton Dam. 
























CROTON AQUEDUCT. 


Upper picture: Dam at Boyd’s Corners. Lower: Size of 
aqueduct north of Jerome Park, near the Bronx. 










AQUEDUCT 307 

the Middle Ages the construction of aqueducts 
almost completely ceased, but with the Renais- 



AN AQUEDUCT OF NERO 


sance came a new development. The Popes 
at Rome restored some of the ancient struc¬ 
tures which had fallen into disuse, and several 
new ones were built in France. One of the 
most remarkable of these was begun by Louis 
XIV in 1684 to carry water from the Eure 
River to Versailles. Forty thousand soldiers 
worked four years on this task, which was 
never completed because war broke out in 
1688. Most ancient aqueducts were of stone, 
or of brick and concrete, but the extensive use 
of iron and steel pipes has now rendered the 
construction of aqueducts of the old type 
unnecessary. Gravity is now frequently aided 
by pressure, and the aqueduct bridges are 
usually supplanted by inverted siphons (see 
Siphon). The bridge form, however, is still 
used not only for supplying water to towns, 
but also in many irrigation projects. 

One of the first of the great aqueducts built 
by European cities was that from Loch Katrine 
to Glasgow, completed in 1860. Manchester, 
England, is supplied by an aqueduct, com¬ 
pleted in 1892, nearly ninety-six miles long. 
Of this length thirty-six miles are concrete 
conduit, fourteen and one-half miles of con¬ 
crete tunnels, and forty-five miles of iron pipe. 
Liverpool, Vienna, Paris and many other cities 
have long aqueducts. 


AQUEDUCT 

Croton Aqueduct. In the United States the 
first important aqueduct was the old Croton, 
completed by New York City in 1842. Boston, 
Brooklyn, Baltimore, Washington and Saint 
Louis followed in order. New York, as the 
largest city in America, has the greatest prob¬ 
lems in connection with its water supply. The 
Old Croton Aqueduct has a total length of 
thirty-eight miles and an average fall of one 
foot per mile. For most of its length it is 
constructed of stone, brick and cement. The 
water is carried across the Harlem River in 
three iron pipes, the largest having a diameter 
of seven and one-half feet. It was designed 
to carry 72,000,000 gallons a day, but was soon 
found to be too small for the needs of the 
city. Minor changes were made from time to 
time to increase the flow, until in 1890 the 
New Croton Aqueduct was completed. The 
new one, like the old, begins at Croton Lake, an 
artificial body created by damming the Croton 
River, and runs to 135th Street, where it is 
connected with the city’s distributing system. 
It passes the Harlem River by an inverted 
siphon 300 feet below the river bed. For 
most of its length it is a horseshoe-shaped 
tunnel thirteen and one-half feet high and 
an inch or two wider. Its original carrying 
capacity was over 300,000,000 gallons a day, 
but its average flow, because of wear on the 
interior, is now only 250,000,000 gallons. 

Catskill Aqueduct. This great project, begun 
in 1906 and practically completed in 1913, will 
eventually add 500,000,000 gallons a day to 
New York’s water supply. From its beginning 
in the Catskill Mountains to the end of the 
aqueduct proper is a distance of ninety-two 
miles, and pipe lines and branches in the city 
add thirty-four miles more. The water is 
taken from several rivers in the mountains 
and is collected and stored in the great 
Ashokan reservoir, thirteen miles west of 
Kingston, N. Y. The reservoir is twelve miles 
long by one mile wide, with a maximum depth 
of 190 feet. Two smaller reservoirs are re¬ 
spectively thirty and fifteen miles from 
the New York Municipal Building. The ini¬ 
tial capacity of the system is 250,000,000 gallons 
a day, but by 1920, when several additional 
secondary reservoirs will be completed, this 
figure will be doubled. 

Most of the aqueduct was built by the “cut- 
and-cover” method; that is, excavations were 
made, the aqueduct was built in the opening, 
and the earth was then replaced. Fifty-five 
miles were constructed in this way, and thirty- 
































ARABIA 


AQUINAS 

one miles were tunneled. One of the most 
remarkable features is the tunnel under the 
Hudson River, - near West Point. It is 3,000 
feet long, cut in bed rock 1,100 feet below the 
river’s surface. On each shore is a shaft, lined 
with concrete, with an inside diameter of four¬ 
teen feet. The cost of the entire system, 
including about $25,000,000 for piping and local 
reservoirs in the city, will be not far from 
$ 200 , 000 , 000 . 

Los Angeles Aqueduct. This is the longest 
aqueduct in the world, with a length of 235 
miles. It was begun in 1907 and was placed 
in operation in 1914. It diverts the entire flow 
of the Owens River, which it receives about 
ten miles north of Independence, Cal. As the 
elevation of the intake is 3,800 feet above the 
sea, and that of Los Angeles only 275 feet, the 
water flows to every part of the city by gravity. 
Besides supplying the city with an abundance 
of water, the aqueduct carries enough to irri¬ 
gate thousands of acres of land nearby, and 
will ultimately furnish 120,000 horse-power 
for electric plants of the city. Nearly the 
whole of the aqueduct was built by the city 
itself, not by contractors, and its estimated 
cost was $25,000,000. 

In Mining and Irrigation. The name aque¬ 
duct is sometimes applied to ditches and other 
channels used in mining and in irrigation. 
Occasionally these are permanent structures of 
stone or concrete, but more often they are 
temporary structures of wood and are properly 
called flumes, not aqueducts. Some irrigating 
systems require as much water as a fair-sized 
city, notably in the western part of Canada 
and the United States. For details, see Irri¬ 
gation. w. f. z. 

AQUINAS, akwi'nas, Saint Thomas (1227- 
1274), a celebrated divine, called by his fellow- 
students at Cologne the “dumb ox,” but years 
later by his pupils “the Angelic Doctor.” He 
was a member of the Dominican Order, and 
taught at Cologne, Rome, Bologna and Pisa, 
showing such learning and piety that he was 
looked up to as one of the foremost church¬ 
men of his time. His greatest work, the 
Summa Theologiae, is a “summing up” of the 
theological system of the Roman Catholic 
Church, and stands to-day as a standard 
authority. Aquinas was declared a saint by 
Pope John XXII in 1323. 

ARABESQUE, arabesk', a term meaning 
after the Arab style, employed in a narrow 
sense to describe a certain kind of fantastic 
ornamentation which the Arabs and Moors 


308 

used on their buildings. More generally the 
word denotes any kind of ornamentation of a 



ARABESQUE ORNAMENTATION 

fanciful character. In the arabesques of the 
Mohammedans the figures of men and animals 
were never used, because the Koran forbade 
it, and architects and artists confined them¬ 
selves to geometric devices, foliage, fruit, floral 
forms and the like, which were arranged in 
elaborate designs. The most beautiful Moor¬ 
ish arabesques are found in the Alhambra, 
Spain, and the best examples of Roman work 
in this same style are the works of Raphael 
in the Vatican, imitated from earlier friezes. 

ARABIA, ara'bia, a great peninsula of 
Southwestern Asia, a land of romance, of 
deserts and unexplored waste, toward which 
the eyes of the 
world are turned 
chiefly because it 
is the home of 
one of the great 
religions, Mo¬ 
hammedanism. 

From it have 
come, however, in 
centuries past, 
the beginnings of 
so many of the Location marked in black. 

arts and sciences that a history of education or 
of civilization cannot well omit Arabia. 

The Land. Including the Syrian desert, 
Arabia has a greatest length of 1,500 miles, 
while its greatest breadth is 1,200 miles. From 
its northern to its southern boundary the dis¬ 
tance is almost as great as from New York to 
Denver, and its total area, 1,200,000 square 
miles, is about one-third that of the United 



ARABIA 




































ARABIA 


309 


ARABIA 


States with Alaska and its island possessions 
included. In estimating its population authori¬ 
ties differ, some placing it as high at 7,500,000, 
others as low as 4,500,000. This difference is 
accounted for by the fact that in no part is 
there any regular census, while absolutely no 
definite information is to be had respecting a 
large part of the central desert regions. 

Within the vast area of Arabia there are 
no such varieties of climate, soil and resources 
as are to be found within the United States. 
For while the surface is diversified into cen¬ 
tral tableland, surrounding deserts and ranges 
of mountains parallel to and approaching the 
coast, one condition prevails almost every¬ 
where—extreme dryness. There are relatively 
small territories elsewhere on the earth’s sur¬ 
face which are as dry, but nowhere else except 
in the Sahara is so large an arid stretch to 
be found. In mountain and in lowland, the 
date palm is often the only sign of vegetable 
life, and there are districts which in the course 
of a year do not have a single shower of rain. 
There are dried up river courses which show 
that once the country must have had abun¬ 
dant water, and in a few of them there are 
trickling streams during the so-called rainy 
season, but in all Arabia there is not one real 
river. Thousands of square miles in the inte¬ 
rior are made up of deserts dryer than the 
Sahara, much of which have never been ex¬ 
plored. The heat, too, is in many places 
intense, and Aden, in the southwestern part, 
is the hottest spot in the world. The reason 
for the extreme dryness and heat is that 
almost all the winds come from the northeast, 
across the hot, arid regions of central Asia. 

In such a climate few things will grow ex¬ 
cept the date palm, which furnishes the staple 
article of food; but there are spots where figs, 
grapes and corn thrive in good years, and the 
province of Yemen, in the southwest, polit¬ 
ically a part of Turkey, exports the excellent 
Mocha coffee. In the oases wild animal life 
is fairly abundant, ostriches, gazelles, jackals, 
hyenas and even lions being not uncommon. 
Of the domestic animals, the Arabian horses 
and camels are famous far and wide. The 
Arabian horses are among the most beautiful 
and high-spirited breeds in the world, but it 
is the camel upon which the Arab mainly de¬ 
pends—“ship of the desert,” which alone makes 
it possible for him to travel across the drifted, 
sandy wastes. 

The People. See article Arabs. 

Government and Religion. Arabia is not 


a country in the sense in which the United 
States or Great Britain is, for the almost im¬ 
passable deserts have prevented any unity of 
government. To-day the west coast and part 
of the east coast belong to Turkey; Aden, 
in the southwest corner, is a dependency of 
England; Oman is independent, though under 
English influence, while the central part is 
under the sway of a number of native sheiks 
or chiefs. Mecca, the holy place of the Mo¬ 
hammedans, is its chief city. Other impor¬ 
tant towns are Medina, Mocha, Aden and 
Muscat. 

But though divided politically, religiously 
Arabia is a unit, for Mohammedanism every¬ 
where prevails. To the Arab the greatest 
blessing on earth is to be able to make a pil¬ 
grimage to Mecca and so receive forgiveness 
for all his sins. The greatest happiness to be 
derived after death is to live forever in a 
green oasis where there is no lack of water 
or food. 

History. The history of the Arab peoples 
previous to the time of Mohammed is obscure, 
but with his advent the Arabians united for 
the purpose of extending the new creed; and 
under the caliphs, the successors of Moham¬ 
med, they obtained great power and founded 
large kingdoms in three continents (see Mo¬ 
hammed; Mohammedanism). 

On the fall of the caliphate of Bagdad in 
1258 the decline set in, and when the Moors 
were driven from Spain in the fifteenth century, 
the foreign rule of the Arabs came to an end. 
In the sixteenth century Turkey subjected 
Hedjaz and Yemen and received the nominal 
submission of the tribes inhabiting the rest of 
Arabia. The subjection of Hedjaz has con¬ 
tinued down to the present day, but Yemen 
became independent in the seventeenth cen¬ 
tury and remained so till 1871, when the ter¬ 
ritory again fell into the hands of the Turks. 
In 1839 Aden was occupied by the British. 
Oman early became virtually independent of 
the caliphs and grew into a well-organized 
kingdom. The Wahabis (which see) appeared 
toward the end of the eighteenth century and 
took an important part in the political affairs 
of Arabia, but their progress was interrupted 
by Mohammed Ali, pasha of Egypt, and they 
were completely defeated by Ibrahim Pasha. 
He extended his power over most of the coun¬ 
try, but the events of 1840 in Syria compelled 
him to renounce all claims to Arabia. The 
Hedjaz thus again became subject to Turkish 
sway. Of recent years none but minor changes 


ARABIA 


310 


ARABIA 



Outline 


I. Position 


VI. Climate 


(1) Latitude, 12° 40' to about 35° north 

(2) Longitude, 32° 30' to 60° east 

II. Size and Shape 

(1) Length, 1,500 miles 

(2) Breadth, 1,200 miles 

(3) Area, 1,200,000 square miles 

(4) Form, an oblong quadrilateral 

III. Coast Waters and Shore Line 

(1) Arabian Sea and Gulf of Aden on 

south 

(2) Red Sea on west 

(3) Mediterranean Sea on north 

(4) Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman on 

southeast 

(5) Regular coast line 

IV. Surface 

(1) Deserts 

(2) Central tableland diversified 

(3) Mountain ranges surrounding table¬ 

land 

V. Drainage 

(1) Not one real river 

(2) A few intermittent streams 

(3) Dry river beds 


(1) Extreme dryness 

(2) Intense heat 

(3) Northeast winds 


VII. Vegetation 

(1) Little vegetation 
( 2) Few oases 

VIII. Animal Life 

(1) Wild animals 

(2) Domestic animals 

(a) The Arabian horse 

(b) The camel 

IX. Inhabitants 

(1) Striking virtues 

(2) General intelligence among men 

(3) Women uneducated 

(4) Nomadic life 

(5) Transportation in Arabia 

X. Government and Religion 

(1) Divided politically 

(2) Mohammedanism 

XI. History 

(1) Tribes united by Mohammedanism 

(2) Decline of power 

(3) Turkish conquests in Arabia 

(4) The British in Arabia 


Questions 


What is the government of the country? 

For what virtue have the Arabs been noted for over two thousand years? 

Who are the Bedouins? 

What did Shakespeare mean by “Arabian bird”? 

Is there much illiteracy in Arabia? 

How has the pilgrimage to Mecca been made easier? 

What sort of vegetation grows in Arabia? 

What is Arabia Felix? 

What Arabian coffee is well known? From whom did the Arabians learn to drink 
coffee? 

Have the Arabs ever had extensive political power? 

Why has Arabia been so little coveted by outside nations? 

What have we learned from the Arabs? 

How does the area of Arabia compare with the combined areas of Ontario and 
Quebec? 

For what two animals is Arabia especially famous? 





















ARABIA 


311 


ARABIAN SEA 


and happenings have occurred in the history 
of the peninsula. So much of the territory is 
practically worthless that there has never been 
the fierce contention over it that there is over 
more favored spots. 

Other Items of Interest. Arabia was the 
first country outside of Abyssinia to adopt 
coffee drinking. 

During the War of the Nations in 1915, 
Arabia, under the leadership of the Shereef of 
Mecca, declared its independence of Turkey. 
There had been ill feeling ever since the com¬ 
ing into power of the Young Turks, who at¬ 
tempted to supplant the Arabian language by 
their own. 

The sacred pilgrimage to the tomb of Mo¬ 
hammed at Medina is easier than ever before, 
for a railroad has been built from Damascus 
to Medina. The line was to be continued to 
Mecca, but the rails which were intended for 
this part are said to have been used during the 
War of the Nations on a Turkish railroad of 
greater strategic importance. 

The southwestern corner of the country is 
known as Arabia Felix, which is Latin for 
Fortunate Arabia. Behind it rise mountains to 
a height of perhaps 8,000 feet, cutting off from 
the interior the rain-laden winds which give 
Arabia Felix ample rainfall during the whole 
summer. 

Agrippa, in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleo¬ 
patra, exclaims: 

“0 Antony! O thou Arabian bird!” 

By Arabian bird he means the phoenix (which 
see). 

Herodotus wrote, in the fifth century b. c.: 
“The Arabs keep pledges more religiously than 
almost any other people.” This virtue has 
been noted by travelers in all times, including 
the present day. 

Herodotus is also responsible for the state¬ 
ment that in Arabia there were sheep whose 
tails were three cubits (about five feet) long, 
so that all the shepherds made little trucks 
and fastened one to each tail, to prevent it 
trailing on the ground. 

The prefix al- in an English word frequently 
shows that it is of Arabian origin, for al, like 
the Italian il and the Spanish el, means the. 
We find it in many familiar proper names, 
like Allan, Aladdin, Algeria; in names of 
Arabian sciences like algebra and alchemy; in 
alcove, alfalfa and alkali; in the names of 
stars, as Aldebaran and Algol; and in a large 
number of Spanish words, such as Alcazar and 
Alhambra. 


If we did not have Arabic numbers arith¬ 
metic would be very difficult for us. a.mc c. 

ARA'BIAN NIGHTS, or THE THOUSAND 
AND ONE NIGHTS, one of the most famous 
collections of stories in the world, loved by 
children for the charm and wonder of the old 
tales, and consulted by scholars for their pic¬ 
tures of the customs and manners of the 
Orient. It is supposed that the stories had 
their origin in India, that Persia adopted them, 
and that it was from the latter country that 
the Arabs received them. To-day they are 
printed in many languages—probablj^ more 
than any other book except the Bible. It was 
early in the eighteenth century that they were 
introduced into Europe. 

There are over two hundred tales in the 
complete editions of the Arabian Nights, and 
these are woven into one story by the follow¬ 
ing device: 

According to the first story, the Sultan 
Shahriyar has made a law that every one of 
his future wives is to be put to death the 
morning after her marriage, and one beautiful 
girl after another has met that cruel fate. At 
length Shahrazad, the daughter of the grand 
vizier, offers to become the sultan’s bride, but 
begs her sister to visit her on the morning 
after her wedding and request that she be 
allowed to tell one last story before she dies. 
The scheme is carried out, the request is 
granted, and the sultan becomes so interested 
in the tale that he declares she must live until 
he has heard the end of it. Thus by breaking 
off each night in the middle of a thrilling 
narrative she keeps the sultan interested and 
saves her own life; for by the time she has 
entertained him for one thousand nights he 
has fallen in love with her and decided that 
she is as good as she is clever. 

So well known are some of these stories 
that people anywhere will understand refer¬ 
ences to Aladdin, to Ali Baba and the Forty 
Thieves, to the Old Man of the Sea, or to the 
Magnetic Mountain which drew the nails out 
of the ship that came near it. 

ARA'BIAN SEA, the part of the Indian 
Ocean between Arabia, India and Beloochi- 
stan, north of a line drawn from Cape Comorin 
at the southern extremity of India to Cape 
Guardafui on the east coast of Africa. The 
Red Sea and the shallow Persian Gulf are 
properly arms of the Arabian Sea. In ancient 
times the Arabian Sea was of great importance 
as a commercial route, goods from the Far 
East being brought by ship to its shores and 


ARABIC NUMERALS 


312 


ARABS 


carried by caravans to the Mediterranean. 
The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 raised 
the value of the sea as a highway, but caused 
the caravan routes to be abandoned. 

The most important islands in this sea are 
the Laccadives, off the west coast of India, 
and Sokotra, northeast of Cape Guardafui. 
On the east it receives the waters of the great 
River Indus and indents the Indian coast with 
the gulfs of Cutch and Cambay. See map, 
article Asia. 

ARABIC, ar'abik, NUMERALS, the com¬ 
mon figures used in writing numbers to-day, 
but which have been employed among Euro¬ 
peans only since the twelfth century. Before 
that, letters were employed, as in the so-called 



OLD ARABIC NUMERALS 


Roman numerals which are I, V, X, L, C, D, 
M. When the Moors established themselves 
in Spain the Christians looked upon them 
with the most intense disfavor and had no 
dealings with them save to fight them in war, 
but they were forced to admit that in some 
ways the Moors possessed the superior skill. 
Especially did they know how to calculate. 

At length one young Christian scholar, desir¬ 
ing knowledge more than he hated the Moors, 
disguised himself and went to one of their 
schools, where he learned the wonderful art 
of calculating, which is to-day called arith¬ 
metic. He learned, too, to make certain new 
symbols which proved so very useful that they 
speedily spread over all civilized Europe. 
These were the Arabic numerals, 1, 2, 3, etc. 
That the Arabs did not invent these figures 
is now regarded as certain, and it seems prob¬ 
able that they acquired them from India; but 
research has failed to show the real begin¬ 
ning of the figures which play so large a part 
in the records and the business of the world. 
See Arithmetic; Roman Numerals. 

ARABS. This name is given to the inhabi¬ 
tants of Arabia and the neighboring lands. 
The Arabs are of interest not only because 
they have preserved in much greater degree 
than most peoples the purity of their original 
stock, but because they rank unusually high 
among the races of mankind. Europeans and 
Americans are somewhat inclined to look upon 
the Arabs as an inferior race, and it comes as 
a surprise to learn that authorities regard them 


as the most perfect race physically and as one 
of the most highly endowed mentally. 

Characteristics. They are tall and of 
proportions that an athlete might envy, and 
the black eyes set above their aquiline noses 
shine with intelligence. The Arabs of Arabia 
are always very clean, the Koran making fre¬ 
quent bathing obligatory, but those of Africa 
often keep the letter but not the spirit of this 
command by bathing in sand instead of water. 

Though they have lost that remarkable 
aptitude for science which w r as responsible for 
the birth of chemistry and astronomy and the 
great advancement of geography and mathe¬ 
matics, the Arabs still put a high value on 
education. Few indeed are the men and boys, 
even of the desert tribes, who cannot read 
and write, but like all Mohammedans, they 
consider that a woman has no need of edu¬ 
cation. 

Morally, the Arab leaves much to be desired. 
While he is unusually hospitable, will stand 
by his pledged word even to death, and never 
forgets a favor, yet he does not forget an in¬ 
jury, and his vengeful spirit makes the repay¬ 
ing of it the chief work of his life. If a mem¬ 
ber of his family has been killed the Arab 
may not rest until he has put to death the 
slayer. Then, too, an Arab, especially one of 
the wanderers, or nomads, appears to have no 
idea of property rights. 

Manner of Life. All the Arabs do not 
live in Arabia. The crusading zeal of Moham¬ 
medanism led them into all the neighboring 
countries, and North Africa they have made 
distinctly their own. Their civilization there 
is much as it is in Arabia. The town-dwellers 
have for the most part remained true to the 
architectural forms evolved by their Arabian 
ancestors; the desert wanderers hold to the 
same primitive customs as their brothers in 
Arabia. In the accompanying picture the inte¬ 
rior shown is that of a North African house, 
but it might be the dwelling of a wealthy fam¬ 
ily in Mecca. 

The traveler approaching an Arab town sees 
one characteristic thing—the inevitable sur¬ 
rounding wall. Usually it would be of no use 
as a defense, for it is made of dried mud, but 
custom has decreed that it shall be there. 
Many of the houses are of sun-dried bricks, 
though the poorer people cannot afford even 
this luxury, and must content themselves with 
shelters of woven branches or homes of rude 
tents. Fortunately most of the lands in which 
the Arabs live are very diy, otherwise every 


ARABS 


313 


ARACHNIDA 



ARAB 

(a) North African, in joyous mood. 

(b) Arab woman, with face covered, according 
to centuries-old custom. 

village and town would be a breeding-place 
for disease, as no attention is paid to drainage. 

Nomads. Perhaps the most interesting of 
the Arabs are the nomads, or wanderers. 
These Bedouins, as they are called, are full- 
blooded Arabs, who live not in town but in 
tents on the edges of the deserts and in the 
oases. With their herds of camels they roam 
from place to place, following the same course 
year after year unless a scarcity of grass for 
their camels compels them to go elsewhere. 
They live on the milk from the camels and 
the cheese made from it, together with such 
dates and bread as may be obtained by barter. 
When the season is especially dry the camels 
starve, particularly the young ones, and there 
is not enough milk to keep the men, women 
and children from suffering. Then it is that 
the Bedouins rob and plunder. 

Caravans. Fear of these desert robbers is 
one reason why the merchants of Arabia travel 
in caravans rather than singly. With their 
trains of laden camels they cross the deserts 
over trails that to unaccustomed eyes would 
be invisible. This method of travel dates back 
with little change to centuries before the 
Christian Era, for the Arabs have made slight 
advance in customs. o.b. 


types 

(c) Nomadic, or wandering, Arabs, and the only 
home they know. 

(cl) Interior of Arab house, North Africa. 

ARACHNE, arak' ne, according to Greek 
legend, a girl who was so proud of her ability 
to weave that she dared to match her skill 
with that of the great goddess Athene, or 
Minerva. For her presumption Athene changed 
her into a spider, that she might spend her 
life in spinning. See Mythology, for story. 

The closeness of the connection between this 
myth and nature is shown by the fact that 
the spider in Greek was arachne. And when 
scientists were seeking a general name which 
should include all spiders, as well as the mites 
and scorpions, they used this word as a basis, 
calling the whole class of animals arachnida. 

ARACHNIDA, arak' ni da, a class of animals 
belonging to the subkingdom arthropoda 
(which see), represented by the spiders, scor¬ 
pions, mites and ticks. Animals of this class 
differ from insects in that the head and thorax 
are generally united and the thorax usually 
bears four pairs of legs (see Insects). Feel¬ 
ers, or antennae, characteristic of insects, are 
also lacking. Arachnids have simple eyes 
varying in number from two to twelve. Spe¬ 
cies of spiders are known by the number and 
arrangement of these eyes. Breathing is car¬ 
ried on by means of tracheae or by “lung- 
books,” these latter consisting of sacs contain- 


































ARAGO 


314 


ARBITRATION 


ing several blood-filled leaflike plates, opening 
on the under side of the abdomen. Nearly 
all arachnids live on animal matter, and many 
of them are parasites. The mites, however, 
live on plant sap. As the animal-feeders usu¬ 
ally prey upon insects, they are of benefit to 
the farmers. The word arachnida is of Greek 
derivation, and the name Arachne appears in 
Greek mythology; in the legend it is borne 
b}^ a Lydian girl who was changed into a 
spider because she equalled Athene in spin¬ 
ning. 


Related Subjects. The following articles will 
give a detailed discussion of the characteristics 
of the most important arachnids: 
Daddy-long-legs Spider 

Mites Tarantula 

Scorpion Ticks 

Sheep Tick Trapdoor Spider 


ARAGO, ah'rago, Dominique Francois 
(1786-1853), a celebrated French astronomer 
and statesman who made such great personal 
sacrifices in behalf of science that the Paris 
Academy of Sciences broke one of its stand¬ 
ing rules and elected him, though too young 
for that honor, to be one of its members. In 
1806, while in the Pyrenees Mountains work¬ 
ing on the measurement of an arc of the merid¬ 
ian for the French government, he was cap¬ 
tured by the Spanish as a spy, and succeeded in 
reaching his native country only after going 
through much hardship and suffering many 
narrow escapes. He became life secretary of 
the Academy of Sciences in 1830, and his 
work as a scientist included several impor¬ 
tant discoveries in electro-magnetism. He also 
held a number of public offices, and was known 
as the champion of the people’s rights. Arago 
wrote about sixty scientific works. 

ARAL air' al, a large salt-water lake in Asia, 
in Russian territory, about 150 miles west of 
the Caspian Sea. Because of its isolation and 
the character of the surrounding country it 
has been of little value to the world. It cov¬ 
ers an area of 26,000 square miles, and is there¬ 
fore a little larger than the state of West 
Virginia and more than twice as large as Bel¬ 
gium. It is fed by the waters of the Amu- 
Darya or Oxus, and the Syr-Darya or Jaxartes 
rivers. The lake contains an abundance of 
sturgeon and other fish, and has a large num¬ 
ber of islands. Navigation on it is difficult 
because of the shallowness of the waters and 
the fierce and sudden storms from the north¬ 
east. For location on map, see Asia. 

ARAMAIC, ar a may' ic, an ancient language 
closely allied to the Hebrew. Its relations 


are explained under the title Hebrew Language 
and Literature. 

ARAPAHO, a rap' a ho, an Algonquian tribe 
of American Indians, whom the Cheyenne 
call “Blue-sky men” or “Cloud men.” This 
was formerly a large tribe, but now they num¬ 
ber only about 1,800. They are a brave, 
kindly and accommodating people, much given 
to observing ceremonies. Before they were 
known to white men the Arapaho were sup¬ 
posed to have lived in the valley of the Red 
River of the North, in Minnesota, later thej T 
moved westward into Wyoming and subse¬ 
quently a part of them were placed on a reser¬ 
vation with the related Cheyenne in Okla¬ 
homa, where they are now farmers. Those in 
Wyoming are still on a reservation. See 
Indians, American. 

ARARAT, air' a rat, a celebrated mountain 
of Armenia, in Western Asia, on which Noah’s 
ark is supposed to have rested when the waters 
of the Deluge subsided. It is a volcano of 
two cones, the highest being 17,260 feet above 
the sea. The last eruption occurred in 1840 
and caused great destruction of life and prop¬ 
erty. The summit of the mountain is in Rus¬ 
sian territory. 

Another Mount Ararat, or Pilot Mountain, 
is found in Surrey County, N. C. This moun¬ 
tain is 3,000 feet high, and can be seen from 
a long distance. 

ARBELA, ar be' la, an ancient town in As¬ 
syria, which gave its name to the battle fought 
in 331 b.c., in which Alexander the Great 
overcame the Persian king Darius, and thus 
made possible the spread of Greek civiliza¬ 
tion over Western Asia. This battle, one of 
the fifteen decisive battles of history, was actu¬ 
ally fought at Gaugamela, about twenty miles 
from Arbela. On the site of the ancient city 
is the modern town of Arbil, in the Turkish 
province of Mosul. See Fifteen Decisive Bat¬ 
tles of the World. 

ARBITRATION, a peacable, semi-judicial 
method of settling disputes between individ¬ 
uals or nations. The word is derived from the 
Latin arbitratio, meaning an examination or 
judgment. The essential principle in arbitra¬ 
tion is that the examination is made by im¬ 
partial umpires, who also render the final 
judgment. A board of arbitration may, and 
usually does, include representatives of the 
parties to the dispute, but it is customary to 
include one or more neutral persons whose 
interests are not affected by the case. 

A fundamental difference must be noted be- 


ARBITRATION 


315 


ARBOR DAY 


tween arbitration involving individuals and 
that involving nations. Arbitration by indi¬ 
viduals has been made compulsory in many 
parts of the world, particularly in labor dis¬ 
putes. The most conspicuous example is in 
New Zealand, where strikes and other prob¬ 
lems of labor must be arbitrated, and failure 
to carry out the award of the arbitrators is 
punishable by law. Arbitration between na¬ 
tions is purely voluntary, and no interna¬ 
tional power, except war or the threat of war, 
exists to force a nation to accept an award 
which it regards as unjust. 

In Civil Cases. Arbitration is a simple 
method of settling many cases without the 
delay and expense of a long legal process. It 
is especially desirable if the amount at issue 
is small, when the court costs and other fees 
would be greater than the money or value of 
property involved. In Pennsylvania arbitra¬ 
tion is compulsory if one of the parties desires 
it, although in most states it is voluntary. In 
England, arbitration may be at the request 
of the parties concerned, or at the order of the 
judge, who appoints a referee; in either case 
the awards are usually enforced by the courts 
unless fraud can be proved. 

Industrial Arbitration. As a method of 
settling disputes between employers and em¬ 
ployees, arbitration is increasing in popularity, 
especially in those industries on which the 
general public is dependent for its comfort or 
security. An example of this tendency was the 
settlement of the great strike of the anthra¬ 
cite coal miners in the United States in 1902; 
arbitration in this instance was due to the 
initiative of President Roosevelt. Another 
miners’ strike, perhaps of even greater impor¬ 
tance and settled in the same way, was the 
refusal of the Welsh coal miners in 1915 to 
work until their wages were increased and their 
working conditions improved. Strikes of em¬ 
ployees of steam, electric and street railways 
are frequently settled in this way. In New 
Zealand and several states of Australia com¬ 
pulsory arbitration is enforced, but this method 
has made slow progress in other parts of the 
world. New York, Massachusetts and a few 
other states have boards of arbitration which 
may investigate disputes on their own initia¬ 
tive or at the request of one of the parties, 
[n Canada the Dominion Department of Labor 
frequently settles labor disputes. 

International Arbitration. From ancient 
times to the present many disputes between 
nations have been settled by arbitration. The 


Greeks and Romans, to be sure, regarded for¬ 
eigners as barbarians, and generally refused to 
consider arbitration with another nation, but 
between the various Greek states it was a com¬ 
mon occurrence. In more modern times the 
Pope has been chosen frequently as arbi¬ 
trator—for example, when Pope Alexander VI 
drew the line of demarcation between Span¬ 
ish and Portuguese possessions in the two 
Americas, and when Pope Clement XI was 
the third arbitrator under the terms of the 
Treaty of Ryswick (see Demarcation, Line 
of). In the nineteenth century Great Britain 
and the United States have several times arbi¬ 
trated their disputes (see Alabama, The; 
Bering Sea Controversy; British Columbia, 
subhead History). Perhaps the greatest step 
in the effort to eliminate war as the result of 
disputes was the establishment of the Hague 
Tribunal, a permanent international court. 
Many nations have signed individual arbitra¬ 
tion treaties with other nations. The United 
States, through Secretary of State Bryan, pro¬ 
posed and ratified in 1914 a series of such 
treaties with most of the leading nations of 
the world. These all provide for the creation 
of commissions to which disputes may be re¬ 
ferred, and the parties to the treaties agree 
not to declare war before the report of the 
commission is presented. See Peace Confer¬ 
ence, International. w. f. z. 

Consult Foster’s Arbitration and The Hague 
Court; Morris’s International Arbitration and 
Procedure. 

ARBOR DAY, a day set apart in Canada and 
the United States for the planting of trees, 
honored most of all by the children of the 
public schools. It is a part of the movement 
which has for its aim the saving and renewal 
of the forests and other natural resources of 
these countries (see Conservation). The first 
Arbor Day was celebrated in Nebraska in 
1872, and was the idea of John Sterling Mor¬ 
ton, Secretary of Agriculture under President 
Cleveland. Mr. Morton deplored the fact 
that his state should be almost treeless, and 
that in other parts of the country there had 
been such widespread destruction of timber 
areas. Since that time other states and a 
number of provinces have one by one adopted 
the plan which he developed, and now a large 
proportion of them have an Arbor Day, either 
fixed by law or named by proclamation. In 
Canada and in most of the northern states 
it comes late in April or early in May; in the 
southern states, between December and March. 


ARBOR DAY 


316 


ARBOR DAY 


a 










m 















% 


ARBOR DAY 

A Suggestive Program 

“Jock, when ye hae naething else to do, ye 
may be aye sticking in a tree; it will be grow¬ 
ing, Jock, when ye’re sleeping.”— -Scott. 

Song, The Grapevine Swing . Peck 

Essay, What Arbor Day Means 

The Planting of the Apple-Tree . Bryant 

Tree-Planting . Lucy Larcom 

Quotations about Trees 

Little by Little . Anonymous 

Song, Woodman Spare That Tree . Morris 

The Story of Rhoecus, adapted from Low¬ 
ell’s poem Rhoecus 

Apple-Seed John . Lydia Maria Child 

Brief “autobiographies” of famous trees 

When We Plant a Tree . Abbey 

The Oak Tree . Mary Howitt 

The Use of Trees.. .Rapid-fire response by 
pupils, each naming one use 

The Tree . Bjornstjerne Bjornson 

The Heart of a Tree . H. C. Banner 

Essay, How to Know Our Home Trees 
The Making of the Canoe, from Hiawatha 

. Longfellow 

Song, The Linden Tree 

March, by the pupils, each carrying a branch 
Tree-planting 










i 










































































































































ARBOR VITAE 


317 


ARCADE 


The school children observe the day by 
planting trees on the school grounds and tak¬ 
ing part in exercises, consisting of songs and 
recitations, that help them to remember the 
beauty and importance of Arbor Day. The 
government departments of agriculture publish 
Arbor Day manuals with helpful suggestions 
for observing the day, which will be sent to 
anyone who writes for them, and several of 
the states and provinces also issue valuable 
manuals. A typical program is given here¬ 
with. 

ARBOR VITAE, ar' bor vi' tee, a name 
which means tree of life. It is given to cer¬ 
tain cone-bearing trees because they are of 
the evergreen variety and because their resin 
was once supposed to be very valuable as a 



ARBOR VITAE 


Appearance of tree and detail of branch. 

medicine. Arbor vitae, trees are much like 
cypresses and have flattened branchlets with 
small, scale-like leaves overlapping like the 
shingles on a roof. The common arbor vitae 
is a native of North America, where it grows 
to a height of forty or fifty feet. The young 
twigs have a pleasant, spicy smell. 

ARBUTUS, ahrbu' tus, the name given to a 
number of evergreen plants of the heath fam¬ 
ily, most of which are shrubs or tall trees, 
though some are tiny and inconspicuous. In 
Eastern and Central Canada and the United 
States the best-known species is the trailing 
arbutus, a creeping plant with shining, ever¬ 
green leaves and dainty white or pink flowers, 
which have a delicious fragrance. It is one of 
the earliest spring wild flowers, and one of the 
best-loved. The ornamental strawberry tree 
and the picturesque madrona of California, 


with its red bark and glossy leaves, also belong 
to the arbutus group. 



TRAILING ARBUTUS 

Darlings of the forest! 

Blossoming alone 
When Earth’s grief is sorest 
For her jewels gone— 

Ere the last snow-drift melts 
Your tender buds have blown. 

— Cooke. 

ARCADE, from the Latin word for bow, is 
the name given to a series of arches supported 
by columns or piers. As a rule there is a pas¬ 
sageway or promenade behind the arcade, as 
in the case of the cloisters in the old monas¬ 
teries where the monks used to gather for 
recreation and exercise. Such an arcade was 
what the poet Milton had in mind when he 
wrote of— 

A pillar’s shade, 

High over-arch’d, and echoing walks between. 

Often, however, the wall is built up close to 
the columns, so that the arcade is in reality 
only a decorative screen. This form is known 
variously as a blind arcade, wall arcade, or 
arcature. Arcades are also used in the interiors 
of churches for ornamental railings and simi¬ 
lar purposes. 



ARCADE 

A Spanish style adopted by the Moors 


The arcade was first used by the Romans 
and appears frequently in their aqueducts, 
palaces and theaters. The great Colosseum at 



































ARCADIA 


318 


ARCH 


Rome has three arcades, one over the other; 
in the famous Palace of the Doges at Venice 
both the lower and second stories are arcaded, 
as is also the interior court (see Colosseum ; 
Doge). The arcade was a favorite form of the 
Saracens. It appears in their mosques in 
Cairo and when the Moors came to Spain they 
introduced it into their building there. Among 
the most beautiful arcades in all architecture 
are those which, resting on white marble pil¬ 
lars, surround the Court of the Lions in the 
Alhambra at Granada, Spain (see Alhambra). 

ARCADIA, in ancient Greece, the central 
and most mountainous part of the Pelopon¬ 
nesus, whose inhabitants were largely a shep¬ 
herd people. They were famed throughout 
Greece for the simplicity and innocence of 



ARCADIA (IN BLACK) 
Surrounding provinces were as folows : 


(a) Elis 

( b ) Achaea 

(c) Argolis 

( d ) Messenia 

(e) Laconia 
(/) Acarnania 

(g) Aetolia 

( h ) Aeniania 

(i) Locris 


O') Doris 

( k ) Oetaea 

(l) Malis 
(to) Phocis 

(n) Boeotia 

(o) Megaris 

(p) Attica 

( q ) Euboea 


their character and manners, and for that 
reason the name Arcadia came to be used 
worldwide as a symbol of rural simplicity and 
happiness. In every country, especially at 
times when life has been most complex and 
artificial, poets and prose writers have de¬ 
lighted to write tales of a fanciful Arcadia, 
where charming shepherdesses and brave shep¬ 
herds spent their life in unbroken peace and 
happiness. Of these romances the Arcadia of 
Sir Philip Sidney is perhaps the most famous. 

ARCH, an architectural form that combines 
grace and beauty with strength and utility. 
It has no support on the sides or top, but by 
reason of the perfect balance of its parts is 
able to bear the weight of a load over an 


open space, as in doorways, windows, roofs, 
bridges or tunnels. Arches are made of stone, 



The various parts are described in the text. 

brick, wood and steel, but the wooden arch 
is little used in building at the present time. 
The most common form of the arch is that 
of a bow, but some arches are pointed, and 
there are a great many modifications of both 
the round and the pointed arch. The illus¬ 
tration shows the various parts. 

The typical arch is composed of wedge- 
shaped pieces, called voussoirs, ring-stones or 
arch-stones, the middle stone being the key¬ 
stone and the lowest stone on either side the 
skewbac, or springer. The highest part is called 
the crown; the sides, haunches; the curve on 
the inner side, the intrados; the outer curve, 
the extrados. The base which supports the 
lowest stone on each side is the impost; in 
the illustration it consists of bricks. The dis¬ 
tance between the two supports of an arch 
at its lower part is its span; the rise is the 
height from the bottom of the haunches to 
the under side of the keystone. 

A single stone, called a lintel, constituted 
the oldest and simplest device employed in 
supporting a structure over a doorway. The 
ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Etruscans and 
Greeks found the lintel practically sufficient 
for their needs; though they understood the 
principle of the arch, only the Etruscans used 
it to any extent. Among the Romans, how¬ 
ever, it met with great favor and was devel¬ 
oped to a high type of usefulness, appearing 
in their buildings, drains, aqueducts and 
bridges. The opening of the Cloaca Maxima, 
or Great Sewer, is still seen at Rome, and is 
supposed to be the oldest Roman arch, having 
been built about 500 b. c. The curved arch 
maintained its popularity until the Middle 
Ages, when the pointed or Gothic form came 
into use. 

The Cabin John Bridge, near Washington, 
D. C., is the longest stone span in the United 
States; it is 220 feet long and twenty feet wide, 
and has a rise of fifty-seven feet. The largest 
stone arch ever made is at Plauen, Germany; 









































ARCHAEOLOGY 


319 


ARCHBISHOP 


its span is over 295 feet. Steel arches are 
widely used at the present time in bridge 



THREE TYPES OF ARCH 
(a) Semi-circular, (b) Horseshoe, (c) Lancet. 

building; the steel arch supporting the car¬ 
riage bridge below Niagara Falls has a span 
of 840 feet, and the arch of the new Hell Gate 
bridge one of 1,016 feet (see Hell Gate). 

Arches for purposes of decoration are also 
frequently seen. In public celebrations flower- 
covered arches often span the streets; single 
arches are sometimes erected for gateways or 
as memorials. The triumphal arch of the 
Romans, under which a victorious general led 
his army, is of historic fame. See Arch of 
Triumph; Constantine, Arch of; Septimius 
Severus, Arch of; Titus, Arch of; Trajan, 
Arch of. b.m.w. 

ARCHAEOLOGY, ahrkeol'ojy, the science 
which deals with the history of nations and 
peoples, not as set forth in their written rec¬ 
ords, but as shown in the material results of 
their labor which yet remain. Thus architec¬ 
ture, sculpture, painting, as well as the crudest 
of utensils and implements, furnish knowledge 
of what different peoples were in the early 
epochs of their history. The remains of Greek 
and Roman civilization have been given by far 
the most attention, and that branch of archae¬ 
ology is therefore more advanced than others, 
but within the last few decades increasing 
interest has been shown in excavations and dis¬ 
coveries in Babylonia and other lands of the 
Near East. In the United States the Mound- 
Builders and some of the early Indian tribes 
left relics which have attracted much atten¬ 
tion from archaeologists. 

Archaeology divides the prehistoric period 
of the human race, especially as shown by re¬ 
mains found in Europe, into the Stone, the 
Bronze and the Iron ages, according to the 
chief material used for weapons and imple¬ 
ments during each period. See Age; Mound- 
Builders; Babylonia. 

ARCHANGEL, ahrk' ane jel, a name meaning 
chief angel. As used in the New Testament 
the word indicates that there are ranks among 
the angels. Saint Paul refers to the Lord as' 
an archangel (/ Thes . IV, 13), Jude refers to 


the archangel Michael. While Gabriel is no¬ 
where directly called an archangel he is con¬ 
sidered chief among the angels. In Revela¬ 
tion there are various references which indicate 
that there are angels of different rank. See 
Angel. 

ARCHANGEL, an important Russian sea¬ 
port and commercial center, founded in 1584, 
and situated at the mouth of the River Dvina 
on the White Sea, about 740 miles northeast 
of Petrograd. It is larger than any other town 
in the world in such northerly latitude, being 
less than 2° south of the Arctic Circle. If 
New York City were as far north as Archangel 
it would be located in Southern Greenland. 
For more than six months of the year the 
port of Archangel is closed by ice. Up to 
1916 it was Russia’s only open seaport in 
Europe, for its ports on the Baltic are not 
available for commerce in time of war because 
the nation which can control the narrow en¬ 
trances around Denmark can effectively cut 
off that sea from the world. This occurred the 
day the War of the Nations was begun in 1914; 
then the importance of Archangel was empha¬ 
sized as it had not been before for a hundred 
years. For description of Russia’s new port, 
open all the year, see Ekaterina. 

The trade of the city is extensive; it exports 
linseed, flax, tow, tallow, train oil, mats, timber, 
pitch and tar to the value of about $4,500,000 
annually. In September each year a fair is 
held which attracts merchants from all parts 
of Russia and the East. The city contains 
some fine buildings and the cathedral is con¬ 
sidered one of the finest in Russia. Population 
in 1911, 37,987. 

ARCHBISH'OP, the chief prelate or bishop 
of an ecclesiastical province, or see , who has 
jurisdiction over all bishops in that province. 
The title was first used in the fourth century, 
to distinguish the bishops in large cities from 
those of smaller churches, and the office is 
recognized in the Roman Catholic, Anglican 
and Greek churches. The archbishop of Rome 
is the Pope; he has the power to appoint other 
archbishops, who must previously have been 
bishops. England has two archbishops, one at 
Canterbury and the other at York, of whom 
the former is supreme. His is the right of 
crowning the kings or queens of Great Britain. 
The Roman Catholic is the only Church main¬ 
taining the office of archbishop in the United 
States, which is divided into fourteen pro¬ 
vinces, or sees, with an archbishop over each. 
See Bishop. 



















































ARCHEAN SYSTEM 


320 


ARCHERY 


ARCHEAN, ahr he' an, SYSTEM. The word 
archean means very ancient, and the term 
Archean System is given to the rock formations 
of the oldest period of geologic time. The 
article Geology (which see) tells the story of 
the formation of the earth. In this account, 
geologic time, which is thousands upon thou¬ 
sands of years old, is divided into eras and 
periods; the Archeozoic is the first era, and its 
system of rocks is the Archean. The rocks of 
this system extend down to unknown depths, 
for they constitute the first series laid down in 
geologic history. They include igneous rock 
for the most part, such as granite, basalt and 
gneiss (see Igneous Rocks), but there are also 
deposits of sedimentary rocks, such as black 
carbon-bearing slates and limestones. These 
latter indicate the presence of life in that 
remote era, for such rocks are formed through 
the agency of plants and animals. There are, 
however, no fossils of any kind, and so geolo¬ 
gists have no means of knowing what sort of 
life existed when the earth was in its infancy. 

The Archean System underlies practically the 
whole surface of the globe. In North America 
an area of Archean rock occupies nearly the 
whole of the peninsula of Labrador, and 
stretches from that region in a southwesterly 
direction to the Great Lakes, thence north¬ 
westerly to the Arctic Ocean. There are other 
important areas in the eastern part of the 
United States and in the Rocky Mountains. 
In Europe Archean formations are prominent 
in the Scandinavian Peninsula, France, Ger¬ 
many and Spain, and there are similar forma¬ 
tions in India, Northern China, Australia and 
New Zealand. 



ARCHER FISH 


insects on which it feeds. It is said that it is 
able to shoot drops of water at insects a dis¬ 
tance of three or four feet, and to bring them 
in this way into the water within its reach. 
The archer-fish is about six inches long, and is 
found in the seas around the East Indies. 

ARCHERY, ar'cheri, practised in ancient 
times by the hunter and the warrior, is at the 
present time a healthful outdoor sport. The 
weapons of the archer are the bow and arrow. 
The history of archery is as old as the story 



ARCHERY 

The target of the best type is made of cork, 
with cloth covering. The latter may be fre¬ 
quently renewed. 


of mankind. One of the earliest Bible narra¬ 
tives is that of Ishmael, who “dwelt in the 
wilderness of Paran and became an archer” 
( Genesis, XXI, 20). The Egj^ptians, Persians, 
Assyrians, and Parthians were all highly skilled 
in the use of the bow and arrow, the Parthians 
being the most celebrated horse-archers of 
ancient times. Among European peoples none 
excelled the English in archery, and stories of 
the bow and arrow are numerous in their his¬ 
tory, their legends and their songs. It is told 
that the Norman archers of William the Con¬ 
queror broke up the ranks of the English at 
the Battle of Hastings, by shooting upward 
showers of arrows that fell upon the faces of 
their enemy; but later the skill of the English 
archers won on French soil the famous victories 
of the Hundred Years’ War—Crecy, Poitiers 
and Agincourt. When men put aside the bow 
- and arrow for the gun, archery disappeared 
from the battlefield, and at the present time 
only savage races use the archer’s weapons in 
hunting or warfare. 


ARCHER-FISH, a fish which gets its name Archery is now a popular and fashionable 
from the peculiar way in which it catches the sport in England, Canada and the United 




































































ARCHIBALD 


321 


ARCHIPELAGO 


States, though to a less extent in the latter 
countries than in the first-named. See Bow 
and Arrow. 

ARCH'IBALD, Sir Adams George (1814- 
1892), a Canadian statesman, one of the lead¬ 
ers in the movement for Confederation and the 
first lieutenant-governor of Manitoba. He was 
born at Truro, N. S., educated at Pictou Acad¬ 
emy, and called 
to the bar of his 
native province 
in 1839. He en¬ 
tered public life 
in 1851 as mem¬ 
ber of the Nova 
Scotia assembly, 
and after 1856 
held in turn the 
positions of solic¬ 
itor - general o f 
Nova Scotia, at¬ 
torney-general and advocate-general in the 
vice-admiralty court at Halifax. He was a 
member of the Charlottetown and Quebec 
Conferences, and played an important part in 
the work preceding Confederation. When Con¬ 
federation was won in 1867, he became a mem¬ 
ber of the Dominion House of Commons and 
for a year was also Secretary of State for the 
colonies in Sir John A. Macdonald’s Ministry. 
In 1870 he was appointed first lieutenant-gov¬ 
ernor of Manitoba, a position of great responsi¬ 
bility because of the disorders at the time (see 
Manitoba, subtitle History). He resigned in 
1873, later served two terms as lieutenant- 
governor of Nova Scotia, and from 1888 to 
1891 again sat in the House of Commons. 



SIR ADAMS GEORGE 
ARCHIBALD 



ARCHIMEDEAN SCREW 
ARCHIMEDEAN, ahr ki me ' de an, SCREW, 

a device for raising water, said to have been 
invented by Archimedes. It consists of a hol¬ 


low spiral tube bent around a cylinder, as 
shown in the illustration. The device is in¬ 
clined, the lower end being immersed in the 
water; the upper end has a handle by which 
the apparatus may be turned. The water is 
gradually raised from one bend of the tube to 
the next and finally flows out of the upper 
end. The Archimedean screw, in ancient times, 
was used in the Nile valley for draining and 
irrigating land, and it is now sometimes em¬ 
ployed where it is desired to raise a large 
quantity of water not more than ten or fifteen 
feet, with the expenditure of little power. See 
Archimedes. 

ARCHIMEDES, ahr kimee'deez (287-212 
b. c.), the greatest mathematician who lived 
before the Christian Era, and the discoverer 
of the principle of specific gravity (which see). 
He was born at Syracuse, in Sicily, and prob¬ 
ably studied at Alexandria, after which he 
returned to his native city and there passed the 
rest of his life. 

His discovery of ‘‘Archimedes’ principle,” on 
which the theory of specific gravity is based, 
occurred, according to legend, in the following 
manner. Entrusted by the ruler of Syracuse 
with the task of finding out whether a certain 
goldsmith had used all the gold turned over 
to him in making a crown, Archimedes pon¬ 
dered long over the question. One day while 
in the bath he noticed how his body made 
the water rise, and then came to him the two 
principles—that a body displaces a quantity 
of water equal in bulk to itself, and that the 
loss in weight of the body immersed in water 
equals the weight of the water displaced. Ex¬ 
cited by his discovery, the absent-minded 
philosopher leaped from the bath and ran 
through the streets crying “Eureka! I have 
found it!” 

Archimedes also discovered the principle of 
the lever, and boasted that if he had but a 
place to stand upon and to rest a lever upon, 
he could move the world. The Archimedean 
screw (which see) was also constructed by him, 
as were various burning mirrors and hurling 
engines much used during sieges. After the 
siege of Syracuse, where with his burning 
glasses Archimedes had fired the Roman fleet, 
a Roman soldier, rushing into the philosopher’s 
study, found him calmly drawing geometrical 
figures. Not noticing the soldier’s drawn 
sword, the old man cried, “Don’t disturb my 
circles.” Enraged, the soldier slew him. 

ARCHIPELAGO, ar kipeV a go, a word de¬ 
rived from two Greek words meaning chief 


















ARCHITECTURE 


322 


ARCHITECTURE 


sea, now given to any sea, or portion of a sea, 
containing a large number of islands. The 
name is generally applied to the islands 
themselves, but this is not strictly cor¬ 


rect. The Aegean Sea is the most notable 
archipelago in the world, and the name was 
first given to it by the Greeks to distinguish 
it from all other seas. See Aegean Sea. 



RCHITECTURE, ar' ki 

tek ture. Goethe said, “Architec¬ 
ture is frozen music.” In a striking 
way he emphasized man’s accom¬ 
plishment in making art walk hand in hand 
with unemotional science, which takes account 
only of endurance, utility, stress and strain in 
the construction of a building. That brick and 
stone and marble may be so utilized that the 
realization of an architect’s dream may stir 
the esthetic emotions is reason enough for 
placing architecture among the fine arts. It 
is therefore proper to class architects of vision 
with painters and sculptors. They all pro¬ 
duce objects good to look at and sometimes 
inspire a spiritual exaltation in the beholder. 

Is a building well proportioned? Are the 
details of it pleasing to the eye and does the 
structure as a whole seem to fit well in the 
landscape? Is its style suited to the purpose 
for which it was built; that is, if it is a 
schoolhouse does it look like a schoolhouse and 
not like a barn with windows, or if it is a home 
does it appear comfortable and inviting? 
These are the questions we ask ourselves when 
we see a building, and on our conclusions we 
are apt to base our opinion of the architect. 


But if buildings were only beauti¬ 
ful few could be well utilized. Use¬ 
fulness, except in monuments and 
purely decorative structures such as 
arches of triumph, is even more essential than 
attractiveness. If an architect is to design an 
office building he must know the relative cost 
of building with different materials and the 
expense of labor for each kind of work. More 
important still, he must understand how to 
arrange the space so that it will bring the 
greatest possible rent, must know how many 
elevators are needed to serve the people who 
will occupy the building, what heat is most 
effective and economical, and how much win¬ 
dow space is necessary to give proper light. He 
must be able to estimate exactly how much 
strength is required at each point, and know 
how to gain this strength with the least cost. 

Houses. “Home,” said Pliny, “is where the 
heart is.” A home, then, more than any other 
structure, should be harmonious. It should be 
pleasing to the eye, both inside and out, and 
give to its folk that comfort which will make 
it, to quote the poet, James Montgomeiy— 

“the spot of earth supremely blest, 

A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest.” 



COMFORTABLE, BUT UNATTRACTIVE 

A house an owner would probably design for 
himself. 



PLEASING TO THE EYE 

The architect would design a home something 
like this. 


































































































































ARCHITECTURE 


323 


ARCHITECTURE 


Surely, then, there is no greater field for archi¬ 
tecture than in home-building, and yet it is 
only within the last generation that the art 
and science of home planning has developed. 
In earlier years kings had their palaces de¬ 
signed by architects, and rich men imitated 
them; but splendor and magnificence were 
commonly sought rather than true charm. 

To build a home in this age without the 
aid of an architect is only a little wiser than 
to attempt to make one’s own automobile. 
This does not mean that the architect is to 
be given an order for a house and the owners 
must accept whatever he chooses to give them. 
A home, to be enjoyed to the utmost, should 
be an expression of its owners’ thought. Per¬ 
haps the master of the house would like his 
library arranged in just such a way, and the 
mistress is longing for a certain kind of kitchen 
and many closets for clothes and linen, and 
both have definite ideas about a porch, a fire¬ 
place or a sun parlor, and many other details; 
but if they attempt unaided to combine their 
ideas in one structure they find the task most 
difficult. Or, perhaps they have admired cer¬ 
tain houses which they have seen, but have no 
very exact notion of their wants. In either 
case a good architect can soon find the way, 
if there is any, to embody the dreams of his 
clients, besides adding many conveniences 
which they never would have suggested, thus 
making the whole structure quite unlike any 
other, a “thing of beauty,” which, says Keats 
in Endymion — 

“is a joy forever; 

Its loveliness increases; it will never 

Pass into nothingness.” 

The services of an architect are not beyond 
the purse of anyone who is building. Usually 
the fee for designing is only six per cent of the 
cost, and for supervising construction an addi¬ 
tional four per cent. Thus one who plans to 
spend $2,000 on a little home may have expert 
help for $200, and if the architect is competent 
he will save more than this amount in con¬ 
struction costs. 

Architecture Old and New. Most of us know, 
when we see a building, whether it pleases or 
displeases us, but few of us can tell why. To 
gain a true appreciation of cause and effect, 
a knowledge of what renders a structure at¬ 
tractive or makes it offend the eye, we must 
study the story of architecture. When we 
learn how men have gradually approached a 
knowledge of true beauty we shall gain more 
of that knowledge for ourselves. In so doing 


we shall add greatly to our enjoyment of good 
architecture, for our eyes will be opened to 
many beautiful things which we have never 
before noticed. 

Early Efforts. It is in the cradles of civiliza¬ 
tion, Egypt, Assyria and Babylonia, that we 
find the first successful attempts to give beauty 
to the work of the builder. The tombs and 
temples of ancient Egypt, some carved out of 



EGYPTIAN TYPE OF ARCHITECTURE 

The temple of Edfu, begun 237 b. c., by one of 
the Ptolemies. 


the solid rock, others formed of massive blocks 
of stones, are silent testimonies to the aspira¬ 
tions of a race which believed in the endless 
life of the human body as well as of the soul. 
They have a dignity and an air of eternity 
unequalled by any other works of man. Both 
carving and color added to their charm, but 
the heavy walls and close grouping of columns, 
the flat roofs and the predominance of straight 
lines give them a depressing solemnity. All 
of these features will be appreciated after a 
study of the pictures of the ruins of Karnak 
which appear in the article Egypt, and of the 
illustration here shown of the temple of Edfu. 

Many centuries before civilization in the 
Nile valley reached its height, the Babylonians 
and Assyrians developed an architecture which 
resembled the Egyptian only in its straight 
lines and flat roofs and massive walls. The 
Assyrians had little stone, the Babylonians 
none at all, and neither had timber. Sun-dried 
brick was their building material; with it they 
erected huge palaces with walls often thirty 
feet thick and usually no farther apart, roofed 
with primitive vaults. The rooms were high- 
ceiled, long and narrow. Windows were im¬ 
possible in walls of such depth, so there could 
be no second story to shut off light from 
above. Decoration was gained with glazed 
tile, painting and carving. 

“The Glory That Was Greece.” Of the many 
debts which architects of the last two thousand 
years owe to their fellows of ancient Hellas, 

























ARCHITECTURE 


324 


ARCHITECTURE 


and especially to those of the age of Pericles 
(about 460-430 b. c.), none exceeds the indebt- 


r 


0 ) 

cd 


Com 


ce 


LU 


Frieze 

Architrave 

Capital 


Shaft 


c 

i< 

o 

o 



Base 
^Plinth 

COLUMN AND ENTABLATURE 
A part of “the glory that was Greece.” 


edness felt for the sense of proportion the 
Greeks gave us. The Parthenon at Athens, 
inspiring even in ruins (see the illustration 
that heads this article), is unequalled as an 
example of a building whose parts all bear a 
pleasing relation to each other and to the 
whole. Proportion is a matter which has no 
exact science; yet it is one of the most vital 
questions in architecture. If you were describ¬ 
ing the Parthenon you would not speak of it 
as a narrow building, nor as a wide building; 
you would not say it was high or low. Far 
more than mere adjustment of the three dimen¬ 
sions was necessary to gain this effect of per¬ 
fection. Notice, for a single instance of the 
care which the builders exercised, that the 
three columns of each corner have less dis- 



WHERE ATHENS WORSHIPPED ITS 
PATRON GODDESS 

The Parthenon, completed 435 b. c. This pic¬ 
ture is from the restored model in the Metropol¬ 
itan Museum, New York City. 

tance between them than have any of the 
others. But for this arrangement the temple 


would appear distorted because of the con¬ 
trast between the bright sky, forming the back¬ 
ground at the edges, and the dark inner walls 
at the center. 

Harsh, straight lines are avoided in Greek 
structures by the adoption of soft, almost im¬ 
perceptible curves. Thus the columns in the 
Parthenon do not taper like pails set upside 
down, but with a graceful, gradual change of 
direction. 

Details characteristic of Greek public archi¬ 
tecture were the low-pitched roofs of timber 
covered with tile, the terraced steps, the sculp¬ 
tured friezes. Red and blue paint, gold and 
dull yellow wax gave warmth to the cold, white 
stone. The three types of columns—Doric, 
Ionic and Corinthian—are described and illus¬ 
trated in the article Column, and each of three 
famous buildings, the Erectheum, Theseum 
and Parthenon has an article. 

“The Grandeur That Was Rome.” Before 
the rise of the imperial city on the banks of 



THE PANTHEON OF AGRIPPA 

A heritage from the grandeur of the Roman 
Empire. 


the Tiber, the Etruscans, whose home was 
farther north in Italy, had become experts in 
the use of the arch. From them the Romans 
copied it, and made the semi-circular arch the 
distinguishing feature of their work. In other 
respects their architecture is largely a modifica¬ 
tion of Greek styles. With the arch it was 
possible for the Romans to construct interiors 
of a size previously not dreamed of, and to sub¬ 
stitute bricks and small stones held together 
by cement for the enormous unmortared slabs 
°f Egypt and Greece. The great arches of 
aqueducts and bridges; the enormous vaults 
of the baths, sometimes over one hundred feet 
high; the dome of the Pantheon; all are 
tributes to the skill with which Roman archi¬ 
tects and engineers utilized the new knowl¬ 
edge. But the semi-circular arch required ex- 


















































































































ARCHITECTURE 


325 


ARCHITECTURE 


ceedingly heavy walls for its support, for 
reasons which are explained in the article 
Bridge, and made Roman works impressive for 
their size rather than for their grace. 

The Pantheon, as rebuilt by the Emperor 
Hadrian in the second century a. d., is an illus¬ 
tration of both the Greek and the Etruscan 
influence on Rome. From the outside it is 
truly not a pleasing structure; the square, pil¬ 
lared entrance does not accord with the 
massive circular walls. Inside, however, the 


huge dome, over 140 feet in both diameter and 
height, is striking. Other Roman edifices are 
told of and pictured under the headings Colos¬ 
seum; Forum; Amphitheater; Aqueduct; 
Atrium; Basilica; and Baths and Bathing. 

After Rome. The fall of Rome was not the 
fall of all things Roman. The Empire of the 
Caesars had left its stamp upon the languages, 
laws and religion of the Western world, and to 
an even greater extent on its architecture. 
Wherever Roman soldiers went people learned 
to build the arch, the vault and the dome. 

In the East, the mingling of Roman and 
Oriental ideas produced a style known as 
Byzantine, of which the church of Saint Sophia 


in Constantinople, erected in the sixth century, 
is typical. From the outside this huge pile of 
brick is unattractive, but its interior, before 
Turkish occupation in 1453, w T as probably the 
most gorgeous in the world. Red, green and 
black marble, precious stones, mosaics—all 
have a part in it, yet there is no confusion of 
colors, for all are placed according to a defined 
scheme. Much of the gracefulness of this 
interior is due to the placing of the dome upon 
square walls, a feat of construction unknown 


to the Romans. It was accomplished by means 
of pendentives, curving brackets of stone at 
the corners, which, as may be seen from the 
accompanying illustration, formed an arch on 
each of the four sides and carried the weight 
of the dome to the corners. Saint Mark’s, 
Venice, another famous Byzantine church, re¬ 
sembles Saint Sophia’s in many respects. 

In the West early Christian churches were 
formed in imitation of the basilicas or halls of 
Roman residences. There was nearly always a 
long room bordered with pillars; an aisle on 
each side whose roof was lower than the cen¬ 
tral roof and permitted a clerestory, or row of 
windows, above it; and an apse, or semicircular 



INTERIOR OF SAINT SOPHIA 
































































































ARCHITECTURE 


326 


ARCHITECTURE 


projection, at the end. These features, which 
are illustrated in the picture of Saint Paul’s 



FOURTH CENTURY CHRISTIAN BASILICA 

Interior of “Saint Paul Outside the Walls,” as 
rebuilt after a destructive fire of 1823. 


Outside the Walls, have influenced church 
architecture from Constantine’s time to the 
present day. 

There was in the West no type of archi¬ 
tecture to blend with the Roman and form a 
style corresponding to the Byzantine in the 
East. What took place was a gradual devel¬ 
opment into the fashion called Romanesque. 
In general the tendency was away from the 
heaviness of the older construction. In Lom¬ 
bardy vaults were supported by ribs at the 
intersections of surfaces (see the article Vault 
and the picture of a groined vault), the ribs 
resting on pillars and making massive walls 
unnecessary. In Burgundy architects learned 
to construct groined vaults in oblong shape in 
place of the square vaults to which others had 
been confined. In Germany first, then else¬ 
where, the church tower was made a part of 
the main building, instead of a separate struc¬ 
ture (see Campanile). 

Gothic, the Expression of a New Life. The 

student of architectural history misses half the 
interest of his subject if he does not notice 
how clearly the buildings of a nation or of an 
age may indicate the spirit of the times. The 
solemnity of old Egypt, the keen intelligence 
of Greece, the unconquerable will of Rome— 
are all recorded in brick and stone. When 
we come to the age of awakening understand¬ 
ing which preceded the glorious rebirth of 
Europe, called the Renaissance, we find an 
example even more striking. Emerson calls 
the Gothic cathedral “a blossoming in stone” 
and adds:’ “The mountain of granite blooms 
into an eternal flower, with the lightness and 
delicate finish, as well as the aerial proportions 
and perspective of vegetable beauty.” 

Structurally Gothic architecture is marked 
first of all by the pointed arch, which can be 


raised to impressive heights without increase 
in width, needs no heavy walls to resist its out¬ 
ward thrust and permits vaults of any shape. 
In true Gothic style there is not a wasted 
stone. All weight is carried by a skeleton 
of arches, piers and flying buttresses; real walls 
are almost lacking, for the spaces between out¬ 
side piers are filled by lofty windows. 

The Gothic style had its birth in France. 
It was copied in England and Germany, Spain 
and Italy, but nowhere in its purity. Various 
modifications arose, mostly with elaborate orna¬ 
mentation (see Gargoyle; Tracery; Tudor 
Style). Gothic structures described elsewhere 
in this book are the cathedrals of Notre Dame, 
Lincoln, Cologne, Rheims, Milan and Amiens. 
The first of these is pictured under its own 



IN A GOTHIC CATHEDRAL 


The graceful arches of a choir-aisle in Rheims 
Cathedral, built in the thirteenth century. 

heading, the second appears in the illustra¬ 
tion at the head of this article, and with the 
third and fourth, under Cathedral. 

The Renaissance and After. It was in Italy 
that the reawakened interest in the works of 
past ages which characterized the Renaissance 
first manifested itself. Here architects were 
able to study the fragmentary remains of clas¬ 
sical Roman structures, and to adopt into their 
own practice those elements which pleased 
them best. After the visit of the court of 







































































































ARCHITECTURE 


327 


ARCHITECTURE 


King Charles VIII of France to Rome in 1494, 
the revival of classic forms began to influence 
French architecture, and soon spread to other 
countries. It is characteristic of the new age 
that other edifices than churches were now 
thought worthy to try the architect’s skill, and 
the palaces, castles, chateaus and town halls 
of the Renaissance period show plainly that 
their designers were influenced by those of far- 
off, imperial Rome. 

The Church of Saint Peter, at Rome, is a 
product of this age of classical study. Its 
great cupola, constructed in the second half of 
the sixteenth century according to plans which 
Michelangelo had drawn, may be seen in the 
upper part of the page of illustrations with 
the article Vatican. The dome, like that of 
the Pantheon, is formed entirely of masonry 
without the timber frame found in most Euro¬ 
pean domes. But its umbrella-like ribs, and 
the lack of the Pantheon’s heavy walls, show 
the lessons learned in Romanesque and Gothic 
vault construction. The big drum, or circular 
wall, beneath the dome, and the small drum 
above, are each marked by a row of pillars 
shaped to give the appearance of pairs of 
classic columns. In the lower picture on the 
same page may be observed other examples of 
the fashioning of details after ancient models; 
at the center Greek roofs over the two win¬ 
dows in the small tower, and the pilasters, or 
flat decorations made to look like pillars sup¬ 
porting them; at the top of the building at 
the right, the colonnades, or rows of columns, 
and their Greek gables. A picture of the 
Louvre, perhaps the best instance of French 
Renaissance architecture, appears in the article 
on that building. 

Since the Renaissance the practice of study¬ 
ing the best work of days gone by has con¬ 
tinued. Fresh problems have arisen, especially 
in America, where the sky-scraper built with 
a skeleton of steel or concrete has transformed 
the science of building. But so far no new 
style worthy to succeed has been evolved. In 
the exterior design of a modern tall building 
two of the tasks of the architect are to avoid 
the monotony which is apt to result from the 
multitudes of regularly arranged windows, 
and to prevent the great height of the struc¬ 
ture from making the dimensions seem poorly 
proportioned. In solving these problems the 
architect draws from his knowledge of the 
achievements of past centuries. Thus, as any 
observer may discover, many recently con¬ 
structed office buildings have elements of 


classic or of Gothic design. Continuous verti¬ 
cal strips between windows often end at the 
top in pilasters, and cornices are almost uni- 



AN HISTORIC STYLE 

Adapted to modern needs. The University- 
Club, Chicago, called the finest example of pure 
Gothic in America. 

versal. The striking resemblance between the 
tower of the Wool worth Building, the tallest 
of tall buildings, and those of Lincoln Ca¬ 
thedral, built nearly six centuries earlier, is 
shown at the head of this article. c.h.h. 


Consult Sturgis’s How to Judge Architecture; 
Ruskin's Seven Lamps of Architecture; Reinach’s 
Story of Art Throughout the Ages. 

Related Subjects. The following lists, which 
contain general architectural topics, buildings 
of note, and the world’s greatest architects, will 
give to the reader a comprehensive view of the 
subject: 


Abbey 

Aqueduct 

Arabesque 

Arcade 

Arch 

Atrium 

Basilica 

Beam 

Blue Print 

Bungalow 

Campanile 

Capital 


GENERAL 

Capitol 

Cartouche 

Caryatides 

Castle 

Cathedral 

Chimney 

Circus 

Cleopatra’s Needles 

Cloister 

Column 

Corbel 

Cupola 











































































ARCHITECTURE 


328 


ARCHITECTURE 


OUTLINE AND QUESTIONS ON ARCHITECTURE 


Outline 


I. What It Is 


(1) An art 

(2) A science 

II. What Good Architecture Means 

(1) Beautiful buildings 

(2) Suitable buildings 

(3) Useful buildings 

III. Development of Architecture* 

(1) Earliest forms 

(a) Egyptian 
1. Dignity 

Babylonian and Assyrian 

1. Material 

2. Style 


(b) 


(c) Greek 

1. Sense of proportion 

2. Avoidance of harsh lines 

3. Three types of columns 

(d) Roman 
1. Arch 

(2) Latin styles 

(a) Byzantine 

(2 ) Later styles 

(b) Romanesque 

(c) Gothic 

1. Pointed arch 

(d) Renaissance 

IV. Modern Problems 

(1) Home-building 

(2) “Sky-scrapers” 


Questions 


If you wished to build a home should you consider it wise to draw up your plans 
and turn them over to a building contractor? 

What three demands must every perfectly successful building fulfil? 

What is the greatest debt which later architecture owes to the Greeks? 

In what style of architecture is the capitol of your state or province? 

How can you recognize Gothic architecture infallibly? 

What is regarded as the most perfect building ever constructed? 

May an architect be a “pure artist,” or must he have a definite knowledge of 
certain material things? 

In what suggestive manner did Goethe define architecture? 

Have you ever seen a building which seemed to you to fit this definition? Do 
most of the houses, stores or churches which you pass? 

What are some of the difficulties which the architect of a modern sky-scraper 
has to overcome? 

The Woolworth Building is 750 feet high and weighs 360,000,000 pounds. Is it 
as tall as the greatest pyramid? Does it weigh as much? 

What were the distinguishing marks of Egyptian architecture? 

What was the great architectural achievement of the Romans? 

Did the architects of the eighteenth or nineteenth century develop any new stjde 
of architecture? 

Could the Romans have built their great bridges and aqueducts if they had never 
developed any new architectural form? 

What are Cleopatra’s needles? 

What was the building material of the Babylonians and Assyrians? 

Who was the architect of the dome of Saint Peter’s? 

Is there in Europe any good example of Mohammedan architecture? 

What is a clerestory? An apse? 

How did Emerson describe Gothic architecture? 














ARCH OF TRIUMPH 329 


ARCOLA 


Dome 

Facade 

Finial 

Gable 

Gargoyle 

Indian Architecture 

Keystone 

Labyrinth 

Lateran 

Loggia 

Mansard Roof 
Minaret 

Mohammedan Archi¬ 
tecture 
Mosque 
Nave 

Norman Architecture 
FAMOUS 

Abbotsford 

Alhambra 

Arch of Triumph 

Athenaeum 

Buckingham Palace 

Choragic Monument 

Colosseum 

Eiffel Tower 

Erectheum 

Escorial 

Holyrood Palace 
Invalides, Hotel des 
July, Column of 
Kaaba 
Louvre 

Luxembourg Palace 
Monticello 

Notre Dame, Cathedral 

of 


Obelisk 

Pagoda 

Pediment 

Pendant 

Pendentive 

Pilaster 

Roof 

Rose Window 

Seraglio 

Spire 

Temple 

Tower 

Tracery 

Transept 

Tudor Style 

Vault 

Window 

BUILDINGS 

Palais Royal 
Pantheon 
Parthenon 
Pitti Palace 
Quirinal Palace 
Saint Mark, Cathedral 
of 

Saint Peter’s Church 

Sophia, Church of Saint 

Statuary Hall 

Theseum 

Uffizi 

Vatican 

Versailles, Palace of 
Washington Arch 
Washington Monument 
Westminster Abbey 
Westminster Hall 
Windsor Castle 


Most of the great cathedrals, as Lincoln, Milan, 
Rheims, are described in the articles on the 
cities in which they are located. 


ARCHITECTS 


Bramante, Donato 
Brunelleschi, Filippo 
Bulfinch, Charles 
Burnham, Daniel 


Hunt, Richard Morris 
Michelangelo 
Buonarroti 

Wren, Sir Christopher 


ARCH OF TRIUMPH, called by the French 
Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile (triumphal arch 
of the star), situated at the head of the Champs 
Elysees, one of the most beautiful streets in 
Paris, is the largest triumphal arch in the 
world. It was begun by Napoleon Bonaparte 
in 1806, to commemorate his victories, and was 
completed by Louis Philippe in 1836. Har¬ 
monious in proportions and imposing in design, 
this famous structure rises to a height of 160 
feet. Its central archway is forty-eight feet 
broad and ninety-five feet high, and on its inner 
walls are inscribed the names of 384 of Na¬ 
poleon’s generals and ninety-six of his great 
triumphs during the period of his glory. 
Among the striking decorations are four 
groups of colossal figures, sculptured in high 


relief. One of these symbolizes the departure 
of the volunteers of 1792. 



ARCH OF TRIUMPH 

A monument to the successes of the great 
Napoleon—but without a suggestion of the end 
at Saint Helena. 

ARCHON, ar' kon, the highest officer in an¬ 
cient Athens. The first archon was chosen by 
the nobles from the royal family of Codrus, 
the last king of Athens, and his term of office 
was for life. In 752 b. c. the length of the 
term was shortened to ten years, and in 714 
b. c. the archonship was thrown open to all 
the nobles. In 682 b. c. the number of archons 
was increased to nine, and thereafter they 
were chosen every year. The reforms of Solon 
gave anyone who had a certain amount of 
property the right to hold the office, and in 
477 b. c., under Aristides, this right was given 
to all Athenian citizens. After 508 b. c. the 
archons were chosen by lot. The first of the 
nine archons, called the Archon, gave his name 
to the year in public records; the second had 
the care of the religious interests of the peo¬ 
ple ; the third, the Polemarch, was the war 
archon. The other six were the lawgivers of 
the state. 

ARCOLA, Sask., a town 113 miles southeast 
of Regina and 253 miles west of Winnipeg. 
It is a divisional point on the Arcola-Regina 
branch of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and 
has been for years the chief shipping center 
for a rich grain-growing region. The land in 
the Areola district is slightly rolling, very 
fertile and well watered by Moose Mountain 








































ARCTIC CIRCLE 


330 


ARCTIC LANDS AND SEAS 


River and other smaller streams. Fish Lake, 
eighteen miles north of Areola, is a summer 
resort, with good boating, bathing and fishing. 
The town is the center of the Cannington 
judicial district (Southeastern Saskatchewan), 
and has the district Land Titles building, 
erected in 1913, and a courthouse, completed 
in 1910. Population in 1911, 794; in 1916, 
estimated, 1,200. p.b.t. 


desolate northern region. The Arctic Circle 
just touches the northern headlands of Ice¬ 
land, cuts off the southern and narrowest por¬ 
tion of Greenland, crosses Fox’s Strait, north 
of Hudson Bay, whence it extends westward 
to Bering Strait, continuing across Northern 
Russia, the White Sea and the Scandinavian 
Peninsula to Iceland. See map accompanying 
the article Arctic Lands and Seas. 



LANDS AND WATERS OF THE FROZEN NORTH 


ARCTIC CIRCLE. At the North Pole the 
year is divided into six months of night and 
six months of day. The Arctic Circle, repre¬ 
sented on the globe as a circle twenty-three 
and one-half degrees distant from the north 
pole and parallel to the equator, indicates 
roughly the boundary of this alternate daylight 
and nightime zone. The name comes from 
arktos, by which the constellation Great Bear 
was known to the Greeks (see Bear, Great). 

When the sun reaches the Tropic of Cancer 
on its northward journey, its rays shine day 
and night over the whole area between the 
Arctic Circle and the North Pole. When, how¬ 
ever, it reaches the Tropic of Capricorn, 
twenty-three and one-half degrees from the 
South Pole, darkness prevails over this same 


ARCTIC, ark' tik, LANDS AND SEAS, bar¬ 
ren, inhospitable regions of snow-covered lands 
and ice-bound seas situated between the Arctic 
Circle and the North Pole. The name Arctic 
Ocean is applied collectively to all the gulfs, 
bays and seas within the Arctic region. The 
ocean washes the most northerly shores of 
Europe, Asia and America, is connected with 
the Pacific Ocean by Bering Strait and with the 
Atlantic Ocean by Davis Strait, and by a wide 
passage between Greenland and Norway. It 
contains numerous islands, the largest of which 
are Greenland, Spitzbergen, Franz-Josef Land 
and Baffin Land, although only part of the 
latter is within the Arctic Circle. To the 
north of Canada there are the ice-bound islands 
which constitute the Arctic Archipelago. 






















ARCTIC LANDS AND SEAS 


331 


ARCTIC LANDS AND SEAS 


Animal Life. Fur-bearing animals are very 
numerous in Arctic lands and are well able 
to withstand the rigors of the climate. The 
polar bear, fox, musk ox, lemming and hare 
abound, and the Eskimo dog and reindeer 
have been acclimatized and domesticated. 
Whales of several species, seals and walrus 
are found in most parts of the ocean. Birds 
are very plentiful. Gulls of all kinds are 
found in thousands wherever there are cliffs 
for nesting places; snowbirds, ravens, sand¬ 
pipers, falcons, ducks, geese, petrels, puffins 
and ptarmigans are also among the regular 
inhabitants of these northern regions. There 
are valuable fisheries on the northern coast 
of Russia; more than 125 varieties of fish 
have been caught in Arctic waters, the chief 
food fishes being cod, halibut and several 
kinds of flat-fish. Trout arid salmon are found 
in some Arctic rivers, and mollusks, including 
clams, mussels and squids, are plentiful. 

Plant Life. About 1,700 species of Arctic 
plants have been classified, many closely re¬ 
sembling Alpine vegetation. Poppies and sax¬ 
ifrages blossom in the extreme north of Green¬ 
land, and flowering mosses and lichens are 
everywhere common. Trees, chiefly dwarf 
willows, birches and junipers, occur in the most 
southern portions, but are absent farther north. 
It is generally agreed among authorities that 
the dry winds and not the extreme cold pre¬ 
vent the growth of trees, as in the coldest 
parts of Siberia trees thrive, because there is 
more humidity in the atmosphere. 

Mineral Wealth. In Greenland a mineral 
called cryolite, once extensively used in mak¬ 
ing aluminum, and now much used in the 
manufacture of enameled ware, is mined; 
fossil ivory is obtained in Northern Russia, 
especially in the delta of the River Lena; and 
the numerous islands north of Canada contain 
coal of good quality. At present, difficulty of 
access and lack* of transportation render these 
coal fields valueless, but a railway financed 
by the United States government for the pur¬ 
pose of developing the coal fields and copper 
mines of Alaska is under construction. Gold 
has been extensively mined in Alaska. Petro¬ 
leum is known to exist. 

Climate. The temperature varies consider¬ 
ably in different localities within the Arctic 
regions, but on the average it is much below 
32° Fahrenheit. On the American continent 
inland temperature averages 30° below zero 
at the Arctic Circle. In Northern Siberia at 
Verkhoyansk, the coldest place in the northern 


hemisphere, the winter temperatures sometimes 
range below 60° for weeks at a time. The 
temperature of the water of the Arctic Ocean 
is higher than that on the ice-covered land, 
varying from a few degrees above freezing 
point to a few degrees below that point. 

Ice Formation. The ice of Arctic lands and 
seas constitutes much of the scenic feature of 
the region. In Greenland and some of the 
larger islands ice has accumulated more rap¬ 
idly than it has melted. This accumulation 
is known as paleocrystic ice. The great ice- 
sheet of Greenland in places is thickly covered 
with fine dust having a chemical composition 
not unlike volcanic ash; and the material, it 
is thought, came from the nearby volcanoes 
of Iceland, having been carried hither by the 
winds. Very small spherules of iron also have 
been collected, and these, without doubt, are 
of meteoric origin. In the vicinity of Disko 
Bay, Greenland, the steep slope of the coast 
causes a sliding movement, or flow of the ice- 
sheet, forming Humboldt Glacier. As the edge 
of the glacier is pushed into the sea, great 
masses of ice are broken off and float south¬ 
ward through Davis Strait. The icebergs thus 
borne into the route of transatlantic commerce 
become a double menace. Collision with them 
has sent many a steamship to the bottom ; 
the dense fog which they help to create adds 
greatly to the dangers and discomforts of 
transatlantic passenger service. 

Sea ice takes various forms. The narrow 
shelf of ice that skirts the cliffs is called the 
ice-foot. Where waves break on sandy beaches, 
sand is plentifully mixed with the water, and 
the mixed sand and ice form the shore barrier. 
The freezing of the surface of comparatively 
still sea water, sometimes to a depth of several 
feet, forms the ice-sheet , or ice-field. When 
on-shore winds become strong the ice-field is 
broken into blocks that are piled up and 
crunched against the shore, forming an ice¬ 
pack. The accumulated force of the wind 
and water combined is so great that the side 
crunch hurls great blocks of ice several feet 
into the air. A ship caught in the pack is 
usually a fixture for three or four months, 
and many a one has been hopelessly crushed 
at the breaking of the pack. Detached masses 
floating about constitute floes; or, if finally 
broken, sludge. In the navigable fiords and 
estuaries ice sometimes forms around the 
anchors of vessels lying there, finally accumu¬ 
lating until its buoyancy causes it to rise to 
the surface; this is known as anchor-ice , or 


ARCTURUS 

ground-ice. See Polar Explorations; North¬ 
west Passage. J -R- 

Consult Nansen’s Farthest North; Peary’s The 
North Pole. 

ARCTURUS, arktu’rus, a star of the first 
magnitude in the constellation of Bootes, next 
to Sirius, the dog star, the brightest in the 
northern hemisphere. It is so distant from 
the earth that it takes 125 years for its light 
to reach us, yet it is much nearer than many 
other stars. To locate it, follow the curve 
of the handle of the Dipper; the continued 
line will point direct to Arcturus, the Bear 
Driver, a star of ruddy hue. See, in article 
Astronomy, illustration of location of heavenly 
bodies. 

ARDMORE, ard' mohr, Okla., the county 
seat of Ardmore County, in the south central 
part of the state, the center of a vast oil-pro¬ 
ducing section. It is 100 miles south of Okla¬ 
homa City, and nearly the same distance north 
of Fort Worth, Texas. It is on the Gulf, Colo¬ 
rado & Santa Fe; the Chicago Rock Island 
& Pacific; the St. Louis & San Francisco, and 
the Oklahoma, New Mexico & Pacific rail¬ 
ways. The population, 8,618 in 1910 and 9,868 
in 1914, is largely American, including a few 
Indians and a number of negroes. The area 
of the city exceeds three and a half square 
miles. 

Ardmore is situated twelve miles south of 
the Arbuckle range of hills, and is surrounded 
by a series of lakes. Within a radius of forty 
miles from the city are eight oil fields; a 
number of large pipe lines extend from them 
to Ardmore. In the vicinity are also large 
deposits of asphalt and extensive zinc fields. 
Throughout the country are many large cattle 
ranches and farms, whose produce includes 
fruits, cotton, corn, cereals and forage crops. 
The important industries of the city include 
oil refineries, cotton compresses, flour mills, 
the largest cigar factory in Oklahoma and an 
asphalt brick plant. 

In addition to the public school system, 
Ardmore has Saint Agnes Academy, a com¬ 
mercial school, night schools (one for white, 
and one for colored students), and a govern¬ 
ment Indian school. The prominent buildings 
of the city are the Federal postoffice erected 
in 1916 at a cost of $185,000, the county court¬ 
house, costing $165,000, the high school build¬ 
ing, costing $150,000, a Carnegie Library and 
the Hardy Sanitarium. 

Ardmore was founded in 1887. It was in a 
region which was the home of a large part of 


332 AREQUIPA 

the Chickasaw and Choctaw nations. It was 
incorporated in 1898 and has since adopted the 
commission form of government. In the fall 
of 1915 a tank car of gasoline on the tracks 
of one of the railroads in the city, exploded, 
causing the death of forty-three persons, in¬ 
juring 350 others and destroying property 
valued at $500,000. Claims against the railroad 
company were satisfactorily settled out of 
court through the efficient arbitration of a 
city commission and road officials. c. of c. 

AREA, a're a, a Latin word meaning piece 
of level ground, has come to have in English 
several different meanings. In arithmetic and 
geometry the area of a surface is the number 
of square units it contains, as square inches, 
square feet, etc. (see Mensuration). Often 
the word is used to mean any open space, as, 
“Within this area the entire city was built.” 
It is also applied to the open space of a 
narrow front yard, or a back court. The early 
Christians gave the name to the sections of 
consecrated ground in which the faithful were 
buried. The word area is also used in de¬ 
scribing particular parts of the cortex of the 
brain. The various areas of the brain are 
indicated in the article Brain (which see). 

AREOPAGUS, air e op' a gus , the oldest court 
of justice of ancient Athens, so named because 
its meetings were held on the Hill of Ares 
(Mars), directly west of the Aeropolis (see 
Mars’ Hill). In the time of Solon it was 
composed of those who had once been archons 
(see Archon), and the term of office was for 
life. This court tried cases of murder, had 
general oversight of the morals of the people, 
and could fine citizens found guilty of extrava¬ 
gance, insolence or any form of intemperance. 

AREQUIPA, ah rake'pah, an old city of 
Peru that has been conspicuous in the history 
of its country. It is the capital of the depart¬ 
ment of the same name and is situated on the 
Chile River in a fine dry climate 7,000 feet 
above sea level. Mollendo, with which it is 
connected by rail, is 100 miles southwest. 
Arequipa is one of the best built cities in 
South America; it has good streets, a cathe¬ 
dral, two national schools and a university. 
At a height of over 8,000 feet above the sea, 
overlooking the city, is a branch of the Har¬ 
vard Observatory containing the largest pho¬ 
tographic telescope ever constructed. The 
people are employed chiefly in the making 
of jewelry and the cutting of precious stones. 
The city has some commercial importance, 
as it is the center of trade for the interior 


ARETHUSA 


333 


ARGENTA 


of Peru. It was founded by Pizarro in 1540. 
In 1600 and again in 1868 it was nearly de¬ 
stroyed by earthquakes. Population in 1910, 
35,000. 

ARETHUSA, air e thu'sa, in Greek myth¬ 
ology, a beautiful nymph, one of the attend¬ 
ants of the goddess Diana, who changed her 
into a fountain to free her from the too 
ardent courtship of the river god Alpheus. But 
the god, changing himself into a swift tor¬ 
rent, still pursued her, and Diana in pity 
opened for her an underground passage 
through which she fled until she came to the 
upper world on the plains of Sicily. The god, 
however, followed her in the regions below, 
and, passing from Greece to Sicily, joined his 
loved one where the fountain sparkled under 
the bright Sicilian skies. 

The Greeks based the pretty story on the 
peculiar course of the Alpheus River, which, 
as it flows through Arcadia toward the Ionic 
Sea, now and then disappears below the sur¬ 
face. Near the seacoast on the Sicilian plains 
a beautiful fountain bubbled up, and the 
imaginative Greeks liked to believe that it 
contained the waters of the Alpheus. Shelley 
wrote the story of Arethusa in his poem of that 
name. 

Arethusa is also the name of two species of 
the orchid family, one growing in North Amer¬ 
ica, the other in Japan. See Nymph. 

AREZZO, a city of Northern Italy, capital 
of the province of Arezzo, in Tuscany. It is 
fifty-four miles southeast of Florence and has 
a beautiful situation on the slopes of a hill, 
commanding a charming view of the surround¬ 
ing fertile country. Arezzo is the episcopal 
see of Tuscany, and its cathedral, a fine ex¬ 
ample of Italian Gothic, was begun in the 
thirteenth century. Many imposing buildings, 
broad streets, a museum and picture gallery, a 
noted academy of science and a library are 
among the attractions of the city. It has 
manufactures of cloth, silk fabrics and leather. 
In the ancient times Arezzo, then called Arre- 
tium, was one of the richest cities of Etruria, 
and was especially famed for its pottery and 
copper work. The city was the birthplace of 
Petrarch and other famous men. Population 
(city and suburbs) in 1911, 48,170. 

AR'GAND LAMP, a lamp invented about 
1784 by the Swiss chemist Aime Argand, which 
was one of the earliest improvements on the 
old-fashioned oil lamp. The old-style lamp was 
simply a shallow vessel containing oil, into 
which a short rounded wick was dipped. The 


light was obtained by the burning of the oil 
vapor which rose from the wick. The amount 
of surface of the oil-vapor that came in contact 
with the air was so small that only a little of 
the carbon of the oil burned, and the rest rose 
in the form of 
smoke which gave 
off unpleasant 
odors. 

Argand’s lamp 
had a burner that 
created enough 
heat to burn up 
all of the carbon. 

He made a wick 
in the form of a 
hollow cylinder, 
which he placed 
between two 
metal tubes, one 
within the other. 

A circular flame 
was thus p r o- 
duced, and both 
the inside and 
outside of this 
flame were sup¬ 
plied with air; 
the result was a 
clearer light and 
a lamp that did 
not smoke. One 
of Argand’s workmen discovered by accident 
that a glass chimney placed around the flame 
created a draft and made the light steadier and 
brighter. The Argand burner is widely used 
to-day. 

ARGENTA, Ark., in Pulaski County, is 
centrally located in the state, on the north 
bank of the Arkansas River, almost directly 
opposite Little Rock, the state capital. It is 
on the Saint Louis Southwestern; the Saint 
Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern, and the 
Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific railroads. The 
population, which in 1910 was 11,138, was 
13,693 in 1914. The area is three square miles. 

Argenta has a city hall, built in 1915 at a 
cost of $100,000, two parks and a United States 
military post, Fort Logan H. Roots. The 
principal industries include railroad shops, 
cotton compresses, cotton-seed oil mills, hard¬ 
wood mills, stove factory, cooperage and boiler 
and iron works. Natural gas is used for 
manufactories and for domestic purposes. The 
town was founded in 1870 and became a city 
in 1906. n.r. 



ARGAND LAMP 

(a) burner; (b) wick; (c) 
flame; (d) chimney. Arrows 
indicate air currents. 



































































ARGENTINA 


334 


ARGENTINA 



RGENTINA, ar jen tee' nah, the 
popular name for the nation officially termed 
Argentine Republic, which is the largest 
Spanish-American country of South America. 
Brazil, its great neighbor, is more than twice 
as large, but Brazil is Portuguese in its origin, 
customs and language. No other Spanish¬ 
speaking nation on the continent is so popu¬ 
lous, so rich as Argentina, or, except Chile, so 
favorabty situated as to climate. 

It has 1,153,000 square miles, a larger area 
than all of the United States east of the Mis¬ 
sissippi River plus all of the states bordering 
that stream on the west, except one-third of 
Louisiana. Its population was estimated to be 
9,710,000 in 1916; 
the six small New 
England States 
alone have nearly 
as many people. 

When it is under¬ 
stood that about 
one - seventh of 
Argentina’s peo¬ 
ple are in one 
city (the mag¬ 
nificent capital, 

Buenos Aires), it 
is clear that the 
vast expanse of 
the country is 
sparsely settled. 

In Buenos Aires 
there 



are 


ARGENTINA 

Location, in black, shows 
the proportion of the conti- 
over nent occupied, by this great 

18,000 people to country ‘ 
the square mile; in some entire inland prov¬ 
inces there is only one person to three square 
miles. Comparing Argentina with Canadian 
provinces, we find that it has over twice the 
combined area of Alberta and Saskatchewan, 
and nine times the number of people. 

The People and the Cities. In its population 
Argentina presents a strange contrast to other 
Spanish-American lands. We find here a Babel 
of European languages, a hive of human indus¬ 
try, a metropolis unapproached in size by any 


other Spanish-American city or by any city of 
Spain itself, or by any city in the world south 
of the equator, and an almost feverish striv¬ 
ing for material wealth. The steady industry 
of Northern Spain, from which the early set¬ 
tlers so generally came, is united with the 
imagination and enterprise of less steady peo¬ 
ples. Spanish conservatism is offset by a striv¬ 
ing for the new in modern life and achieve¬ 
ment. 

Within the past half-century Argentina has 
received nearly twice as many immigrants 
from Italy as from Spain. Two and one-third 
millions of Italians have been added to its 
citizemy within the period named. At one 
time it was thought not unlikely that their 
language might become the language of the 
whole population; but the Spanish tongue, 
marvelous in its perfection and easjr to acquire, 
has held its own, and all immigrants have 
been assimilated in the population. These in¬ 
clude French, Russian, German, British and 
Portuguese, in large numbers, together with 
other nationalities, and the population con¬ 
tinues to grow rapidly with streams of immi¬ 
gration. Thus far, but few North Americans 
have sought permanent homes in Argentina, 
though some (like Thomas B. Wood in the 
educational and religious world and others in 
commercial and industrial fields) have long 
been conspicuous there. The number of such 
persons from the United States and the Do¬ 
minion of Canada will grow 7 with the increas¬ 
ing acquaintance and mutual appreciation be¬ 
tween the Northern and Southern peoples of 
this hemisphere, wdiose interests have so much 
in common, despite the barriers of language 
and traditional influences. 

Argentina, like Chile, has been free from 
any negro problem, for it never contained any 
African population worth mentioning. The 
Indian and mestizo (mixed Indian and white) 
population, which is insignificant and perhaps 
does not exceed a total of 100,000, is rela¬ 
tively decreasing through the immigration of 
Europeans. Of the latter, the Jews formed no 






























ARGENTINA 


335 


ARGENTINA 


part until 1891, and then they began to come 
from Russia only. 

Buenos Aires, the capital, is considered a 
rival of Paris as a beautiful metropolis; its 
population, 1,560,000 in 1914, is increasing rap¬ 
idly, 1,700,000 having been claimed for it in 
1915 (under the title Buenos Aires there is 
a full history of the city). No other city in 
the country is known to many people in North 
America, but some are gaining rapidly in im¬ 
portance ; the second city is Rosario (220,000); 
others coming into prominence are Cordoba 
(135,000), La flata (106,000), Tucuman (79,- 
000), Bahia Blanca (73,000) and Mendoza 
(60,000). 

Location and Climate. Argentina is almost 
wholly within the temperate zone; it there¬ 
fore enjoys all the climatic conditions that 
the habitable regions of the United States and 
Canada offer, but conditions of the seasons 
are exactly reversed. When the snows of 
winter cover a large part of North America, 
Argentina is engaged in harvesting. It lies 
wholly south of the equator, its northern 
boundary being 22° south latitude, and its 
southern, 55° south. Havana, Cuba, lies in 
about 23° north latitude; if a map of Argen¬ 
tina is folded over a map of North America, 
drawn on the same scale, Argentina’s northern 
boundary will touch Havana, and the island 
of Tierra del Fuego (part of which Argentina 
owns) will reach to Hudson Bay. 

It is a natural supposition, then, that the 
range of climate of this southern republic 
would average well with that of the United 
States and Lower Canada, and that those in¬ 
dustries which thrive in North America would 
be the leading ones in Argentina. These con¬ 
clusions are largely true, particularly with 
respect to products, but there are certain cli¬ 
matic differences worthy of note. 

The North American continent in the lati¬ 
tude of Labrador is cooled by the down¬ 
flowing Labrador Current from the icy Arctic 
regions; part of the Southern Argentina coast 
(the Northern Patagonia section) is modified 
in temperature by the Equatorial Current 
(still warm when it reaches the far southern 
latitude), which makes possible a vast south¬ 
ern area suitable for stock-raising. However, 
to offset this advantage somewhat, cool winds 
blow across the lofty Andes Mountains from 
the west. Much of the lower third of the 
country is arid, because the winds from the 
mountains lose their moisture before reach¬ 
ing the plains. This is also true of a wide 


belt running the entire length of the country 
bordering on the lofty western mountain 
ranges. The elevation of the land ranges from 
sea level, along the east coast, to several thou¬ 
sand feet, in the Andes, and has an average of 
about 2,000 feet in the * minor ranges which 
are a part of the Andean system. The rainfall 
is over sixty inches in the east, decreasing to 
as little as two inches in the plateau region. 

Over half of Argentina borders on the At¬ 
lantic Ocean on the east, giving the country 
nearly 2,000 miles of coast line; on the re¬ 
mainder of the eastern boundary and on the 
north Argentina meets Uruguay, a corner of 
Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia. Chile extends 
the entire length of the country on the west. 

Some idea of the region of Argentina in 
the latitude of Talcahuano, Chile (near Con¬ 
cepcion), as it appeared more than six decades 
ago, has been acquired from Jules Verne’s 
popular romance The Children of Captain 
Grant. In this well-known story a party of 
men led by Lord Glenarvan cross the conti¬ 
nent from Talcahuano eastward on the 37th 
parallel without guides, through the Andean 
pass of Antuco and on through the entire 
breadth of Argentina, experiencing earthquake, 
storm, avalanches, fight with a condor, etc.,' 
and reach the Atlantic coast in safety. The 
chief value of this narrative at the present 
day is the contrast between the conditions 
portrayed by the romancer and the actual 
conditions of our time, in that land of mar¬ 
velous development. No one should permit 
himself to be misled by thinking of it as a 
picture of the present. Nor is the portrayal 
of a journey across the continent in this re¬ 
gion of the world in pioneer days confined to 
tales of romance. Biographers of the great 
Pope Pius IX relate with some detail his 
arduous march, in his young manhood, in 
1823, with members of an ecclesiastical com¬ 
mission, from Buenos Aires over the pampas 
and through the mountain passes to Santiago, 
Chile. This first Pope to outlive “the years 
of Peter” was the first and only Pope that 
ever visited any part of America at any time 
in his life; and the story of his rigorous 
American experiences has given us an inter¬ 
esting picture of the Argentine life and envi¬ 
ronment of nearly a century ago. 

Industrial Life. The day is not far distant 
when Argentina will be a very important fac¬ 
tor in the world’s commerce; already welcome 
evidences of this are at hand. The United 
States cannot provide sufficient fresh meat 


ARGENTINA 


ARGENTINA 


m 


for the needs of its people at the former 
low prices; Argentina’s plains are ample for 
the raising of many millions of head of cattle, 
and beef from that land is reaching the mar¬ 
kets of the world in increasing quantities. 
The cattle of the republic are worth (1916) a 
little more than $700,000,000. The shipment 
of meat and of live cattle from Argentina has 
assumed enormous proportions. The exporta¬ 
tion of animal products in 1913 reached the 
value of $300,000,000. Great Britain received 
much the larger part of this, but the ship- 



GRAIN AND FLAXSEED ZONE 

The lightly-shaded section indicates Argen¬ 
tina’s total area as compared with the United 
States. The heavily-shaded section represents 
the proportion of the total area on which grain 
and flaxseed are raised. In South America this 
extends from 28° S. to 41° S., corresponding 
roughly to the distance from Galveston to Cen¬ 
tral Kansas and from the center of Arkansas 
and Louisiana to Central Texas. It is thus seen 
that Argentina’s wheat lands extend only to 
41° S., while, by contrast, Canada’s wheat area 
extends to about 55° N. 

merits to the United States are growing rap¬ 
idly. There are ten freezing and chilling 
establishments for meat, and more are under 
way. Argentina was the first country to send 
frozen meat to Europe, and its salting of 
meats is declining. 

Wheat is a great crop in Argentina, and 
the acreage is rapidly increasing. About 15,- 
000,000 acres are in this cereal, and millions 


of bushels of wheat are exported annually to 
Europe. Of corn, the second crop in impor¬ 
tance, there are annually over 10,000,000 acres 
under cultivation. Next in importance are 
flax, oats, barley and rye. Of Argentina’s 
730,000,000 acres, 255,000,000 are fit for culti¬ 
vation or for cattle industries. Some day 
irrigation will greatly increase the latter area. 

Almost all minerals needed for industrial 
development lie in the mountains of Argentina. 
There is much gold and there are also coal, 
iron and tin. Mining has not materially de¬ 
creased the country’s mineral riches, for there 
has not been much development of these 
resources. Oil has been found in paying quan¬ 
tities. 

Communication. The distance from Buenos 
Aires to New York, 4,370 miles, is covered 
by steamers in about twenty-three days; about 
the same time is required for a trip to Liv¬ 
erpool, England. There are two regular mail 
steamers from and to each of these cities 
every month. The trip from Rio de Janeiro 
is made by steamboats in about five days. 
With one exception, the Uruguay, the rivers 
of the republic flow southeast or east; the 
direction of the Uruguay is nearly south, 
along the eastern boundary. Three of the 
rivers, the Paraguay, Uruguay and Parana, 
form the great La Plata system (see La Plata, 
Rio de La) ; these encourage commerce be¬ 
cause they are navigable for several hundred 
miles into the interior, and unite to a degree 
the business interests of Argentina, Paraguay 
and Uruguay (see map, with article South 
America). The bulk of the commerce of the 
country enters and leaves by the Rio de la 
Plata, and Buenos Aires is the center of nearly 
all the trade. But the best natural harbor, 
by far, is 500 miles south, at Bahia Blanca, 
where the government has established a great 
naval station. 

In 185/ Argentina possessed six miles of 
railroad; in 1914 there were 21,880 miles; and 
during the next two years, over 3,000 miles 
were ordered built. Over 45,000 miles of tele¬ 
graph lines, with 140,000 miles of wires, are 
in operation, and there are thirteen wireless 
telegraph stations. The government controls 
the telegraph monopoly, and owns 3,500 miles 
of the country’s railroads. 

Education and Religion. Spanish traditions 
and Roman Catholicism are inseparable. The 
Roman Catholic religion is in part supported by 
the government, but there is freedom of other 
worship. Before 1884 only Church marriages 







































ARGENTINA 


Independence 
monument, 
Buenos Aires 


An Argentina cowboy, 
and his home. 




i '' 'i. :: 




h<4W 





jKmntt 

" 1 




_in 

W \ 

Wm 

IS! 




Mil 


in 









































































































































































































































































































































ARGENTINA 


338 


ARGENTINA 


were legal; in that year civil marriage was 
legalized. Education of children from six to 
fourteen years of age is compulsory, and a 
recently-improved system of free secular 
schools is making its influence felt. The gov¬ 
ernment is yearly adding largely to its expen¬ 
ditures in this direction, and the illiterate pop¬ 
ulation of fifty-five per cent in 1905—which 
was less than the corresponding population in 
several of the countries of Europe—is now only 
fifty per cent. There are sixty-seven normal 
schools for the training of teachers, five na¬ 
tional universities and numerous colleges. The 
national observatories at Cordoba and La Plata 
enjoy a reputation in Europe and America. 

Commercial Opportunities. Business oppor¬ 
tunities for North Americans in Argentina are 
generally associated in the mind v/ith great 
corporations and the investment of large cap¬ 
ital; and indeed, North American enterprise 
is to be witnessed in the business of such cor¬ 
porations in various lines of production. It 
is nevertheless a fact that contracts for the 
construction of public works are usually made 
with European companies, . and that North 
American salesmen have not learned to com¬ 
pete very successfully with agents of European 
houses in securing orders for wholesale trade. 
Various reasons are offered for this. Conti¬ 
nental Europe makes use of the metric sys¬ 
tem of weights and measures, which is uni¬ 
versally used in South American lands; and 
other weights and measures are foreign and 
perplexing. Further, the North American sys¬ 
tem of credits is more restricted than that 
of European houses, which are generally ready 
to extend the time of payment considerably 
beyond the time to which wholesale houses 
in the United States are accustomed. Further, 
North American shippers have acquired in 
Spanish America a reputation for carelessness 
in the packing and shipment of goods, and for 
delays in shipping, and however much or little 
this reputation may be deserved it remains 
to be overcome by care and promptness in the 
future. 

But probably these matters count for less 
than the barrier which is found between peo¬ 
ples in difference between peoples in educa¬ 
tion and in habit relating to social matters. 
Representatives of European houses acquire 
the speech, social customs and sentiments of 
representative Argentinos, and do not seem to 
be foreigners. A knowledge not only of the 
rudiments of Spanish speech, but also of the 
idioms of commerce, avoids misunderstandings. 


A similarity of tastes in literature, art, music 
and drama, and a common historical and relig¬ 
ious inheritance, constitute a bond of sympa¬ 
thy which cannot but influence trade relations. 

There is much opportunity offered in Argen¬ 
tina for small retail trade establishments such 
as the “ten cent stores” of Northern lands. 
A Monte pio (small loans on collateral) is 
guarded in the interests of the poor, and is 
controlled by the municipality. The business 
of supplying mate, or Paraguayan tea, is grow¬ 
ing rapidly. The quebracho flojo, or iodina, a 
hardwood tree of Argentina, produces a dye 
much used in South America. Another, que¬ 
bracho, rich in tannin, produces a very hand¬ 
some red. 

Government. Argentina is a federal repub¬ 
lic, with a constitution in many respects sim¬ 
ilar to that of the United States, adopted in 
1853 and twice amended. The President is 
chosen by electors, and serves six years; both 


l 



ARGENTINA NATIONAL FLAG 

Outside stripes, blue; middle stripe, white; 
sun, yellow. 

he and the Vice-President must be Roman 
Catholics, and neither can succeed himself. 
The legislative department comprises a Con¬ 
gress, of which the Senate, with thirty mem¬ 
bers, and the House of Deputies, of 120 mem¬ 
bers, are the two branches. Senators serve 
nine years; Deputies, four. There are four¬ 
teen provinces (states), ten territories and one 
federal district (Buenos Aires). The consti¬ 
tution gives to the provinces full control of 
affairs purely local. There are provincial leg¬ 
islatures, also elected. 

History. Sebastian Cabot, commanding a 
Spanish expedition in 1526, named the La 
Plata River, and founded upon its banks a 
colony which Spain at once claimed and de¬ 
veloped as a dependency of Peru. In 1776 
some semblance of home rule was granted to 
the La Plata colonists; but Spanish rule was 
oppressive, and in 1810 the colonists declared 
their independence. Years of war and disorder 



















ARGENTINA 


339 


ARGENTINA 


followed, and it was not until 1825 that the 
first President of the new republic was elected. 

Like the United States, Argentina has sought 
by its constitution to avoid both the extremes 
of centralized government and local self- 
government, by maintaining both national and 
state (provincial) legislative bodies. The 
struggle between the extremists began almost 
with the inception of the government. Riva- 
davia ended his short service in the Presidency 
by resigning in 1827. Dorrego, who followed, 
was deposed by Lavalle; and the popular 
Rosas, governor of Buenos Aires, was pro¬ 
claimed dictator. As an incident of the repub¬ 
lic’s half century of strife with its neighbors, 
Great Britain and France intervened in 1845 
to save Uruguay. Urquiza succeeded in over¬ 
throwing Rosas in 1852. Ten years later, it 
was believed that the happy mean had been 
reached between the Unitarians (centralists) 
and the federalists by the adoption of the con¬ 
stitution of 1853. This provides for a Presi¬ 
dential term of six years, following the prece¬ 
dent of the constitution of the so-called Con¬ 
federate States—adopted in the preceding year. 

The first and second Presidential terms 
under the new constitution were filled respec¬ 
tively by General Bartolome Mitre and Gen¬ 
eral Domingo F. Sarmiento, both of them 
distinguished authors and publicists and men 
eminent in ability and leadership. The nation 
prospered. President Sarmiento founded the 
National Observatory at Cordoba and ap¬ 
pointed as director the distinguished astron¬ 
omer Benjamin Apthorp Gould, of the United 
States. From 1865 to 1870 Argentina was 
compelled to war against the Paraguayan dic¬ 
tator, Francisco Solano Lopez, who was 
finally suppressed. 

In 1878 the President of the United States, 
Rutherford B. Hayes, chosen as international 
arbiter, settled the boundary between Argen¬ 
tina and Paraguay, making the Pilcomayo 
River the dividing line. In 1880 General Julio 
Roca was chosen President. He was rather a 
soldier than a statesman, and achieved but a 
* partial success. Juarez Celman was elected 
in 1886. The credit of Argentina declined 
under his reckless and scandalous administra¬ 
tion. The great banking house of Baring 
Brothers, in London, financial agents of the 
Argentine government, failed in 1890, and a 
financial panic swept over the republic. The 
President was compelled to resign, and his 
term was completed by Carlos Pellegrini, who 
had been Vice-President. Dr. Saens Pena, who 


was chosen in 1892, was an able jurist, but 
failed as an executive, and resigned in the 
third year of his term, being followed by the 
Vice-President, Uriburu, in orderly succession. 
An event of President Pena’s term was the 



CHRIST OF THE ANDES 


The great Peace Statue erected jointly by 
Argentina and Chile. In his book, South Amer¬ 
ica, Observations and Impressions, Hon. James 
Bryce makes this note of the act and of the 
spirit of the two countries: 

“On the level summit of the pass stands the 
Christ of the Andes, a bronze statue of more 
than twice life size standing on a stone pedestal 
rough hewn from the natural rock. 

There had been a long and bitter controversy 
between Chile and Argentina over the line of 
their boundary along the Andes, a controversy 
which more than once had threatened war. 

After years of careful inquiry an award 
was delivered and a boundary line drawn in 
which both nations acquiesced. Grateful for 
their escape from what might have been a long 
and ruinous strife, they cast this figure out of 
the metal of cannon, and set up here this monu¬ 
ment of peace and good-will, unique in its place 
and in its purpose, to be an everlasting witness 
between them.” 

% 

settlement by President Grover Cleveland of 
a disputed boundary, making the Pequiry 
River the line of demarcation through the dis¬ 
puted border. General Roca was called back 
to the office of President in 1898, and he 
proved a great force for peace. The western 
boundary of Argentina was settled perma¬ 
nently, it was believed, by the arbitration of 
the United States minister; and the question 
of ownership of the south end of the conti- 









































































































ARGENTINA 


340 


ARGENTINA 


OUTLINE AND QUESTIONS ON ARGENTINA 

Outline 

I. Position 

VI. Products and Industries 

Cl) Latitude, 21° 55' to 55° 2' south 

(1) Stock-raising 

| i | (2) Longitude, 53° 40' to 73° 17' west 

(2) Agricultural products 

1 ( 3 ) Boundai’ies 

(3) Mining 

II. Size and Shape 

VII. Inhabitants 

(1) Length, 2,200 miles 

(2) Breadth, 1,000 miles in north to 200 

miles in south 

i (3) Area, 1,083,596 square miles 

1 (4) Comparative size 

(5) Wedge-shaped 

( 1 ) Language and characteristics of the 

people 

(2) Small rural population; cities 

( 3 ) Immigration 

(4) Roman Catholic religion 

(5) Compulsory education; decrease in 

illiteracy 

III. Surface 

VIII. Transportation and Commerce 

(1) Vast, flat plain in east 

(1) Communication with New York and 

(2) Interior highlands 

Brazil 

(3) Plateau and peaks in northwest 

(2) Buenos Aires and other ports 

(3) River navigation 1 

IV. Drainage 

( 4 ) Railroads 

V (1) Easterly flowing rivers 

(a) The Rio de la Plata 

(5) The North Americans’ part in the 
business of Argentina 

(b) The Parana 

(c) The Paraguay 

IX. Government aud History 

(d) The Salado 

(1) A republic , 

(2) Salt marshes in central provinces 

(2) Early exploration i 1 

(3) Colonial government of Spain 

V. Climate 

(4) Independence 

(5) Political struggles of the republic 

( 1 ) Temperate 

(6) Boundary difficulties with Chile and 

(2) Climatic differences compared with 

Paraguay 

United States 

(7) International cooperation of South 

(3) Arid regions and rainfall 

American countries 

v Questions !■ 

Why does the country near the Andes have but little rainfall? 

What are some of the reasons for the success of European salesmen in Argentina? 

What celebration was held in 1910? 


Where do the Argentine farmers buy most of their machinery? 

Has the country an extensive coast line? ■ 

How are the pawnshops prevented from 
they called? 

charging excessive interest, and what are 

Which country gives more attention to alfalfa, Argentina or the United States? 

How is Tierra del Fuego cut off from the rest of the country? 

What are Argentina’s two great crops? 


,«, What three heads of foreign nations have helped Argentina settle its disputes ■ 

with its neighbors? 

What are the meanings of Argentina, 
Fuego? 

La Plata, Buenos Aires and Tierra del 



















ARGENTINA 


341 


ARGENTINA 



Outline and Questions on Argentina—Continued 


What places in North America have latitudes equivalent to those' of the north 
and south extremes of Argentina? 

How long does the President serve? Under what circumstances may he be 
reelected? 

Are there many tenant farmers? 

What minerals are there in the country? 

To what extent does the world depend on Argentina for corn? 

What is the largest city in the southern hemisphere? 

What are the opportunities for education? 

How do Argentine farmers store their corn? 

How important is the cattle industry? 

Does the country rank high as a producer of flaxseed? 

What story of Jules Verne’s tells of adventure in Argentina? 

What striking comparison can be made between Canadian and Argentine facilities 
for handling grain? 

How does the constitution resemble that of the United States? 

Is the country thickly-settled? 

What part of your electric light bulb may come from Argentina? 

What explorer is connected with the early history of Argentina whose father 
figures in that of Canada? 

Are there many railroads? 

How long would it take you to get to Buenos Aires? 

What two Presidents have also been successful literary men? 

What influence had Napoleon on the history of Argentina? 

What is a mestizo ? 

Is Argentina the largest nation in South America? 

What are the pampas? 

What significance has a certain monument in the Andes? 

Compare the country in size with the United States. 

How does the southern limit of wheat-growing in Argentina compare with the 
northern limit in Canada? 

Is the country more or less densely populated than Canada? Than Alberta? 

If all the inhabitants were removed to Texas, would that state be more or less 
densely settled than is Illinois? 

What language do the people speak? 

In how many cities larger than the capital of Argentina is that language spoken? 
How important is the negro problem? 

During the last half century, from which European country did most of the 
immigrants come? 

For what is Bahia Blanca noted? 

What great churchman visited Argentina? 

How long does it take to go by water from Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro? 
What provision is made for the training of school-teachers? 

What substitute for tea is popular? 

How many cities have more than 100,000 inhabitants? 

Why does not Argentina prepare so much salt meat as formerly? 

Compare the country, as to size and population, with the combined provinces 
of Alberta and Saskatchewan. 




















ARGENTINA 342 

nent was happily arbitrated by King Edward 
of Great Britain. The beginning of a lasting 
peace, with the settlement of old issues in 
1892, was marked in a singularly impressive 
manner by the construction of the famous 
monument and statue known as the Christ 
of the Andes. 

There is no other statue in the world so 
significant of peace and commerce as this one, 
which marks the boundary line between Ar¬ 
gentina and Chile. So long as the countries 
quarreled over their boundary and other mat¬ 
ters, there could be no effective cooperation 
in the great work of interoceanic railway con¬ 
struction and maintenance. It was an Argen¬ 
tine lady, Senora Angela de Costa, who con¬ 
ceived and urged the plan of erecting on the 
sublime eminence an enduring figure of the 
Saviour of men, to solemnize the pledges 
upon which the future peace was based. And 
then, after forty years of thwarted effort, the 
desired international cooperation began. 

In 1904 Dr. Manuel Quintana was elected 
President; but he died two years later and 
was succeeded by the Vice-President, Dr. Jose 
Figueroa Alcorta. In 1910 Roque Saenz Pena 
became the chief magistrate; and in the same 
year the centennial of Argentine independence 
was celebrated with great magnificence by an 
exposition conducted at Buenos Aires. Upon 
the death of President Saenz Pena, Vice- 
President Victorino del Plaza became Presi¬ 
dent. 

Additional Facts of Interest. Argentina 
mines several hundred tons of tungsten ore 
each year. In this it is exceeded only by 
Burma, the United States, Portugal and Aus¬ 
tralia. 

Though the wheat crop of Argentina is 
usually greater than that of Saskatchewan and 
Alberta, the total elevator storage capacity of 
the country in 1917 did not equal that of the 
three Dominion elevators at Moose Jaw, Sas¬ 
katoon and Calgary. In all Argentina outside 
of the ports there are not as many elevators 
as there are at the average railroad station 
in the west of Canada or the United States. 

The most southerly town in the world is 
Ushuaia, on Beagle Channel, established by 
Argentina as a colony for desperate criminals. 

It has about four hundred inhabitants. 

Argentina produces and exports nearly one- 
half of the world’s flaxseed. 

This country exports more corn than all the 
other countries in the world combined, though 
its annual production of two to three hundred 


ARGENTINA 

million bushels is only one-tenth that of the 
United States. 

The wheat crop is only from fifty to eighty 
per cent that of Canada, but the yield per 
acre is so much less that it requires from one 
and one-fourth to one and one-half times the 
acreage. 

The pampas is the name given to the vast 
fertile plain sloping toward the sea which is 
the cereal zone of the country. Most of the 
very few trees in this region have been planted 
by the settlers. 

Rio de la Plata means river of silver; Se¬ 
bastian Cabot called it this because the natives 
told him that there was a large amount of this 
metal along its upper waters. Republica Ar¬ 
gentina means silver republic; Buenos Aires is 
literally good airs, and Tierra del Fuego is land 
of fire. 

Argentina devotes 12,000,000 acres to alfalfa, 
nearly three times as many as the United 
States. 

During the Napoleonic wars the British occu¬ 
pied Buenos Aires. This action showed the 
people that Spain was helpless to protect them, 
and when Napoleon made his brother Joseph 
king of Spain a definite movement for inde¬ 
pendence began. 

Till 1912 Argentina was Canada’s best cus¬ 
tomer outside of the British Empire and the 
United States. Since that time, however, 
Canadian business in South America has de¬ 
creased. 

Seventy per cent of the agricultural imple¬ 
ments imported into Argentina are manufac¬ 
tured in the United States. 

The corncribs of Argentina are usually built 
with walls of corn or cane stalks, and some 
farmers grow small patches of cane solely for 
this purpose. In building a troje, as a crib 
is called, poles fifteen feet or more in length 
are first placed in the ground in the form of 
a circle, and wires are strung across the inside 
of the poles. The stalks are not fastened, but 
are held against the wires by the corn. 

The War of the Nations brought a great in¬ 
crease in trade between Argentina and the 
United States. During the first three months 
of 1916, imports from the United States were 
more than twice as great as for the correspond¬ 
ing period in 1915. 

Tierra del Fuego is separated from the rest 
of the country by a narrow body of water 
whose name is known to eveiy boy and girl 
who has been to school—the Straits of Ma¬ 
gellan, r.s.n. 



ARGON 


343 


ARGUS 


Related Subjects. A more detailed 
edge of Argentina may be gained from 

of the following 

articles: 

CITIES AND TOWNS 

Bahia Blanca 

Mendoza 

Buenos Aires 

Rosario 

Cordoba 

Santa Fe 

La Plata 

Tucuman 


COAST WATERS 

Atlantic Ocean 

ISLANDS 

Tierra del Fuego 


LEADING PRODUCTS 

Alfalfa 

Meat 

Cattle 

Oil 

Corn 

Sheep 

Gold 

Wheat 


MOUNTAINS 

Aconcagua 

Andes 

Aconquija 

RIVERS 

Parana 

Uruguay 

Pilcomayo 

Plata, Rio de la 

Vermejo 


UNCLASSIFIED 

Gauchos 

Patagonia 


Consult Boyce’s Illustrated South America; 
Handbook of the Argentine Republic (Bulletin 
issued by the Pan-American Union, Washing¬ 
ton, D. C. ) ; Fraser’s The Amazing Argentine. 


AR'GON, a gas which is found in the at¬ 
mosphere, of which it forms only a very small 
proportion, about eight-tenths of one per cent. 
It is a chemical element and its symbol is A. 
Its presence in the atmosphere was suspected 
for a long time, but it was discovered only in 
1875 by Lord Rayleigh and Sir William Ram¬ 
say. It is a colorless and odorless gas and 
seems to possess no chemical properties by 
which it can unite with other substances; 
therefore, no compounds have been discovered. 
Argon has been reduced to a liquid and a solid. 
Four volumes of it dissolve in 100 volumes of 
water. See Chemistry. 

ARGONAUT, ar' go nawt, a small cuttlefish, 
named for the sailors on the Argo (see Argo¬ 
nauts, below), because it was popularly sup¬ 
posed to sail on the surface of the sea with 
its two webbed arms for sails. The male is 
very inconspicuous—not more than an inch 
in length; but the female is eight or ten times 
as large and has a fluted, spiral shell, called 
the boat. This little animal is the paper 
nautilus of which poets have often written, 
and it is especially well known through Oliver 
Wendell Holmes’s The Chambered Nautilus. 


In this poem, however, Holmes confused the 
chambered nautilus with this little argonaut, 
or paper sailor, for the latter has not a cham- 




ARGONAUT 

Illustration shows (a) male, (b) female. 
Though drawn nearly to same scale, the male is 
only about one-eighth the size of the female. 

bered shell and is not a true nautilus. Thus 
the lines on the “ship of pearl” which “sails 
the unfathomed main” apply to the legend 
regarding the argonaut while the rest of the 
poem refers to the real nautilus. 

ARGONAUTS, ar' go nawts, the fabled 
heroes of Greece who sailed with Jason in the 
Argo in search of the Golden Fleece. Legend 
has it that long before the Trojan War, Aenos, 
king of Thessaly, became tired of ruling and 
gave up the throne to his brother Pelias, on 
condition that the latter should rule only until 
Jason, the son of Aenos, became of age. When 
Jason eventually demanded the crown of his 
uncle, Pelias pretended to comply, but sug¬ 
gested that Jason and his companions could 
gain great renown by going in search of the 
Golden Fleece, which was known to be in the 
distant land of Colchis, on the shores of the 
Euxine (Black) Sea. 

Anxious above all things for glory, the young 
heroes set out on their voyage in the ship Argo, 
which had been made for them. Jason 
was the leader, but Orpheus, Castor and Pol¬ 
lux, Hercules and Theseus were fit companions 
for him. After many adventures they reached 
Colchis, where they learned that the Golden 
Fleece hung in the branches of a tree and was 
guarded by a dragon that never slept. Through 
the aid of Medea, a powerful sorceress, the 
daughter of the king of Colchis, a deep sleep 
was made to fall upon the dragon, and Jason 
captured the Golden Fleece and departed for 
Thessaly, faking Medea with him. This legend 
probably had its origin in some early voyage 
of discovery. See Jason ; Medea. 

AR'GUS, in Greek mythology, a fabulous 
creature known as the all-seeing, because he 
had 100 eyes. This monster was placed by 




ARGYLL 


344 


ARIADNE 


Juno to guard Io, whom she hated, but Mer¬ 
cury induced a deep sleep to fall upon him and 
then cut off his head. Juno then placed his 
eyes in the tail of her favorite bird, the pea¬ 
cock, where they may still be seen. The term 
“argus-eyed” is applied to one who is exceed¬ 
ingly watchful. 

ARGYLL, ar' gyle, John Campbell, second 
duke of (1678-1743), Scotch statesman and gen¬ 
eral, whose habitual kindness and courtesy won 
for him the popular title, the Good Duke of 
Argyll. He was royal commissioner in 1705 to 
effect the union of Scotland and England, and 
was always a leader in Parliament. As a sol¬ 
dier, Argyll served with distinction under Marl¬ 
borough at Ramillies, Oudenarde, Malplaquet 
and other battles, and to a remarkable degree 
won the affections of the soldiers under his 
command. His shifting political views, which 
he changed whenever a change would bring 
him some advantage, in turn won or lost the 
favor of the king, but he finally attained the 
rank of field-marshal. A monument to his 
memory was erected at Westminster Abbey, 
and his deeds have been described in the Heart 
of Midlothian, by Sir Walter Scott. 

ARGYLL, John Douglas Sutherland Camp¬ 
bell, ninth duke of (1845-1914), an English 
statesman and author, better known, perhaps, 
as the Marquis of Lorne, the title which he 
bore by courtesy until the death of his father, 
the eighth duke, 
in 1900. In 1868 
he was sent to 
Parliament, 
where he repre¬ 
sented Argyll¬ 
shire for ten 
years. He mar¬ 
ried in 1871 the 
Princess Louise 
Alberta, fourth 
daughter of 
Queen Victoria. 

The Canadian 
province of Al¬ 
berta was named for her. From 1878 to 1883 
he was Governor-General of Canada, his ad¬ 
ministration being exceedingly popular; from 
1895 to 1900 he was a leading Unionist member 
of the House of Commons. Among his writ¬ 
ings are The United States after the War, 
Imperial Federation, Psalms in English Verse, 
Life and, Times of Queen Victoria, Life of 
Palmerston, and his own reminiscences, Pages 
from the Past . He also wrote several books 


describing his travels, a grand opera, several 
dramas and numerous poems, one of the best 
of which is Canada, a National Hymn. It be¬ 
gins as follows: 

From our Dominion never 
Take Thy protecting hand ! 

United, Lord, forever 

Keep Thou our fathers’ land ! 

From where Atlantic terrors 
Our hardy seamen train, 

To where the salt sea mirrors 
The vast Pacific claim. 

Ay with her whose thunder 

Keeps world-watch with the hours, 
Guard Freedom’s home and wonder, 

This Canada of ours. 

ARIADNE, air i ad' ne, in Greek mythology, 
a daughter of Minos, king of Crete. When 
Theseus came to Crete and undertook to slay 
the Minotaur Ariadne gave him a twist of 
thread, of which she held one end. This he 
unwound as he entered the labyrinth, and by 
following it back found his tvay out after his 
victory. He fled from the island secretly, 
taking her with him, but deserted her on the 



ARIADNE ON THE ISLE OF NAXOS 
From the painting by Rae. 

Isle of Naxos, where she was found and mar¬ 
ried by Bacchus. See Labyrinth; Minotaur; 
Theseus. 



NINTH DUKE OF ARGYLL 
(Marquis of Lorne.) 






























ARID REGION 


345 


ARISTOCRACY 


ARID, air' id, REGION, a dry area with no 
rainfall or with a quantity of rainfall so small 
that a good growth of vegetation cannot be 
sustained. The word arid literally means dry, 
or exhausted of moisture. A desert, therefore, 
is an arid region. The name is frequently 
applied to that portion of North America 
which does not have enough rainfall for the 
successful raising of crops. This region com¬ 
prises most of the western plains, including 
parts of Alberta and Saskatchewan and the 
states of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, 
Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico, the western 
portion of the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, the 
northern part of Texas west of the 100th 
meridian and a portion of Southern California. 

Another arid region, smaller in extent, is 

found in Oregon and the southeastern part of 

Washington, extending into Idaho. The area 

of the arid region of North America is nearly 

two million square miles, of which about three- 

fourths are in the United States. Large por- 

% 

tions of this region, however, receive sufficient 
rainfall to support a growth of good grass 
for grazing purposes, and it is more accurate 
to call this a semi-arid region. In the arid 
region of North America, and in almost all 
similar sections in other parts of the world, the 
soil is fertile, and when supplied with water 
produces abundant crops. See Desert; Irri¬ 
gation ; Dry-Farming. 

ARIES, ay'rieez, the ram, the first sign of 
the zodiac and the name of a constellation. 
The zodiacal division of Aries includes the 
first 30° of the ecliptic from the vernal equi¬ 
nox, or the point at which the sun crosses the 
equator in the spring. The sun at the time 
of crossing is said to be “in the first of Aries,” 
but owing to the forward and westward motion 
of the equinoxes the sun actually is in Pisces 
at the vernal equinox (see Precession of the 
Equinoxes). The symbol of Aries is T, repre¬ 
senting the horns of a ram or the nose and 
eyebrows of the human face. See Zodiac, for 
illustration. 

ARISTA, arees' ta, Mariano (1802-1855), a 
Mexican general who ranks not lower than 
third among Mexico’s great men, regarded by 
some as second to Porforio Diaz. He took 
part in the war that secured Mexican inde¬ 
pendence, and in 1836 was second in command 
to the dictator Santa Anna, whom he excelled 
in constructive ability. During the war be¬ 
tween Mexico and the United States Arista 
led the Mexican forces at Palo Alto and Resaca 
de la Palma, and was badly defeated in both 


battles by General Zachary Taylor. In 1850 
he became President of Mexico, but his term 
of office was a troubled one, and he resigned 
in 1853. Soon afterward he w T as banished by 
Santa Anna, who had stirred up a revolt against 
him. He died in exile in Spain. 

ARISTIDES, airisti'deez (about 550-467 
b.c.), a celebrated Athenian statesman and 
military commander, of whom it is told that 
he was once approached by an ignorant citizen 
unknown to him, and asked to write the name 
Aristides on a shell. Since this was a vote 
for banishment, Aristides asked what his reason 
was for wishing to banish an innocent person, 
and the man replied, “It’s that I am so tired 
of hearing him called The Just.” 

At the time of the Persian invasion under 
Darius, Aristides was one of the leaders of 
the Athenians; it was owing to his influence 
that the chief command was given to Mil- 
tiades, instead of being changed daily among 
the ten generals, as had been customary. To 
this fact was due in great measure the im¬ 
portant victory at Marathon (490). Shortly 
after this Aristides was appointed archon or 
chief magistrate, but his rival, Themistocles, 
managed to secure his banishment by declaring 
that he was becoming dangerous to the democ¬ 
racy (484). It was in connection with this inci¬ 
dent that the above story is told. Such was 
his unselfish patriotism that during his exile 
he sought to unite the Grecian cities against 
the coming Persian invasion, and before the 
Battle of Salamis (480) went to Themistocles 
and gave him his hearty support. He helped 
to plan the engagement and himself took part 
in it, and afterward commanded the Athenian 
forces. Aristides was so poor at his death that 
he was buried at public cost; but from a grate¬ 
ful country his children received dowries and 
a landed estate. 

ARISTOCRACY, air is tok'ra si, a form of 
government in which the power rests in the 
hands of a few citizens prominent for their 
wealth or family prestige, or both. The term 
literally means government by the best. It 
stands midway between an absolute monarchy, 
in which one man exercises supreme authority, 
and a democracy, in which authority is shared 
by all the citizens. In the Greek philosophy of 
government the aristocracy was the ideal form, 
for it was neither despotic nor ruled by the 
mob. Theoretically, the men best qualified 
governed in the interests of all the people. 
In practice, however, the governing classes 
frequently consulted only their own interests, 


ARISTOPHANES 


346 


ARITA 


thus establishing an oligarchy (which see). 
Athens and Sparta at various times, and Rome 
for two centuries before the formation of the 
Empire, were true aristocracies. In modern 
use the word has a wider meaning, equivalent 
to the best; thus w T e speak of an aristocracy 
of brains, of wealth, and of birth. See Gov¬ 
ernment. 


ARISTOPHANES, ar is tof' a neez (444-380 
b.c.), the greatest writer of comedy in ancient 
Athens. His plays were in poetry, and of the 
forty which he wrote, eleven have survived. 
These comedies give a picture of the political 
and social conditions of Athens in his time. 
He was not afraid to ridicule such well-known 
men as Cleon, Alcibiades and Socrates, though 
his later plays are less personal than the 
earlier ones. 

Aristophanes was a master of language and 
rhythm, and his songs and chants show his 
richness of imagination. His plays are remark¬ 
able for wit, rollicking fun, originality and 
mocking satire. Of the plays that have come 
down to us the most important are The 
Knights, The Clouds, in which Socrates is ridi¬ 
culed, The Wasps, The Birds and The Frogs, 
the latter a satire on Euripides. 

ARISTOTLE, air is tot' ’l, (384-322 b.c.), the 
greatest of ancient philosophers, generally re¬ 
garded as the wisest man Greece ever produced. 
He was born at Stagira, a Greek colony in 
Thrace, and there received his early educa¬ 
tion. At the age 
of seventeen he 
went to study at 
Athens, where he 
remained for 
twenty years. He 
was a favorite pu¬ 
pil of Plato, who 
called him “the 
intellect of his 
school.” About 
343 b. c. Aristotle 
removed to Pella, 
the capital of 
Macedonia, and 
became the teacher of Alexander the Great. 
After the conquest of Persia, Alexander pre¬ 
sented him with a sum equal to nearly a 
million dollars, and aided his scientific re¬ 
searches greatly by sending him a specimen 
of any plant or animal unknown in Greece 
that was found on his expeditions. This 
friendship led the Athenians to accuse Aristotle 
of^favoring Macedonia in the affairs involving 



ARISTOTLE 


the two countries, and he was forced to flee 
to the island of Euboea, where he died. 

While at Athens Aristotle taught in the 
Lyceum, a gymnasium near the city, and his 
school is sometimes referred to by this name, 
though more commonly called the Peripatetic 
School. This name, taken from the Greek 
word meaning walk, was given because Aris¬ 
totle walked up and down in his garden while 
teaching. 

Aristotle was the creator of natural science. 
He was the first to divide the animal kingdom 
into classes, and came near discovering the 
circulation of the blood. His moral and polit¬ 
ical theories, set forth in the Ethics and the 
Politics, give his ideals of government and a 
description of the model state. To him also 
is due the syllogism, the simplest form that an 
argument may assume, as in “All animals are 
mortal; I am an animal; therefore I am mor¬ 
tal”; and it was he who established the so- 
called “cosmological argument” for the exist¬ 
ence of God. This is, in substance, that every¬ 
thing in the world has a fixed cause, and back 
of the long succession of causes there must 
be an infinite being, a first something, absolute 
reason, God. 

Before the eleventh century Aristotle was 
but little known to the Christian world, 
although his writings were prized by the Ara¬ 
bians for three centuries prior to that time. 
For four centuries lie remained the authorit}' 
of the Christian thinkers, but gradually his 
teachings became distorted and misunderstood. 
With the revival of learning (see Renais¬ 
sance) his works were carefully studied and 
correctly interpreted, and their effect is felt 
in Ml modem philosophy, notably in Bacon, 
Kant, Spinoza and Descartes. Only portions 
of Aristotle’s writings have come down to us. 
Of his preserved works the most important are 
Logic, Rhetoric, Poetics, Physics, Metaphysics, 
Ethics, Psychology, Politics, History of Ani¬ 
mals, Meteorology. See Peripatetic School of 
Philosophy; Philosophy; Plato. c.w.k. 

ARITA, a town of Japan noted for its pot¬ 
tery works, which have been in existence since 
the sixteenth century. The porcelain produced 
there is highly esteemed for its artistic finish 
and durability, and is made of the white clay 
known as kaolin, extensive deposits of which 
are found in the vicinity. Arita is situated in 
the western part of the island of Kiushiu, about 
fifty-eight miles north of Nagasaki, with which 
it has railway connection. Its population is 
about 6,000. 


















ARITHMETIC 


347 


ARITHMETIC 



.RITHMETIC. Why must we study 
arithmetic? Why does it hold an important 
place in the list of school studies? Investi¬ 
gations by teachers and business men have 
shown that there never before has been such 
widespread need of arithmetical knowledge, 
because there is no other subject that is so 
closely connected with every-day needs and 
because widening fields of labor demand more 
and more a practical understanding of figur¬ 
ing, or working with numbers and number 
relations. 

What does the world demand of boys and 
girls at the age of fourteen, sixteen or eight¬ 
een who leave school to become workers? 
The cry from employers in every line of work 
is for employees with a good general knowledge 
of arithmetic. It cannot be too plainly stated 
that the young person going into the “working 
world” will have the best opportunity who 
carries with him a knowledge of arithmetic. 
It is the kejr to the ordinary problems which 
will confront him daily. 

We must study arithmetic, then, because it 
is a very practical subject—indeed, the most 
practical branch in all school work. You may 
read somewhat haltingly and without true in¬ 
flection; you may be pardoned for occasional 
errors in speech, but the exact science of num¬ 
bers as developed in arithmetic demands 
accuracy and precision. This is the reason 
that dozens of pages in this set of books are 
devoted to a clear and intelligent explanation 
of every department of arithmetic. 

Besides the practical value of the subject, 
there is an important cultural value, which, it 
is true, is of secondary importance, but yet 
worthy of attention. Both phases are dis¬ 
cussed below. 

The Practical Value of Arithmetic. As the 

years go by for the boy in the industrial 
world, he desires to advance, and father and 
mother earnestly share this ambition. Accord¬ 
ing to their ability they have given him, dur¬ 
ing the years they have sent him to school, 
the tools he needs to work with. Sometimes 


it has been discovered that he is equipped but 
poorly and that he lacks some vital knowledge. 
He may have begun in the machine shop; in 
the laboratory of some large plant; in the 
office of an engineer, contractor, etc. He finds 
almost invariably that to get toward the top 
he must have more mathematics. If he has a 
good foundation in arithmetic he may easily 
take up algebra or geometry and so prepare 
to make headway in his work. For all me¬ 
chanical work, all structural work, civil, me¬ 
chanical, electrical, much mathematics is 
required. The laying out of streets, lots, 
farms, gardens, roads; the building of bridges, 
canals, railroads, sewers, sky-scrapers, subways, 
all require mathematics—to survey the ground, 
to experiment in strain and stress and thus 
suit material to the demands of the situation 
and avoid accident and loss; to insure safety 
of life and property; to estimate costs, and 
so on. Chemistry is making new and large 
demands upon mathematics. The boy who 
goes into a laboratory of a large manufactur¬ 
ing plant needs fair control of arithmetic—of 
common and decimal fractions, ratio, percent¬ 
age—while he is doing the simple work of a 
novice working by formulas. For a few years 
he does this initial work, gets fair wages and 
feels successful. But soon he looks forward 
to advancement, to become a leader, a maker 
of formulas, not a follower only, and finds 
that to advance he must have more mathe¬ 
matics, and if he has had a good foundation 
in arithmetic he easily takes up the advanced 
work. Every mother should be proud to 
know that each hour she devotes at home 
guiding the uncertain steps of her children into 
the field of arithmetic she is making an invest¬ 
ment that will return in later years a hundred¬ 
fold. 

Boys going to work in railroad yards, rail¬ 
road offices, express offices, and so on, report 
that there is a very sharp demand upon them 
for clever manipulation of figures. They find 
the same if they enter one of many of the 
various departments of government works— 

























ARITHMETIC 


348 


ARITHMETIC 


the water department, the department of pub¬ 
lic works, the department of health, the offices 
of the various inspectors, etc. The farmer boy, 
who will operate his own farm some day, 
ought to know how to reduce many of his 
problems to figures. Guesswork on the farm 
is expensive. How much stove wood is in 
that standing tree? How much lumber will 
be required for a corn crib to hold 500 bushels? 
How shall he prepare rations for farm stock 
to get best feeding results? Does his poultry 
pay a profit? How will he determine whether 
his neighbor with a silo has a financial advan¬ 
tage over him? 

Some grocers own computing scales, which 
automatically show the value of a purchase. 
The boy in a less progressive store will find 
his chances of continued employment brighter 
and his work easier if he so commands math¬ 
ematical knowledge that mentally he can solve 
his hundreds of problems daily. A stubby 
pencil and peevish, waiting customers seldom 
give the clerk serene and tranquil poise. 

The growth of scientific investigation and 
the consequent keeping of statistics and set¬ 
ting forth to the public in literature the re¬ 
sults of this varied investigation has enlarged 
the use of arithmetic and opened positions to 
boys and girls and men and women who need 
to be alert and capable in the use of figures. 
More and more are young people turning to 
civil service pursuits. That broad field is par¬ 
ticularly inviting, but one will hardly get in 
and much' less stay in without a good knowl¬ 
edge of thp fundamentals which underlie arith¬ 
metic. Fdr example, the department of health 
gathers expensive statistics from which it draws 
conclusion,^ of incalculable value to physicians 
and to tDe public. Board of education census 
bureaus, bureaus of public welfare and public 
workers in sociology do extensive work in sta¬ 
tistics. The water department must figure 
the capacity of pipes, the flow of water, the 
number of cubic yards of “dirt” to be exca¬ 
vated, the cost of material and labor for lay¬ 
ing pipes, etc. 

Government departments employ scores of 
thousands of clerks whose positions are secure 
as long as they are competent to perform their 
tasks—and there is need of simple arithmetic 
and quickness in applying it in nearly every 
office. Even the Department of State, given 
almost wholly to diplomatic affairs, demands 
mathematics in its consular reports. The De¬ 
partment of Agriculture, with its many bureaus, 
has large forces at work on statistics and per¬ 


centages. The Bureau of Weights and Meas¬ 
ures keep employed numbers of workers in 
simple arithmetical computations as well as 
in advanced mathematics. The employees of 
the Interstate Commerce Commission are 
largely occupied with figures. There is there¬ 
fore a tremendous demand for arithmetic and 
more advanced mathematics. It would seem, 
therefore, as true quite beyond dispute that 
the science of numbers underlies conditions 
in every walk of life where people seek to 
earn their living. The demand appears where 
many of us least expect to find it. 

At the present day the scientific trend of 
thought and the vast growth of industrial life 
are calling urgently for mathematics, simple, 
accurate arithmetical computation, as well as 
the most complex mathematical conclusions. 

Boys and girls, therefore, who desire to be 
equipped well for the demands of industrial 
life, to fill satisfactorily the positions of be¬ 
ginners and business novices in the first months 
and years after leaving school, and to progress 
as the years go by and take leading places 
in this great complex industrial life, should 
go out from school (if they must leave early) 
with a good knowledge of arithmetic; they 
must work in addition, multiplication, sub¬ 
traction and division with assurance, accuracy 
and some fair degree of rapidity; they must 
work easily with common fractions, and pos¬ 
sess a knowledge of how to attack large ones 
if they meet them; the decimal fractions must 
be, in their hand, a tool in perfect control. 
(The decimal fraction is supplanting the com¬ 
mon fraction in all scientific work, investiga¬ 
tion and experiment, and very largely in in¬ 
dustrial work.) They must be familiar with 
ratio and percentage which forms a great part 
of the arithmetic of the commercial as well 
as scientific computations; they must have at 
hand the means of estimating and measuring 
accurately, and lastly they must be prepared 
to go on with advanced work in mathematics. 

Culture Value of Arithmetic. Arithmetic is 
a logical exercise which strengthens and invig¬ 
orates the mind. The student may reason 
clearly and demonstrate to his perfect satis¬ 
faction all arithmetical relations, and need not 
accept them on tradition or on the authority 
of his text-books. Very early in the study the 
student finds laws immutable with which he 
must work in accord; for example, he finds 
by experiment alone or with his class that 
the area of a circle is 3.1416 times as great 
as the square built upon the radius of that 


ARITHMETIC 


349 


ARITHMETIC 



ALL NEED 
ARITHMETIC 


circle. He cannot change this, nor ignore it; 
it is a law, a truth. He learns to respect law, 
to reason in accordance with it not only in 
the class-room but outside of it. This cultural 
value comes from arithmetic only in the degree 
the student is allowed to experiment and in¬ 
vestigate and discover for himself the arith¬ 
metical truths through his own solutions and 
methods. 

The schools are coming to allow more free¬ 
dom in this direction than they formerly did. 
Teachers are letting students experiment with 
problems, are allowing and encouraging indi¬ 
vidual research for material and method of 
solution even in the early grades. Students 
are consulting persons in the business world 
and in the mechanical and technical industries 
and bringing back into class such information 
as they have gained outside by observation 
and inquiry. The teachers urge students to 
investigate as far as they can personally, and 
then consult with persons who have special 
and expert knowledge upon the arithmetical 
situation under consideration in the class¬ 
room. This tends to socialize arithmetic by 
bringing together persons interested in the 
same subject. It gives the student respect for 
parent, neighbor or friend who knows expertly 
the thing which he is studying, and in turn 
the outside people come to understand and 
respect the school. 

Steps in the Study of 
Arithmetic 

To outline a course of study which may be 
applied to the work in all schools is a difficult 
task. There has never been uniformity in 
grading, as parents realize who move with 
their children from town to town. The child 
in fifth grade in a village may be doing prac¬ 
tically the same work as the city child in 
fourth grade. The course of study as outlined 
by school authorities in one state or province 
is not likely to be in accord with courses pre¬ 
scribed in other sections. For the United 
States the Bureau of Education at Washington 
was employed in 1916 on the task of prepar¬ 
ing a uniform course of study to recommend 
for acceptance by all the states. No date was 
announced for its publication. 

Accepting the conclusions of skilled educa¬ 
tors, the following may be considered a fairly 
accurate survey of the work in arithmetic, 
grade by grade, for the first eight grades. 
Beyond the latter year, usualljq no arithmetic 



'V\ 

4\\L 



ALL NEED 
ARITHMETIC 








































































































































































































































ARITHMETIC 


350 


ARITHMETIC 


is taught. It is important that articles in 
these volumes be referred to, where such sug¬ 
gestions appear, for under those titles are given 
many methods to be employed in teaching: 

FIRST YEAR 

Numerical Expression. Writing and reading 
of Arabic numbers to 100 ; Roman numerals from 
I to XII; the signs + , —, X, -r-, = . 

Notation and Numeration. Count by l’s and 
10’s to 100 ; numbering groups of objects with¬ 
out counting; addition, subtraction, multiplica¬ 
tion and division with numbers to 10, using 
objects for illustration. See Notation ; Addi¬ 
tion, etc. 

Measuring. Teach ideas of size, form, direc¬ 
tion. 

Fractions. Deal with halves, thirds, fourths; 
with problems such as Vz of 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 ; % of 
3, 6, 9 ; % of 4, 8, etc. 

Denominate Numbers. Familiarize pupils with 
values of cent, nickel, dime, day, week, pint, 
quart. Do not reach numbers above 10. 

Practical Applications. Keep everything within 
the children’s experience. Problems relating to 
things in which they have an interest will bring 
instant response. Two yards of silk mean less 
than two dolls’ dresses ; two glass marbles pos¬ 
sess more meaning than two bushels of potatoes. 

SECOND YEAR 

Oral and Written Expression. The reading 
and writing of numbers below 1,000 and of all 
language forms used to state the relations of 
numbers expressed in the signs +, —, X, -P, =, 
$, $; including Roman numerals to L, if the 
reading lessons are so numbered; simple work 
involving the expression of dollars and cents ; the 
reading and writing of time from the clock. 

Notation and Numeration. The addition and 
subtraction of numbers not exceeding three 
orders. See Notation. 

The building and learning of the multiplica¬ 
tion tables from 1 to 5 inclusive ; aiding the work 
in tables by counting by 2’s, 3’s, 4’s and 5’s. 

Simple combinations in multiplication and 
division in connection with tables. The com¬ 
paring of numbers. 

Fractions. Review fractions learned in the 
first year and deal with %. 

Denominate Numbers. The learning of the 
units in measure, time and money, such as inch, 
foot, yard, pint, quart, peck, degrees of heat; 
fractions of hour and minute ; cent, nickel, dime, 
quarter, half-dollar and dollar ; in all cases using 
objective material such as coins, measures, the 
clock and thermometer. See Denominate 
Numbers. 

Measuring. By means of foot-rule, yardstick 
and other objects, have the pupils measure length 
of blackboards, window-sills, paper or parts of 
these objects. Simple work in area, using rectan¬ 
gles and triangles of folded paper made by the 
pupils. 

Practical Problems. At this age the pupils 
have begun to develop the spirit of competition 
with their classmates and a comparison of the 
weight and height of the children in the room is 
interesting to them. 


In measuring Charles, Alice and Mary we 
found that Charles was 4 ft. 2 in. tall, Alice was 
3 ft. 5 in. tall and Mary was 3 ft. 8 in. tall. 
Who was the shortest? How much taller was 
Charles than Mary? 

Have the children suggest original problems 
like the above, which involve but one step. 

Problems are made much easier to the pupils 
if they deal with familiar and interesting objects, 
as the following, correlated with their nature 
study. 

The rose bush we planted in the school yard 
grew 1 % inches last year, and in measuring it 
this year, we find that it has grown 2 % inches 
higher. How much less did it grow last year 
than this? 

Peal Problems for Oral Work. I have six 
apples and three bags. How shall I find how 
many apples I should put into each bag? 

The picture near the clock is square. If we 
know the length of one side of it, how can we 
find the distance around it? Outline the picture 
and explain. 

THIRD YEAR 

Oral and Written Expression. The reading 
and writing of Arabic numerals to 10,000 and of 
the Roman numerals to C ; the rapid reading and 
writing of fractions and of sums of money ex¬ 
pressed in dollars and cents. 

NotoAion and Numeration. The rapid addition 
and subtraction of simple combinations. See 
Notation. 

A review of the multiplication tables through 
10 and the learning of the tables of 11 and 12 ; 
practice in counting forwards and backwards by 
2’s, 3’s, 4’s and 5’s. 

The thorough mastery of the multiplication 
table to 10 X 10 and of division by numbers 
through 10. The comparing of numbers and 
quantities continued. See Addition ; Subtrac¬ 
tion ; Multiplication ; Division. 

Fractions. Addition work in the fractions %, 
Vs, Vi and %. 

Denominate Numbers. Continue the work in 
denominate numbers begun in the first and sec¬ 
ond years with drill in changing denominate 
numbers to the new smaller or larger units ; as 
the number of quarts in 12 gallons; the number 
of inches in 3 feet; the number of minutes in 
2 hours, etc. 

Additional practice in reading time from the 
clock. See Denominate Numbers. 

Measuring. Continue the measurement of 
familiar objects and the working of practical 
problems in measurement. 

Practical Problems. Let the problems deal 
with objects full of meaning and interest to the 
children. 

Real problems in comparison such as: If 3 
tops cost 6 cents, what is the cost of 6 tops? 
Let the pupil compare 3 and 6 before proceeding 
to the second step of the problem. Many such 
comparisons may be made. 

Henry and John kept a lemonade stand in 
their front yard. They made 3 gallons, but in 
pouring it into the pitcher, spilled 1 quart. They 
sold it at 6 cents a quart; how much money did 
they receive? The lemonade cost them 1 cent a 
half-pint glass; what was their gain? 


ARITHMETIC 


351 


ARITHMETIC 


FOURTH YEAR 

Oral and Written Expression. The reading and 
writing of numbers below 1,000,000 and Roman 
numerals to M ; the reading and writing of deci¬ 
mals of two orders, including dollars expressed 
decimally. 

Notation and Numeration. Drill for rapidity 
and exactness in simple addition, subtraction, 
multiplication and division. See Notation. 
Written work in multiplication and division of 
numbers of 2 orders. Simple problems in “long’’ 
division and “long” multiplication. Further com¬ 
parison of numbers and quantities. See Multi¬ 
plication ; Division. 

Fractions. Develop fundamental idea or mean¬ 
ing of fractions. Simple operations in addition, 
subtraction and comparison of fractions ; chang¬ 
ing of fractions to whole or mixed numbers and 
back again. See Fractions. 

Denominate Numbers. Review of denominate 
numbers learned in previous grades and in addi¬ 
tion, the units of weight, square measure and 
cubic measure ; problems in denominate numbers 
involving all the fundamental operations. See 
Denominate Numbers. 

Measuring. Continue and extend the exercise 
in the measurement of familiar objects, including 
drawing and construction work. 

Practical Problems. Find dimensions of your 
desk top in feet. What area of space is occupied 
by your Readers, when placed flat upon your 
desk? 

The work may be made interesting by corre¬ 
lating the problems with other subjects such as 
nature study, as in the following example: there 
are 6 oak trees, 2 maple trees and 4 elm trees in 
the school yard; what proportion of the trees 
are oaks? What proportion maples? What pro¬ 
portion elms? 

FIFTH YEAR 

Varied Processes. Review of addition, sub¬ 
traction, multiplication and division with special 
emphasis on division; oral and written drill on 
numbers of nine orders, and all Roman 
numerals ; the comparison of quantities and ratio 
of numbers continued ; sight factoring of simple 
combinations. 

Fractions. Work in small fractions involving 
the four fundamental operations. The use of 
cancellation in the reduction and multiplication 
of fractions. See Cancellation. 

The decimal method of expressing common 
fractions; addition, subtraction, multiplication 
and division of decimal fractions to two places. 
The multiplication and division of decimal frac¬ 
tions by 10,000 or 1,000, by moving the decimal 
point. See Fractions. 

Mensuration. The actual measurement of 
areas, surface, perimeters and volume and the 
use of these measurements in problems; to be 
used also with fractions. See Mensuration. 

Denominate Numbers. Problems involving the 
use of units of length, surface, volume, weight, 
capacity and time. See Denominate Numbers. 

Practical Problems. The application of the 
processes of addition, subtraction, multiplication 
and division in fractions and denominate num¬ 
bers, in concrete problems based on subjects of 
interest to or within the experience of the pupils ; 


7 * 

the form of simple bills, how to foot and balance 
them. Let the pupil tell how problems may be 
solved without going through the actual work 
or give the approximate answer before solving. 

sixth year 

Varied Processes. Review of fundamentals, 
short cuts and easy methods in the calculation of 
interest; tests of divisibility (by 2, 5, 3, 9) ; mul¬ 
tiplication and factoring of fractions and mixed 
numbers. The equation. 

Fractions. Decimal expression of fractions 
and percentage in drill; in business problems. 
See Fractions. 

Mensuration. The measurement of larger 
rectangular areas using larger units, such as 
the rod; measurement of rectangular and tri¬ 
angular solids. See Mensuration ; Triangle ; 
Square ; etc. 

Denominate Numbers. The reduction of de¬ 
nominate units in all tables learned in the pre¬ 
vious grades ; drill in larger units of measure, as 
rod, mile, cord, etc., including a generous num¬ 
ber of concrete examples and. problems. See 
Denominate Numbers. 

Practical Problems. Let the puflils make up 
problems in fencing, flooring, painting and paper¬ 
ing ; excavation problems to find the volume of 
prisms and cubes ; problems using current prices 
and dealing with percentage, profit, loss and 
simple interest. 

SEVENTH YEAR 

Varied Processes. Review of per cent and drill 
in short method of rapid calculations; special 
emphasis on the statement of problems and equa¬ 
tions. See Percentage ; Interest. 

Fractions. A review and application of all 
processes in fractions in both oral and written 
work. See Fractions. 

Mensuration. The practical application of 
measurement of lines, quadrilaterals, triangles, 
solids, circles and cylinders, as in problems in 
the measurement of land, lumber, the capacity of 
barrels, tanks, etc. See Mensuration ; Trian¬ 
gle ; etc. 

Denominate Numbers. Use of surface and 
cubic measure ; comparison and reduction of for¬ 
eign and United States money. See Square 
Measure ; Cubic Measure. 

Practical Problems. Real problems applying 
measurement, per cent and business forms to sub¬ 
jects associated with the home and school life 
and of interest to the pupils, as: problems of 
hired farm labor, acreage of ground, balance of 
rations for cattle, etc. 

EIGHTH YEAR 

Varied Processes. Continue and extend study 
of ratio and proportion; principles of square 
root. 

Fractions. Review with special emphasis on 
decimal fractions, percentage and other business 
uses. See Fractions. 

Mensuration. Drill for rapidity and exactness 
in mensuration work of seventh grade. 

Denominate Numbers. Extend work to include 
units of metric system, longitude and standard 
time. See Longitude and Time ; Standard ; 
Metric System. 


ARITHMETIC 

Practical Problems. Drill pupils on simple, 
modern, business forms such as: notes, checks, 
money orders, receipts, drafts, etc. ; taxes, insur- 


352 ARITHMETIC 

ance, commercial discount, stocks and bonds. See 
Discount ; Insurance ; Taxes ; Checks ; Notes ; 
Drafts, and the like. 


History of Arithmetic 



Arithmetic is the science of number, the 
scientific formulation of number relations. The 
savage formulates his number concepts in a 
crude way, using his fingers as counters and 
when all are used 
says “a hand,” 
meaning 5, “two 
hands,” meaning 
10 . 

In Madagascar 
a chief has been 
observed count¬ 
ing his army as 
follows: The sol¬ 
diers pass before 
the chief and a 
pebble is dropped 
as a counter as 
each one passes. 

When ten peb¬ 
bles have been 
dropped, one peb¬ 
ble is set aside 

and a new pile FINGERS AS COUNTERS 
begun, and again when the pile has grown to 
ten, one is set aside and so on until ten have 
been set aside, when one is set aside to mean 
one hundred. The 
Aztecs indicated 
10 by a picture 
of the “upper 
half of man” 
and their word 
for 10 was 
mat l act l i, or 
hand-halj. Some 
Indian tribes in 
the North express 
twenty thus: “A 
man come to an 
end.” Another 
tribe calls it “One Indian ended.” 

These few illustrations taken from thousands 
that travelers have brought to us from among 
the tribes indicate the attempt of the low races 
to formulate number relations so that they 
may have some control over this important 
element of number in the life about them by 
which they count and to estimate their pos¬ 
sessions and carry on trade and compare the 
wealth and strength of different tribes. The 




INDICATING “TWENTY” 


same need that leads to this crude formulation 
on the part of the savage leads to the finer 
formulation and study of arithmetic as it is 
found among the more civilized peoples of the 
world, and indeed 
largely to our 
study of it to¬ 
day. Of course 
the culture value 
of arithmetic is 
more or less to 
the front in the 
higher civiliza¬ 
tion, but empha¬ 
sis on the culture 
value is much 
criticized; especially at the present time when 
technical and vocational work is attracting the 
attention and receiving the approval of a large 
part of schoolmen and laymen, there is a 
tendency to teach arithmetic for its utilitarian 
value. 

Far back in the centuries we find it taught 
in the schools of the far East only for its 
utility, and therefore only those parts of it 
that were useful to the people and answered 
their vital needs were taught. Among the 
great traders of Southwestern Asia, the Phoe¬ 
nicians, Babylonians and others, we find that 
arithmetic was taught extensively, as is seen 
by the tablets found by excavation in that 
part of the world. The tablets show compre¬ 
hensive bank accounts, and some recently 
found show work of school children. Among 
some of the Semitic people arithmetic occu¬ 
pied from one-third to one-half of all the 
school time during the years corresponding to 
our later grade and high school years. In the 
commercial cities arithmetic was taught en¬ 
tirely for its utility. Italy as a commercial 
nation gave to the world mercantile arith¬ 
metic. During the time of the Hanseatic 
League the merchants throughout the com¬ 
mercial cities and all along the routes of trade 
demanded that the arithmetic of trade and 
commerce be taught, and when the products 
of the church school did not satisfy them they 
set up schools of their own for the study of 
arithmetic under control of a Rechenmeister, 
who was usually the city sealer of weights and 
measures. Indeed, arithmetic was so com- 






















ARITHMETIC 


353 


ARITHMETIC 


.--.-..S' — 

OUTLINE OF DEPARTMENTS OF ARITHMETIC 


I, Notation anil Numeration 

(1) Arabic numbers 
( 2) Roman numbers 

(3) Notation and numeration of money 

(4) Use of arithmetical signs 

II. Basic Processes 

(1*) Addition 

(2) Subtraction 

(3) Multiplication 

(4) Division 

III. Common Fractions 

(1) Notation and numeration of frac¬ 

tions 

(2) Reduction 

(3) Addition of fractions 

(4) Subtraction of fractions 

(5) Multiplication of fractions 

(6) Division of fractions 

(7) Complex fractions 

IV. Factors and Divisors 

(1) Tests of divisibility 
(2 ) Factoring 

(3) Cancellation 

(4) Greatest Common Divisor 

(5) Least Common Multiple 

V. Decimal Fractions 

(1) Notation and numeration of deci¬ 

mals 

(2) Reduction 

(3) Addition of decimals 

(4) Subtraction of decimals 

(5) Multiplication of decimals 

(6) Division of decimals 


(4) Practical measurements 

(a) Roofing and flooring 

(b) Plastering and painting 

(c) Masonry 

(d) Lumber measure 

(e) Tanks and bins 

VIII. Percentage 

(1) Principles 

(2) Applications 

(a) Profit and loss 

(b) Commission 

(c) Discount 
( d) Taxes 

(e) Insurance 

(f) Interest 

1. Simple 

2. Compound 

(g) Promissory notes 

(h) Exchange 

1. Domestic 

2. Foreign 

(i) Stocks and bonds 

IX. Ratio and Proportion 

(1) Ratio 

(2) Simple proportion 

(3) Partnership 

X. Powers and Roots 

(1) Involution 

(a) The square of numbers 

(b) The cube of numbers 

(2) Evolution 

(a) Square root 

(b) Cube root 



VI. Denominate Numbers 

(1) Measure 

(a) Of value 

(b) Of weight 

(c) Of length 

(d) Of surface 

(e) Of volume 

(f) Of capacity 

(g) Of time 

(2) Reduction 

(3) Addition 

(4) Subtraction 

(5) Multiplication 

(6) Division 

(7) Longitude and time 

VII. Determination of Areas and 
Volumes 

(1) Angular measure 

(2) Area of surfaces 

(3) Volume of solids 




pletely dominated by commerce that it was 
no longer mentioned in the curricula of even 
the best schools. 

Among the Romans and the Greeks we find 
some plea for the study of arithmetic for its 
culture value. Plato, Aristotle and Pythagoras 
all set value upon it as a cultural subject. 
Plato says, “It awakens the soul,” Pythagoras 
places it with gymnastics and music as the 
three great educational subjects. He names 
the subjects in the order—gymnastics, music 
and mathematics. “By the first the pupil was 
strengthened; by the second, purified; and by 
the third, perfected and made ready for the 
society of the gods.” a.h. 

Consult any school-book publishing firm for 
arithmetic texts. 


/ 































ARIZONA 


354 


ARIZONA 


A Course in Arithmetic. The following’ arti¬ 
cles in these volumes, if studied in connection 
with the above, will serve as a basis for a com¬ 
plete course in arithmetic: 


Addition 

Angle 

Arabic Numerals 
Area 

Cancellation 

Circle 

Cone 

Cube 

Cube Root 
Cylinder 

Decimal Fraction 


Degree 

Denominate Numbers 
Digit 

Divisibility of Numbers 
Evolution 
Factoring 
Fractions 
Greatest Common 
Divisor 
Insurance 
Interest 


Involution 

Least Common Multiple 
Longitude and Time 
Mensuration 
Metric System 
Multiplication 
Notation and 
Numeration 
Number 
Percentage 
Polygon 
Prism 
Proportion 
Pyramid 
Quadrilateral 
Ratio 


Rectangle 

Rhombus 

Roman Numerals 

Root 

Sphere 

Square 

Square Measure 

Square Root 

Subtraction 

Taxes 

Trapezium 

Triangle 

Unit 

Weights and Measures 
Zero 



.RIZONA, air izo' nah, the newest 
state in the American Union, one of the great 
states of the plateau section. The name is 
variously interpreted as being Spanish for arid 
zone or Indian for few springs, but in either 
case it emphasizes the dryness of this state, 
which has but 146 square miles under water. 
Its area of 113,956 square miles makes it fifth 
in the Union in point of size, but in popula¬ 
tion it ranks forty-fifth, only Delaware, Nevada 
and Wyoming having fewer than its 204,354 
inhabitants (in 1910). It averages but 1.8 peo¬ 
ple to the square mile. The New England 
states, which have a combined area of little 
more than half that of Arizona, have a popula¬ 
tion more than thirty times as great. 

The People. Since 1870, when it contained 
but 9,658 people, exclusive of Indians, Arizona 
has had a steady and rapid but not a phenom¬ 
enal growth. The largest growth in numbers, 
though not in percentage, for any decade was 
between 1900 and 1910, when the population 
increased from 122,931 to 204,354, a gain of 
about 66 per cent. Of the population in 1910, 
171,468 were white, 29,201 were Indians, and 
the remainder were negroes, Chinese and 
Japanese. There are comparatively few Euro¬ 
peans within the borders of the state, but the 
Mexicans are numerous, comprising one-fourth 
of the entire population. 

Almost seventy per cent of the inhabitants 
live in the small towns or rural districts, and 
only 63,260 in the cities. The latter, however, 
are growing, some of them very rapidly, The 


most important cities are Phoenix, the capital; 
Tucson, Bisbee, Douglas, Globe and Prescott. 
The more important of these are described in 
their places in these volumes. 

Indians. The number of Indians in the state 
remains fairly steadfast, but shows a slight 
inclination to increase. All of them except a 
few hundred live in rural districts, chiefly on 
government reservations, and their flat, quaint 
adobe villages are pointed out to travelers who 
pass through these sections on the trains. More 
than half of the Indian inhabitants of Arizona 
are Navajo, who numbered about 16.000 at the 
last census. Their reservation is in the north¬ 
east corner of the state, and has attracted more 
attention than most Indian colonies, because 
of the famous Navajo blankets which are 
manufactured there. South of the Navajo 
live the Hopi or Moki Indians, little more than 
one-tenth as numerous as their northern neigh¬ 
bors. They have aroused considerable interest, 
however, because of the strictness with which 
they have preserved the old customs followed 
before the coming of the white man. The 
Apache and Mohave tribes are also of im¬ 
portance. All the Indians have improved in 
recent years in their manner of life. See de¬ 
scription of each Indian tribe under its title. 

Position and Physical Features. Arizona is 
one of the far Southwestern states, and has 
Mexico as its southern boundary. To the east 
is New Mexico, to the north Utah, and to the 
west Nevada and California. From these latter 
states it is separated by the Colorado River. 


















































ARIZONA 


355 


ARIZONA 


Detached mountains extend across the state 
in a general northwest-southeast direction and 
divide it into two principal physical regions of 
almost equal area—a northwestern plateau and 
a southwestern lowland section. The plateau, 
which has an average elevation of 5,000 feet, is 
in no sense a table-land, but has a highly-diver¬ 
sified surface of hills and deep-cut canyons. 
Through these in former times great rivers must 
have flowed, for only streams of considerable 
size flowing for a long time could have carved 
these deep chasms in the solid rock. To-day 
these rivers, with the exception of the Colo¬ 
rado, the most important river of the state, 
are mostly dry or flow only during the brief 
rainy seasons, but far below the surface of 
many of them is a regular flow of water which 
may be drawn out by pumping and used for 
irrigation. 

The lower, southwestern section has a dis¬ 
tinct slope from the mountain ranges, which 
divide it from the plateau to the Gila River, 
a slow, shallow stream flowing to the Colo¬ 
rado. This latter river drains the entire state 
into the Gulf of California. The lowland is 
not an actual plain, but is broken everywhere 
by short, isolated chains of mountains, which 
rise abruptly from the level surface. Here and 
there shallow tributaries of the Gila find their 
way among the buttes and mesas, but these are 
dry for a large part of the year. 

The southern mountains are flat-topped and 
of no great height, but in the north there are 
lofty, outstanding peaks. Of these a number 
are over 10,000 feet high, and one, Mount 
Humphreys, an old volcanic peak, is 12,794 
feet. 

Scenic Wonders. In the northwestern part of 
the state there is to be seen the most marvel¬ 
ous river gorge in the world—the Grand Can¬ 
yon of the Colorado, described elsewhere in 
these volumes. This formation, wrought by 
the busy river through the ages, is no more 
remarkable for its steep cliffs and the tumbling 
river in its narrow bed than for the wealth of 
brilliant coloring which glows in its rocks. 
Had Arizona nothing to offer to the visitor 
but this one sight, it would well repay a jour¬ 
ney across the continent. But there are other 
wonders no less noteworthy in their way. In 
the north-central part of the state, to either 
side of the Colorado River, stretches the 
Painted Desert, “the most alluring desert in 
the world,” as one distinguished traveler has 
called it. Pink, blue, yellow, white, brown and 
red are its sands, its clays and its rocky 


ledges, and all the colors have an especial 
brightness in the clear air and steady sunshine. 

To the northeast, in Navajo County, near 
Holbrook, is one of the strangest forests in the 



Map shows boundaries, principal rivers, loca¬ 
tion of important minerals, principal cities, the 
Roosevelt Dam, petrified forest and highest point 
of land in the state. 

world—a forest of stone. The trees, some of 
which are fifty feet long and from four to five 
feet in diameter, are not standing, but lie on 
the ground, for the most part at the foot of the 
mesas in which they were earlier embedded. 
Every little particle of the wood has been 
replaced by a particle of silica, and the veins 
and markings all show perfectly. But the 
coloring in these agate, jasper and chalcedony 
logs is far more varied than that of the living 
wood, and enterprising visitors were not long 
in finding that the stone when polished could 
be used for all the purposes for which onyx 
or tinted marble is commonly employed. Great 
sections were removed, and it became evident 
that this wonderful formation would in time 
be entirely destroyed. The United States gov¬ 
ernment, therefore, determined to save it, and 
made of it a forest reserve of a new type— 
a fossil forest reserve. 

Climate and Vegetation. No part of the 

United States has more sunshine than has 








ARIZONA 


356 


ARIZONA 


Arizona, 292 days out of each year, on an 
average, being clear. To a traveler from the 
Eastern states who reaches Arizona on a sun¬ 
shiny day it seems that he has never seen nor 
felt sunshine before, so intense is the glow. 
The northern plateau section has an average 
temperature of about 48°, which is approxi¬ 
mately that of New York, but the extremes 
of heat and cold are not present. Particularly 
delightful is this high region during the sum¬ 
mer. On the southern lowland the average 
annual temperature is about 68° but with a 
summer extreme of 130°. Yuma, at the junc¬ 
tion of the Gila and Colorado rivers, is the 
hottest city in the United States, and one of the 
hottest in the world. The dryness of the air, 
however, makes the great heat of the deserts 
endurable. For Arizona is very dry in almost 
every section; only in a few mountain districts 
is there a fair rainfall. The northern plateaus 
have about twenty inches a year, but in the 
southern portion five inches is a 
common yearly average. This 
dryness of the air makes Arizona 
one of the most healthful regions 
of the United States, and of 
recent years it has become a 
favorite health resort, especially 
for people with any affection of 
the lungs. 

Everywhere the vegetation 
shows the great need of water. 

In the mountains, to be sure, 
there are forests of oak, cedar, 
pine, fir and spruce, and the Co¬ 
conino forest, 6,000 square miles 
in extent, is one of the very 
largest unbroken pine forests in 
the United States. In most 
places, however, desert conditions 
prevail, and little grows except 
sage brush, bunch grass, various 
species of cactus, the mesquite, 
and the ever-present yucca. 

After the summer rains grass 
springs up over much of the 
mesa land, and furnishes pastur¬ 
age for stock. 

Agriculture. The lack of 
moisture has kept Arizona thus 
far from becoming prominent as 
an agricultural state, for without 
irrigation practically nothing will 
grow, and water has been very 
hard to obtain. In 1910 only 1.7 
per cent of the land was under 


cultivation, and of this 350,173 acres, over 
ninety per cent, was irrigated. The small irriga¬ 
tion schemes, of which there were over 1,000 in 
various parts of thp state, had proved that the 
valley lands were fertile and could be made 
very productive, and the Federal government 
determined upon a gigantic scheme—the so- 
called Salt River Project, or Roosevelt Dam 
and Irrigation Project (see Irrigation). The 
great reservoir, which was completed in 1911 
and dedicated in March of that year by Theo¬ 
dore Roosevelt, is large enough to contain 
over 1,000,000 acre-feet of water, or water 
enough to cover that number of acres one foot 
deep. In the spring of 1914 this artificial lake 
was less than one-third full, but within a year 
the amount of water had increased to the point 
when it became evident that Salt River Val¬ 
ley need fear no lack of moisture. More than 
200,000 acres of land will be reclaimed by this 
mighty project. 

At Yuma, where the Gila 
River joins the Colorado, an¬ 
other great irrigation scheme has 
been put into effect. It is esti¬ 
mated that about 100,000 acres 
of the rich river-valley soil will 
be rendered capable of cultiva¬ 
tion by the waters stored behind 
the big weir dam. A part of this 
reclaimed land is in California, 
but the larger part is in Yuma 
County, Arizona. 

By far the most important 
crop of the state is hay, including 
forage plants of all sorts, and of 
these the most valuable is alfalfa. 
Three, five or even more crops of 
this are cut each year, and the 
total yield approximates 500,000 
tons. In no section of the coun¬ 
try is the production of hay per 
acre higher than in Arizona. 
Grains, potatoes and sugar beets 
are also grown, and experiments 
seem to prove that Egyptian cot¬ 
ton can be successfully produced 
in certain sections. Orchard 
crops, including apples, pears, 
peaches, grapes, olives, lemons, 
oranges and figs, do well and will 
probably in time come to rank 
among the important crops of 
the state, and strawberries are 
grown in some sections. In the 
neighborhood of Yuma dates 



GIANT CACTUS 


























ARIZONA 


357 


ARIZONA 



THE GREAT ROOSEVELT DAM 

The base of the dam covers an acre of ground, and the height is 284 feet. At the top, from 
bank to bank, it is 1080 feet long and forms a fine driveway. 


have been planted, and it is believed that this 
useful fruit can be grown in parts of the state 
which had been considered too alkaline for 
agriculture of any sort. 

Stock-Raising. This is the more important 
phase of agriculture in Arizona, for much of 
the land which is too dry for the production 
of crops has a fine growth of grasses, some of 
which seem to be remarkably independent of 
moisture conditions. Thus some of the most 
typical of the great western cattle ranches are 
in Arizona, chiefly in the northern plateau 
region. Most of the cattle are grown for 
market and not for dairy purposes. Sheep¬ 
raising is increasingly important, there being 
over a million and a half of sheep on the 
ranges, and in production of wool Arizona is 
among the first dozen states. With the growth 
of irrigation projects the cattle industry is 
certain to decline as agriculture increases, but 
the change will be slow. 

Minerals. The great wealth of Arizona lies 
in its minerals, few if any of the states sur¬ 
passing it in the richness of its deposits. Some 
of the mines have been worked since the early 
Spanish occupation of Mexico, or over 300 
years, but until the last few years mining has 
not been highly developed, owing largely to 
the lack of transportation facilities. To-day 


Arizona stands first in the production of cop¬ 
per, Montana being its only close competitor. 



IRRIGATION PROJECTS 

The black portions mark areas under irriga¬ 
tion in 1917. 

About 400 million pounds of copper are taken 
from the mines each year, and over 11,000 men 




























































ARIZONA 


358 


ARIZONA 


THE MINE 


Clay 

Sandstone 

Zinc 

Lead 

Silver 

Gold 

Copper 


I 

[J 




0 


ARIZONA PRODUCTS CHART 

Figures Based on U.S.Government Reports 
Millions of Dollars Annually 


THE FARM 

0 ? 

Badey Ji 
Sheep sold fcl • 

Wool,Mohair jl 
Dairy Products® 

Wheat 0 • 

Alfalfa 111 : 

Cattle sold Hli : 


the factory 

0 


Bread,etc. tl 

Manufactured Ice |3 
Condensed Milk fy 
Printmg,Publishing tl 
Flour,Grist jH 

Lumber,Ttmber jH 


Raikoad-car Repair_■ tH 


5 



are employed in the copper-mining industry. 
See Copper. 

Next in importance is gold, but this is by 
no means a close second, the annual output 
being valued at slightly more than $4,000,000. 
Silver, largely obtained as a by-product in the 
smelting of copper, attains a value between 
two and three million dollars; lead and zinc 
are also produced. 

Manufactures. For the most part the manu¬ 
facturing operations are connected very closely 
with the mining, copper-smelting and refining 
being the most important. The products of 
this industry are worth about twice those of 
all the other industries combined. The state 
has flour and grist mills, lumber mills and car 
shops, and while these are of no great im¬ 
portance now, nearly all of them are growing. 

Arizona has certain manufactures which are 
characteristic and of great interest to visitors. 
These are the baskets, pottery, rugs and blan¬ 
kets made by the various Indian tribes. When 
a train on one of the great trans-continental 
railroads arrives at a station, there is to be seen 
squatted on the ground a row of stolid squaws, 
each with her heap of handiwork. They have 
learned well how to bargain, and no longer 
sell their wares for the small sums which used 
to satisfy them. 

Transportation. Two transcontinental lines 
of railway, the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe 
and the Southern Pacific, cross the state, the 
former in the northern part, the latter in the 
southern. Of the 2,345 miles of railroad in 
the state, the Santa Fe has 978, the Southern 
Pacific 537. A line known as the Santa Fe, 
Prescott and Phoenix connects the two main 
lines, passing through Phoenix and Prescott, 
two of the chief cities, and various branch lines 


lead to other important towns and to the 
Grand Canyon of the Colorado. 

The state has little river transportation, only 
the Colorado River on its western border being 
navigable. 

Educational and Other Institutions. Despite 
its scattered population, Arizona maintains a 
well-organized school system, and has com¬ 
pulsory education laws. Public school lands 
of great extent furnish a permanent fund, but 



RAILROADS 

(a) Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, ( b ) South¬ 
ern Pacific. 


local taxation is necessary also. Free text¬ 
books are supplied, and there is a teachers’ 
pension fund. Of nearly 60,000 persons of 
school age (six to twenty years) in the state 
in 1915, over 32,500 were actually attending 






















n r — - - -■ n rr 



Aqricullural Building, State University 



An Arizona Smelter the Cliff Dwellings,near Prescott 








































































































































































































































































































































































































ARIZONA 


300 


ARIZONA 


school. There are high schools, normal schools 
at Tempe and Flagstaff, a state university at 
Tucson, and schools for the Indians at Phoenix 
and Tucson, in addition to those on the reser¬ 
vations. In 1910 the illiteracy percentage was 
20.9, but it is the Indians and Mexicans who 
make it so high. Only 4.2 per cent of the 
native white population over ten years of age 
cannot read and write. 

Other Institutions. The state maintains a 
prison at Florence, an industrial reform school 
near Willcox, and an insane asylum at Phoenix. 
There are, in addition, a Home for Aged and 
Infirm Arizona Pioneers and a Children’s 
Home, the former at Prescott, the latter at 
Phoenix. 

Government. Arizona is governed under the 
constitution of 1911, which provides for a gov¬ 
ernor, secretary of state, state auditor, state 
treasurer, attorney-general and superintendent 
of public instruction. Each of these holds 
office for two years, and all except the state 
treasurer may be reelected. The legislative 
body consists of tw r o houses, a senate of nine¬ 
teen members and a house of representatives 
of thirty-five members. The most interesting 
phase of the legislative question is the existence 
of laws providing for initiative and referendum 
(which see). The initiative permits ten per 
cent of the electors at any time to propose a 
legislative measure, and fifteen per cent to 
propose amendments to the constitution. 
Under the referendum five per cent of the 
electors may request that any measure passed 
by the legislature be submitted to the people 
at the polls, and unless a majority of the voters 
approve it, it does not become a law. The 
governor may not veto any legislation initiated 
and passed upon by the people, nor any measure 
approved by them under the referendum laws. 

The judicial power in Arizona is vested in 
justices ©f the peace, county courts and such 
inferior courts as the law may provide, superior 
courts and a supreme court. For purposes of 
local government the state is divided into 
counties, but the most important government 
units are the cities. Any one of these may 
frame a charter as soon as it has 3,500 in¬ 
habitants, but every city as well as every 
count}' is restricted by certain state laws as to 
franchise and indebtedness. 

By the constitution any male citizen of the 
United States, twenty-one years of age or 
over, was privileged to vote, but in 1912 full 
suffrage was granted to women. In that same 
year the question of the recall of officers, much 


debated at the time the state entered the 
Union (see subhead History, below), was set¬ 
tled by the passing of a law which made every 
elective officer, including judges, subject to 
recall (see Recall). A petition against any 
officer may be circulated by twenty-five per 
cent of those who voted at the last preceding 
election. In 1914 an amendment to the consti¬ 
tution was voted which provided for state-wide 
prohibition of the liquor traffic. . 

History. That the valleys of the Gila, the 
Colorado, the Little Colorado and the Salt 
rivers were once the home of Indian races well 
advanced in civilization may be seen from the 
ruins of pueblos which still exist. The fame 
of these had penetrated to Mexico City, far 
to the south, and the Spanish conquerors there 
heard of the famous “Seven Cities of Cibola,” 
and their hoards of gold (see Cibola, Seven 
Cities of). The first white man to enter the 
territory was Marcos de Niza, a Franciscan 
friar, who passed through the Santa Cruz val¬ 
ley in 1539. In the next year Coronado (which 
see) led by the desire for treasure, visited the 
Moki and Zuni villages of Arizona and New 
Mexico. Other journeys of exploration fol¬ 
lowed, and the Roman Catholic Church estab¬ 
lished missions among the Indians. There 
have grown up in later times stories of the 
cruelties which were practised on the Indians 
by the Spaniards, and of their being compelled 
to work in the mines, but these have been 
proved to be without foundation. The first 
settlement, at Tucson, the oldest town in the 
state, was made in 1776. 

Formation oj a Territory. Certain Indian 
tribes, notably the Apaches, made considerable 
trouble, but in the early years of the nineteenth 
century disturbances among them practically 
ceased. When Mexico began its fight for inde¬ 
pendence, and the loyal Spaniards were driven 
out, Arizona became involved in the unrest, 
and in 1827 a new rising of the Apaches prac¬ 
tically drove out the Church. After the Mexi¬ 
can War the territory, with New Mexico, came 
into possession of the United States, except 
the portion south of the Gila River. This was 
acquired in 1854, and was known as the Gads¬ 
den Purchase (which see). In 1856 petitions 
for territorial organizations were sent to Con¬ 
gress, but were ignored because each side in 
the slavery contest feared that the other might 
thus acquire new territory. Arizona as it exists 
to-day was finally separated from New Mexico 
in 1863 and made a territory. Since 1889 the 
capital has been at Phoenix. 


ARIZONA 


ARIZONA 


361 



(An Outline suitable for Arizona will l»e fouml with the article “State.”) 

What is Arizona’s great natural wonder? 

What is the state’s chief source of income? 

Why was it so long in obtaining statehood? 

In what strange kind of dwellings did some of the ancestors of Arizona Indians 
live? 

How does the population compare with that of New England? 

What is the hottest city in the United States, and where is it? 

What is the condition of education in Arizona? 

What two benefits are derived from the Roosevelt Dam? 

How does the Painted Desert get its name? 

Are there many people in the state who cannot read and write? 

How do the names of the counties tell something of the history of this region? 

Is there much cloudy weather? 

Why did the Spaniards come to Arizona? 

Compare the date of their arrival with that of the settlement of Virginia by the 
English. 

Make a comparison which indicates Arizona’s importance as a copper state. 
Under what conditions do its Indians live to-day? What well-known articles do 
they make? 

When did Arizona become a state? 

Which state has grown the most rapidly in the last half-century, Arizona, Nevada 
or New Mexico? 

What are the principal cities? In which one are the laws made? 

In what three respects has the state shown itself a progressive law-maker? 

What well-known dance takes place in Arizona? 

Has the state any forests? 

What famous astronomical observatory is located in Arizona? 

Is the state all near sea level? Were there ever any volcanoes in this region? 
After the Mexican War, why was Congress slow in organizing this territory? 

Are there many Indians in Arizona? 

What is the story of the state’s law providing for the recall of judges? 

What is the petrified forest? 

Is there any coal in the state? 

Besides copper, what are the chief metals? 

What sort of vegetation grows in the desert? 

What political party is prominent in Arizona that is of minor importance in most 
of the states? 

Has the United States government any land here which it can give away ? 

Is there much manufacturing in Arizona? 

Can fruits be raised successfully? 

How long has Arizona belonged to the United States? Was it all acquired at 
the same time? 

How did the state get its name? 

What has irrigation done for it? 

Is there anything unusual about the number of Arizona’s Representatives in 
Congress? 













































ARIZONA 


362 


ARIZONA 


Boundary disputes with every neighboring 
state, Indian risings and the extreme dryness 
of the soil made development slow for a time, 
but after 1896 the Indians were quiet, while 
irrigation schemes made possible the cultiva¬ 
tion of more and more land. 

Admission as a State. As early as 1891 the 
territory, sparsely settled as it was, began to 
agitate for admission to the Union as a state, 
but its petitions were denied. In 1905 and 1906, 
Congress passed bills favoring the admission 
of Arizona and New Mexico as one state, but 
the vote of the former defeated the plan. 
Finally, in 1910 an enabling act for the ad¬ 
mission of the two separate territories was 
passed, and an Arizona convention prepared a 
constitution. This radical document included 
provision for the recall of judges, and because 
of this clause President Taft refused to assent 
to the admission of the state. Congress, which 
had passed its resolution authorizing the admis¬ 
sion, then passed a new one, making admission 
constitutional on the elimination of the recall 
clause. Later in 1911 the people voted to make 
the change, and the proclamation of Arizona’s 
statehood was signed in 1912. In that same 
year an amendment to the constitution legal¬ 
ized the recall of all elective officers, and pro¬ 
vided for woman’s suffrage. Thus, although 
the newest of American states, in its provisions 
for the recall and by adopting full suffrage for 
women and abolishing the liquor traffic Arizona 
stands in the front rank of progressive com¬ 
monwealths. 

Other Items of Interest. Arizona shares with 
New Mexico the distinction of being the 
youngest state, but was a territory before either 
Oklahoma, Wjmming, Idaho, or Montana. 

Though the great Roosevelt Dam is pri¬ 
marily for irrigation, it supplies the power 
which generates electric light for the city of 
Phoenix. 

Several of the counties of Arizona have 
well-known Indian names: Apache, Gila, Mari¬ 
copa, Mohave, Navajo, Pima, Yavapai and 
Yuma are names of tribes and Cochise was a 
famous Apache chief. Of the other five coun¬ 
ties three have Spanish names, Coconino, Pinal 
and Santa Cruz, and only two, Graham and 
Greenlee, have English names. 

Near Flagstaff is the observatory of the 
astronomer Percival Lowell, known for his dis¬ 
coveries relating to the planet Mars. 

The United States government still owns 
36,000,000 acres of land in Arizona, more than 
half of which is as yet unsurveyed. Only in 


Nevada is there more land not reserved for a 
special purpose. 

The Geological Survey estimates that there 
are fourteen billions of tons of bituminous coal 
in Arizona, none of which has been mined. 

In the Canyon de Chelly, in the northeastern 
part of the state, are ruins of a rock fortress 
of the cliff-dwelling ancestors of the modern 
Indians. In the Rio Verde Valley, and in a 
canyon near Flagstaff, are caves excavated in 
the cliffs by an even more primitive race. 

When Arizona had 9,658 people in 1870, New 
Mexico contained 91,874, and Nevada 42,491. 
Now Arizona has about five inhabitants for 
every eight in New Mexico and every two 
in Nevada. 

The total copper output of Europe and 
Africa combined, or of Asia and Australia, or 
of Mexico and Central and South America does 
not equal that of Arizona. 

East of the Painted Desert is the land of the 
Moki, or Hopi, Indians, whose snake dance is 
celebrated. 

Nevada and California are the only states 
which spend more money than Arizona for the 
education of each child attending the public 
schools. 

There are five states which have the usual 
two Senators, but only one Representative. 
Arizona is one of them. 

In their first vote for President, in 1912, the 
people of Arizona cast more ballots for the 
Socialist party than for the Republicans, the 
next party in numerical strength. a.mc c. 

Related Subjects. The following articles will 
help the reader to gain a more detailed knowl¬ 
edge of the state of Arizona: 

CITIES AND TOWNS 

Tucson 

INDIAN TRIBES 

Moki 
Navajo 

MOUNTAINS 

RIVERS 
Gila 

LEADING PRODUCTS 

Copper 
Wool 

UNCLASSIFIED 

Arizona, University of Irrigation 
Grand Canyon 

Consult Hamilton's Resources of Arizona; 
Pc Long’s History of Arizona, 


Phoenix 

Prescott 

Apache 

Mohave 


Rocky 

Colorado 


Alfalfa 

Cattle 


ARIZONA 


363 


ARKANSAS 


ARIZONA, University of, the only institu¬ 
tion of college rank in Arizona, a coeduca¬ 
tional university at Tucson under the control 
of a board of regents, which includes the gov¬ 
ernor, the superintendent of public instruction 
and eight members appointed by the governor. 
It was founded by act of the territorial legis¬ 
lature of 1885 and was opened in 1891. The 
school of mines is one of the university’s 
strongest departments, Arizona being one of 
the - great mining states; but considerable at¬ 
tention is given to agriculture, particularly irri¬ 
gation and cattle-raising. The agricultural 
experiment station carries on its work not only 
at Tucson, but at Yuma, Phoenix and other 
points. The students number about 500, the 
instructors, forty-five; the library contains 
about 25,000 volumes. The income of the uni¬ 
versity amounts to about $450,000 annually, 
derived chiefly from Federal and state appro¬ 
priations. The university has also received 
several large private bequests and fifty-seven 
sections of rich timber land from the United 
States government. 


ARK. In the Bible, three objects are referred 
to b}^ this term, all of which are vessels for 
the safe-keeping of some precious object. 
(1) The floating vessel built by Noah in which 
he and his family and various animals were 
preserved during the Deluge {Gen. VI). Meas¬ 
ured by the common standards of to-day, the 
ark was 450 feet long, seventy-five feet wide 
and forty-five feet high. (2) The cradle of 
bulrushes in which Moses was placed by his 
mother ( Exod . II). (3) Ark of the Covenant. 
This was the sacred chest which the Lord 
directed Moses to make to contain the tables 
of the law which he had received on Mount 
Sinai. It was four and one-half feet long, two 
and one-fourth feet wide and two and one- 
fourth feet high. It was covered within and 
without with gold and was carried by staves 
inserted in rings on the corners. This Ark of 
the Covenant was the most sacred possession of 
the Israelites. It was placed in the Holy of 
Holies in the Tabernacle and later in a similar 
position in Solomon’s Temple (see Exodus 
XXV, 10-22; XXVII, 1-9). 



JL X.RKANSAS, ahr' kansaw, one of the 
south-central states of the American Union, 
popularly known as The Bear State. It lies 
wholly to the west of the Mississippi River, 
which separates it on the east from Tennessee 
and Mississippi. On the south it is bounded 
by Louisiana, on the west by Texas and Okla¬ 
homa, on the north by Missouri. It is essen¬ 
tially a Southern state in its spirit and ideals 
as well as in its climate, much more so than is 
Texas, which extends far south of it. Its state 
flower is the apple blossom, a most appropriate 
choice considering the prominence of the apple 
in its agricultural development. 

Size. In size Arkansas ranks twenty-sixth 
among the states of the Union and in popula¬ 
tion twenty-fifth. Its area of 53,335 square 
miles is but slightly smaller than that of Illi¬ 
nois, while its population of 1,574,449 is con¬ 
siderably less than that of Chicago. The 
Mississippi River cuts off one corner and makes 
the eastern boundary irregular, but the state 
is approximately a square, with north and 


south and east and west dimensions of about 
250 miles. The water surface is 810 square 
miles, and this is practically all river, for 
Arkansas has no lakes except the little “cut¬ 
offs” or “ox-bows” in its river basins. These 
are formed by changes in the course of the 
rivers, which have a tendency to shorten and 
straighten their courses by cutting across a 
bend instead of flowing around it, thus leaving 
the old bend, with its ends closed by silt, as an 
“ox-bow.” 

Population. Of the population of 1,574,449 
in 1910, about 443,000 are colored. The negroes 
are very unevenly distributed, almost all of 
them living in the cotton-growing section of 
the south. The average density of population 
is about thirty to the square mile, which is 
approximately that of the United States as a 
whole. 

Few foreigners live within the limits of the 
state, over ninety-eight per cent of the popu¬ 
lation being native born. Especially note¬ 
worthy is the large percentage of the people 




































ARKANSAS 


364 


ARKANSAS 


who live neither in cities nor in towns, but 
on farms. This class in 1910 totaled over 
seventy-six per cent of the entire population 



ARKANSAS 

Map shows boundaries, coal areas, principal 
rivers, important cities and greatest elevation in 
the state. 

and the proportion seems to be decreasing very 
slowly. There are in the state twenty-eight 
incorporated places each with a population of 
2,500 or more. Of the cities, the largest are 
Little Rock, the capital; Fort Smith, a com¬ 
mercial and industrial center; Pine Bluff, one 
of the chief manufacturing cities; Hot Springs, 
the famous health resort; and Argenta, which 
has had the most rapid growth of any city in 
the state. All of these are fully treated in 
their alphabetical order in these volumes. 

Surface Features and Rivers. A relief map 
of Arkansas presents a very simple though not 
a monotonous appearance. A line drawn 
diagonally from the corner of the northeastern 
“jog” to that of the southwestern would divide 
the state into two fairly equal sections, a north¬ 
western one of low mountains and hills and 
a southeastern one of lowland. The highest 
mountains, in the extreme northeastern corner 
of the state, are a part of the Ozark system, 
which sends its spurs southward from Missouri; 
Mount Magazine, the loftiest peak, has an 


altitude of 2,823 feet. This Ozark section has 
of recent years come into deserved prominence 
as one of the most beautiful scenic regions of 
the Mississippi Valley. Rounded peaks, rugged 
cliffs, unbroken pine forests, steep-cut river 
gorges and undulating stretches of farm land 
are features of its varied beauty. Sloping from 
this mountainous section is a stretch of hilly 
land which joins the southeastern plain. This 
plain is for the most part low—so low that 
overflow from the Mississippi is common, • de¬ 
spite the levees built by the Federal govern¬ 
ment. Occasionally, however, the marshy 
shore is diversified with ridges and high bluffs. 

It can be seen from the above description 
of the surface that the rivers must have a 
southerly or southeasterly trend. The Arkan¬ 
sas, the greatest river of the state, runs from 
northwest to southeast, dividing the state into 
two nearly equal parts. In its sluggish course, 
very different from its earlier, swifter phase, 
as it rushes through the Royal Gorge of Colo¬ 
rado, it carries down to the Mississippi great 
quantities of silt and has gradually built a 
huge sandbar across its mouth. 

Other rivers of importance are the White, 
which enters the state from Missouri, receives 
the Black and Cache rivers, and after a very 
twisted course joins the Arkansas; the Red 
River, which crosses the southwestern corner; 
the Saline, a tributary of the Red; and the 
Ouachita, which drains the south-central por¬ 
tion of the state. These numerous rivers are 
of the utmost importance to Arkansas. Not 
only are most of them subject to overflow 
in the lower part of their courses, thus deposit¬ 
ing a fertile alluvial soil, but they provide 
about 3,000 miles of navigable waterways. All 
in all, Arkansas has more miles of waterway 
in proportion to its area than any other state. 

Climate. The variation in surface tends to 
bring about a certain variation in climate, and 
sections of the lowland are very hot and un¬ 
healthful, the familiar malaria of the river- 
bottoms prevailing. In the higher parts of 
the state, however, the climate is mild and 
pleasant, free from extreme heat and drought 
in the summer and cold in the winter. For 
these reasons the Ozark region has attained a 
reputation as being beneficial for people with 
lung diseases. 

The summers are noticeably longer than in 
Missouri or in Kansas, for Arkansas receives 
the warm winds from the Gulf of Mexico. The 
highest temperature ever recorded within the 
state was 106°, the lowest 12° below zero, but 








ARKANSAS 


365 


ARKANSAS 


these extremes are very unusual, the average 
January temperature being about 40° and that 
for July about 80°. 

Very little snow falls in Arkansas, but there 
is always plenty of rain. Droughts of any 
length are practically unknown, so the farmer 
need never fear the loss of his crops through 
lack of rain. In some sections 46.5 inches for 
the year is the average rainfall, but for the 
entire state it is but 40 inches. 

Mineral Springs. It is not only by reason of 
its climate that Arkansas is visited by people 
in search of health; but in its numerous min¬ 
eral springs it has a far more active health¬ 
giving agency. Geologists believe that far 
below the surface of the earth the rock masses 
are still hot, and that it is contact with these 
that produces the high temperature of the 
springs. Northern Arkansas has one famous 
spring region, at Eureka Springs, where gather 
thousands of visitors annually, but the most 
famous health resort of the state is Hot 
Springs, the “Baden-Baden of America,” as it 
is sometimes called. The Indians knew well 
the value of these springs, about fifty in num¬ 
ber, and spread abroad tales of their wonder¬ 
ful properties. These grew and grew until 
they culminated in the report of a “Fountain 
of Youth,” which led Ponce de Leon across the 
world. See Hot Springs. 

Agriculture. Its mild climate and excellent 
soil make Arkansas an agricultural state of 
importance. Its variations in altitude make 
possible the raising of practically all crops 
that may be grown from the Gulf of Mexico 
to the Great Lakes. Though a comparatively 
small proportion of the area is under cultiva¬ 
tion, that part is constantly increasing and 
yields an excellent return. 

1 Chief of the crops is cotton, of which about 
a million bales of nearly 500 pounds each are 
produced in a year, mostly in the rich, black 
soil of the southeastern lowlands. Some of it 
is of the very finest quality. Arkansas ranks 
sometimes sixth, sometimes seventh among 
the cotton-producing states. 

One crop exceeds cotton in acreage, and 
sometimes in value, and that is corn, which is 
grown on more than one-fourth of the culti¬ 
vated land. For the most part this is raised 
in the valleys and plateaus of the hilly sec¬ 
tion, but the alluvial region is also good corn¬ 
growing land. Oats and wheat have been 
rapidly increasing in importance in the last 
few years. In the lowest lands, part of the 
old flood plain of the Gulf of Mexico, are vast 


fields of rice, which produce in the neighbor¬ 
hood of 5.000,000 bushels each year. Statistics 
in regard to the rice-industry in Arkansas arc 
difficult to give, so rapidly do they change, 
for the increase in rice-production has been 
one of the astonishing features of recent agri¬ 
cultural development. Even in the best- 
watered regions irrigation is necessary for the 
growth of rice, and it has been the increase 
in irrigating features that has made rice-culture 
of importance. (See Rice, for map showing 
center of production.) 

The northwestern mountain section is locally 
known as the “Land of the Big Red Apple,” 
and the excellent product of that region has 
become widely known. Apples are not the 
only fruit that thrives there, however; the 
peach crop is even more valuable, and in some 
years only California surpasses Arkansas in 
the production of that fruit. Strawberries, too, 
are extensively cultivated, the “patches” yield¬ 
ing over 12,000,000 quarts a year. 

Stock-Raising. For a long time compara¬ 
tively little attention was paid to this indus¬ 
try, despite the fact that the stretches of 
grazing lands, the large corn-supply and the 
evervwhere-present springs and streams offered 
the best of opportunities. Recently, however, 
stock-raising has been growing in importance, 
and as a result forage crops of many sorts 
have become more and more widely spread. 
Now there are over a million cattle and hun¬ 
dreds of thousands of mules and sheep within 
the borders of the state. In 1913 there were 
more than 1,500,000 swine. The finer breeds 
of hogs thrive as well on the acorns with 
which the forest areas abound as do the 
“razor-backs,” and hog-raising can be carried 
on very cheaply. 

Forests and Lumbering. Arkansas is one of 
the most heavily wooded of all the states, 
about three-fourths of its area being yet in 
forests. Both hard and soft woods are to be 
found here: oak, cedar, the valuable black 
walnut, cypress, pine of various species, beech, 
red gum, maple and hickory are abundant, and 
the hardwoods vie with those of any other 
state in quality and value. Despite the great 
area of its forests the state has recognized the 
need for economy and has taken measures to 
prevent the deforesting of large tracts. One 
National Forest containing 1,073,955 acres 
already has been set aside in the western sec¬ 
tion, and another is to be established in the 
Ozark region. 

Manufactures. With this vast supply of tim- 


ARKANSAS 


366 


ARKANSAS 


ber it is natural that industries connected with 
lumber should be of prime importance. Lum¬ 
ber to the total of over two billion feet is 
produced annually, and is valued at almost 
$32,000,000. Some of the largest sawmills in 
the world are to be found in the southeastern 
section, where grows the yellow pine. Sashes, 
blinds, doors and interior finishings are also 
manufactured and shipped in large quantities. 

Next in importance are the manufacture of 
cottonseed oil and cake and flour and grist 
milling, but these fall far below the lumber 


industries in the value of their products. It 
may thus be seen that Arkansas has had no 
great development as a manufacturing state, 
largely because of the lack of transportation 
facilities. As these increase, however, there is 
certain to be steady growth, for not only is 
the supply of raw materials ample, but the 
fuel as well, as noted below. 

Mineral Resources. Arkansas has, chiefly in 
its upland section, extensive beds of coal 
which range in quality from lignite through 
bituminous to a harder variety known as semi¬ 
anthracite. Though the mining of coal is the 
chief mining industry, it has never been de¬ 
veloped to any great extent, because it has 
been as cheap to import coal from neighboring 


states. For years the annual yield has been 
about 2,000,000 tons. 

The most famous of the mineral products 
of Arkansas are the whetstones or oilstones 
found in the Ouachita Mountains. These are 
regarded as the best obtainable anywhere, and 
are used all over the world. Lead and zinc 
are mined in small quantities, and the depos¬ 
its of bauxite or aluminum ore are so exten¬ 
sive that much of the aluminum ware manu¬ 
factured in the United States is made from it. 
Arkansas also has the distinction of being the 


only state in which diamonds have been dis¬ 
covered in any appreciable quantity. The first 
were found in 1906, in Pike County, and 
roused intense excitement, but the yield has 
not yet been great enough to justify any ex¬ 
tensive mining operations. It is the belief of 
geologists that diamond mining may some day 
become important. Among the most valuable 
mineral resources of the state are its building 
stones, which include blue and gray granite 
in immense quantities, marble of excellent 
quality, limestone and slate. 

Transportation. The river systems have been 
particularly valuable in the development of 
Arkansas, and river traffic is still important, 
much of the commerce of the state finding 


ARKANSAS PRODUCTS CHART 

Figures Based on U.S.Government Reports 

Millions of Dollars Annually 


THE FARM 

Cotton 
Corn 

Cottonseed 
Swine slaughtered] 
Dairy Products 
Cattle sold 
Oats 

Garden Vegetables! 
Rice 
Eggs 
Peaches 
Mules sold 
Wheat 

Poultry Taised 
Swine sold 
Sweet Potatoes 
Potatoes 
Horses sold . 
Timothy,Clover 



50 THE MINE 


Soft Coal 

THE FACTORY 

Metal Products 
Leather Goods 
Brick andTile 
Woodworking 
Cooperage etc. 

Ill Manufactured Ice 
Furniture,Refrigerators 
Found ry,Machineshop 
Bread,etc. 

Cam age s ,Wagon s 
Printing,Publishing 
Railroad-car Repairs 
Flour,Grist 
Cottonseed Oil,Cake 
Lumber, Timber 
0 












































ARKANSAS 




DC 




Cotton 
per 
square mile 

□ less than I bale 
/ to 10 bales 
10 to 35 bales 
35 to 50 bales 



Physical 
Map 

□ below 500 ft, 
500 to /,000 ft 
I (000 to 2,000ft. 
Ea above 2,000 ft. 



□ 


r 


' J • : •' '•k i I ; ; l Aa 

r Jr^ ! ; ?. -5>i 

r : V 1 —r\~ jkf£ ; : L -—A £ 

•' •' - *‘K>6age*'. 


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.;:rT"-- v <^/--"^yt-A j r. 

.w 

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•*. L l.. 4 t c? ! 


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l rA. 1 X f r r v#; I"d 


77 


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' X"S-<5s%f V ’ 


an 

Grounds 
and Early 
Explorations 


r-> 



Congressional 
Districts 


DO 




















































































































































































































































































































































































































ARKANSAS 


3G8 


ARKANSAS 


an outlet through Memphis and New Orleans. 
But Arkansas also has an efficient railway serv¬ 
ice, though railroad-building has not been as 
extensive as in some of the states. Save in the 
mountainous northwestern section, however, 
there are now good facilities, and all the towns 
of importance are connected by railway lines. 
Since 1853, when the first railroad in the state 
was built, there has been steady though slow 
growth, and the state now has slightly more 
than 6,000 miles of line. The chief roads are 
the Saint Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern, 
the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific and the 
Saint Louis Southwestern. A state railroad 
commission, with authority to regulate all rates, 
has general supervision, and the state has pro¬ 
gressive laws as to railroad liability in case 
of accident. 

In electric railways the state is not far ad¬ 
vanced, there being but 113 miles in 1914. 

Educational Institutions. Like all states 
which have a proportionately large rural pop¬ 
ulation, Arkansas has found its educational 
problem a difficult one. At its admission to 
the Union in 1836 liberal provision was made 
for education, but no school sj'stem was organ¬ 
ized until after the War of Secession. Re¬ 
cently decided advance has been made, and 
since 1909 a compulsory school attendance law 
has been in force. Local taxation is needed 
for the support of schools, despite the public 
school fund of $1,500,000, but this latter will 
be increased as the resources and industries 
of the state develop. At present the percent¬ 
age in the state of those who cannot write is 
12.6, but a statement of this sort is scarcely 
fair to the white population, as it is the illiter¬ 
acy of the negroes which makes it so high. 

The population of school age—six to twenty 
—is somewhat over 550,000, and of these about 
325,000 are enrolled in the schools, negroes and 
white children attending separate institutions. 
The system includes grammar schools, over 
150 high schools, normals, four agricultural 
schools and a state university at Fayetteville 
(see Arkansas, University of). There are 
also many sectarian schools and colleges, some 
of them of high rank. 

State Institutions. Little Rock has most of 
the charitable and penal institutions; the Deaf 
Mute Institute, the School for the Blind, the 
Hospital for Nervous Diseases, the reform 
school and the state penitentiary are all in 
that city. Most, of the convicts are not left 
confined in the prison, but are employed on a 
state farm about thirty miles from Little Rock 


or are leased to contractors. The system of 
leasing has not been successful, and repeated 
efforts have been made to abolish it. 

Government. Arkansas has had three con¬ 
stitutions; the one under which it is now gov¬ 
erned was adopted in 1874. It provides for 
an executive department consisting of governor, 
secretary of state, treasurer, auditor and attor¬ 
ney-general, each of whom holds office for two 
years. As there is no lieutenant-governor, a 
new election must be held if the office of gov¬ 
ernor becomes vacant, unless such vacancy 
occurs less than one year before the expiration 
of the term, in which case the president of the 
senate becomes acting governor. 

The legislature comprises the usual two 
houses—a senate of thirty-five members and 
a house of representatives of not more than 
100 members. Senators are elected for four 
years, representatives for two, and a session of 
the legislature may not last longer than sixty 
days unless a two-thirds vote of each house 
decrees otherwise. 

At the head of the judiciaiy is a supreme 
court, and the lower tribunals include circuit, 
county and probate courts, besides justices of 
the peace. The units for local government are 
the county and the township. 

Amendments and legislative acts have added 
certain distinctive features to the governmental 
system. In 1893 an amendment was passed 
making the right of suffrage conditional upon 
payment of a poll tax, in 1911 an initiative and 
referendum provision was made, and in 1915 a 
bill was passed establishing state-wide prohibi¬ 
tion. 

History. Before the coming of the white 
man two great tribes of Indians lived in the 
Arkansas region—the Osages, who lived north 
of the Arkansas River, and the Quapaws, or 
Arkansas, as they were called by the French, 
who lived to the south. It was from this 
latter tribe that the territory took its name. 
It was not until the early years of the nine¬ 
teenth century, after the United States had 
gained control of the region, that these two 
native tribes finally left the state. The famous 
De Soto was the first white man to enter the 
territory now included in Arkansas; he spent 
about ten months there, journeying as far 
from the Mississippi as the Ozarks and the 
present site of Hot Springs. Indeed, it was the 
tales of these springs which had lured him 
so far from the Gulf. Some historians hold 
that the great explorer was buried in the 
Arkansas River, but most authorities believe 




ARKANSAS 


369 


ARKANSAS 


that it was into the Mississippi that his body 
was lowered. (See De Soto, Fernando.) 

For over a century and a half after his death 
no white man visited the region, but in 1682 
La Salle took possession of it in the name of 
France. Four years later French traders estab¬ 
lished a settlement at Arkansas Post, not far 
from the mouth of the Arkansas River, but 
no attempt was made to open up the wilder¬ 
ness. Ceded by France to Spain in 1763, and 
in 1800 back again to France, Arkansas came 
into the possession of the United States in 
1803 as part of the Louisiana Purchase (which 
see). For a time it was governed as a district 
of Missouri, but in 1819 was organized as 
Arkansas Territory, the present state of Okla¬ 
homa being included with it. On June 16, 
1836, it was admitted to the Union as the 
twenty-fifth state, and for a time its growth 
was rapid. 

When the War of Secession broke out there 
was doubt as to which side the state would 
join, for though slavery existed within its 
borders its population was fairly evenly divided 
between northern and southern sympathizers. 
Secession was decided upon, however, and sev¬ 
eral battles during the war occurred within 
the boundary of the state. Little Rock was 
captured by the Union forces in September, 
1863, and in the next year a constitution was 
adopted which prohibited slavery. This was 
rejected by Congress, however, the action due 
largely to the reconstruction quarrel in Con¬ 
gress, and not until 1868 was the state re¬ 
admitted to the Union (see Reconstruction). 
Meanwhile the carpet-baggers Rid come, with 
the evils which always attended them, and 
strife ran high between the carpet-bag faction 
and the “reformers” (see Carpet-Baggers). In 
1874, during the election of a governor, civil 
war was averted only by Federal aid. With 
the adoption in that year of the present con¬ 
stitution an era of renewed peace and progress 
began for the state which had for more than 
a decade been harassed and retarded in its 
development. The Democrats have been uni¬ 
formly victorious in elections. 

During recent years the history of the state 
shows steady progress in the development of 
resources and industries The outstanding 
events have been the legislative enactments 
mentioned above—the initiative and referen¬ 
dum and anti-saloon bills. 

Other Items of Interest. The bowie knife, 
first made in Arkansas for a brother of James 
Bowie of Alamo fame, is frequently known 


as the “Arkansas toothpick,” and the state is 
sometimes nicknamed the Toothpick State. 

The Black River and the White River 
abound in mussels, which are sought not only 
for the pearls which they contain, but because 
the shells form the basis of the pearl-button 
industry. 

It is estimated that the state has no fewer 
than 130 different kinds of trees. 

Some of the springs have a flow so strong 
that they furnish abundant water power. In 
Fulton County, for instance, there is one ap¬ 
propriately called Mammoth Spring which 
discharges about 9,000 barrels every minute. 

No other state has so small a per capita 
public debt. 

The state furnished 55,000 men to the Con¬ 
federate armies in the War of Secession. 

Seventy years ago, or thereabouts, the 
Arkansas cut a new channel across to the White 
River, about sixty miles above the mouth of 
the latter. The island formed by this cut-off 
is a heavily forested region abounding in 
game—a veritable sportsman’s paradise. 

In some parts of the state the summers are 
so long that two vegetable crops may be 
grown. 

“Lost hills” is the picturesque name given 
to those heights of land which in the rainy 
season are surrounded by impassable swamps. 

Scarcely a farm or garden is to be found 
in the state which does not have its sweet 
potato patch. 

When the rivers of Arkansas overflow it does 
not indicate that there has been a heavy rain¬ 
fall within the state, but that in Texas much 
rain has fallen or far off in the Rockies in 
Colorado the snow is melting rapidly. 

Alligators are found in the Mississippi as 
far north as the mouth of the Arkansas. 

Arkansas watermelons are especially fine, and 
are shipped all over the country. 

In early days bears were numerous, as the 
popular name of the state would indicate. 

The Arkansas Traveler is the name of a 
humorous dialogue which is given with violin 
accompaniment, the music being of a peculiarly 
lively nature. a.mc c. 


Related Subjects. The reader who desires a 
more detailed knowledge of Arkansas will find 
the following articles helpful: 


CITIES AND TOWNS 

Argenta Jonesboro 

Fort Smith Little Rock 

Helena Pine Bluff 

Hot Springs Texarkana 


’ll 
•« 
? i * 



ARKANSAS 


370 


ARKANSAS 



RESEARCH QUESTIONS ON ARKANSAS 


(An Outliue suitable for Arkansas will be found with the article “State.”) 

Where does Arkansas rank among the states with reference to mileage of navi¬ 
gable rivers? 

What are “ox-bows,” and where are they to be found? 

What was the origin of the wondrous tales which brought Ponce de Leon to 
America? 

Who was the first white man to set foot on the soil of Arkansas? 

To how many countries has the territory comprised in this state belonged? 

Give two nicknames of the state and tell the origin of each. 

What is the state flower? Is it especially appropriate? 

What advanced legislative enactments have been passed within recent years? 

Has the state more or fewer people to the square mile than the United States as a 
whole? 

What river of Arkansas, in its earlier stages, before it enters the state, flows 
through one of the most famous canyons in the country? 

Which could Arkansas better afford to lose, its lumber or its cotton? Its lumber 
or its corn? 

Do the large proportion of the people live in towns or in the country? 

What specially beautiful scenic region has Arkansas? 

How can melting snows in the Colorado mountains affect the Arkansas farmer? 

Are the farming and manufacturing industries fairly well balanced, or does one 
greatly outweigh the other? 

What is the Arkansas Traveler? 

How many times would the greatest altitude of Arkansas have to be multiplied 
to equal the greatest in Colorado? 

What state, considerably larger than Arkansas, was part of the latter when it 
was first organized? 

What city has had a particularly rapid growth in recent years? 

Do the rivers furnish anything of value except transportation and water power? 

Why are the summers longer than in Missouri or in Kansas? 

What do these long summers make possible? 

Why has rice-culture increased so noticeably in recent years? 

What is the “Baden-Baden of America”? 

What pleasant name is given to the northwestern region to indicate one of its 
chief resources? 

What special facilities has the state for stock-raising, and what advantage is 
being taken of them? 

Has the penal system of the state any unusual features? 

What mineral product of Arkansas is unsurpassed elsewhere in the world? 

If a botanist were confined in his labors to this one state, could he learn about 
many trees? 

What are “lost hills”? 

Has the state made any provision for conserving its forests? 

What three things are needed to make possible extensive manufactures? Which 
of them, if any, does Arkansas lack? 

How far north are alligators found? 

How does Arkansas rank among the states as regards its per capita debt? 

Is the most valuable crop always the one to which the largest acreage is devoted? 
























ARKANSAS 


371 


ARLINGTON 


EDUCATION 

Arkansas, University of 

HISTORY 

Carpet-baggers Quapaw 

Louisiana Purchase Reconstruction 


Ozark 

LEADING PRODUCTS 

Apple 

Hone 

Corn 

Lumber 

Cotton 

Rice 


RIVERS 

Arkansas 

Washita 

Mississippi 

Red 

White 


Consult Monette’s Discovery and Settlement of 
the Valley of the Mississippi; Reynold’s Makers 
of Arkansas History. 

ARKANSAS, a river of the United States, 
which is, excepting the Missouri, the largest 
tributary of the Mississippi. Its drainage basin, 
which has an area of 188,000 square miles, 
includes parts of Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, 
Missouri, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico. 
Rising on the east slope of the Rocky Moun¬ 
tains in the central part of Colorado, it first 
flows with rapid current through rocky canyons, 
one of which, the Royal Gorge, is nine miles 
long and one of the deepest and most beauti¬ 
ful canyons in North America. In its upper 
course much of its water is used for irrigation, 
and in its lower course, below Wichita, Kan., 
its sluggish waters are navigable for small 
steam vessels. The total length of the river 
is about 2,100 miles; its general direction is 
to the southeast, though it makes one pro¬ 
nounced northward bend in Central Kansas. 
See Royal Gorge. 

ARKANSAS, a tribe of Indians of the Sioux 
family. They are generally known as Qua- 
paws, under which name they are described in 
these volumes. 

ARKANSAS, University of, a state institu¬ 
tion established in 1871. Colleges of liberal 
arts and sciences, engineering, agriculture, a 
school of education and an agricultural exper¬ 
iment station are all located at Fayetteville, 
in the heart of the Ozark Mountains. The 
medical college is at Little Rock, and the 
branch normal college for negro students is 
at Pine Bluff. All the divisions of the uni¬ 
versity located at Fayetteville require a four- 
year high school course for entrance. The an¬ 
nual enrollment is over 800, and the number 
of professors and instructors about eighty. 
The annual income is approximately $250,000, 
derived chiefly from appropriations by the 


legislature and from funds received from the 
United States government under the Morrill 
Act of 1862 and later acts of similar purpose. 

The university has also an extension divi¬ 
sion for extension work in agriculture and 
home economics. In 1916 this division em¬ 
ployed 114 persons, and expended for the year 
1915-1916 more than $150,000. The extension 
work is done under a cooperative agreement 
with the United States Department of Agri¬ 
culture. 

The University of Arkansas attempts to 
impress upon its students the importance of 
thoroughness in scholarship. It also empha¬ 
sizes the fact that graduates of the university 
should attempt to make some return to the 
people of the state for the educational facil¬ 
ities furnished them, by taking part in some 
form of public or community service. j.c.f. 

ARKWRIGHT, ark'rite, Sir Richard (1732- 
1792), an English inventor of cotton-spinning 
machinery, who is rightly regarded as the 
founder of the modern factory system. As 
he was one of thirteen children of poor par¬ 
ents, he received little education, and at the 
age of thirteen was apprenticed to a barber. 
Having lived in a place where cotton-spinning 
was the chief industry, he early became inter¬ 
ested in the processes used in cotton manu¬ 
facture, and determined to better them. At 
that time cloth was made with a linen warp, 
as no way had been found to spin cotton fit 
for a warp, but Arkwright invented a spinning- 
frame that drew out the cotton from the card¬ 
ing machine into fine, hard-twisted thread, 
suitable for warp. 

His first machine was set up at Preston, but 
he was forced to leave because of the rage of the 
workmen against a machine which they thought 
would take their work from them, and he 
moved to Nottingham, where he became asso¬ 
ciated in partnership with two men who helped 
him to secure a patent for his invention. In 
1769 he set up his first mill, and later built a 
larger factory. Manufacturers tried to deprive 
him of his patents, and angry workmen de¬ 
stroyed his mills, but in the end he was 
entirely successful. John Halifax gives an 
excellent account of the opposition which the 
introduction of machinery stirred up in Eng¬ 
land. See Spinning; Factory and Factory 
Legislation. 

AR'LINGTON, Mass., an attractive residen¬ 
tial suburb of Boston, with a population of 
11,187 in 1910, which increased to 14,889 in 
1915. It is situated in Middlesex County, in 


ARLINGTON 


372 


ARM 


the nearly eastern-central part of the state, 
about six miles northwest of Boston, with which 
it is connected by an electric line. The city 
is also served by the Boston & Maine Railroad. 
Arlington was a part of Cambridge from 1635 
to 1807. In 1762 it was made a “precinct” of 
Cambridge under the name of Menotomy; it 
became a separate township under the name 
of West Cambridge in 1807, and its name was 
changed to Arlington in 1867. The area is a 
little more than five square miles. 

The city is an important center for market 
gardening. The principal manufactures are 
piano cases, picture frames and ice-cutting 
tools. Its fine library was the gift of Mrs. Eli 
Robbins; the high school was erected in 1915 
at a cost of $225,000, and the Arlington town 
hall, built in 1914, cost $385,000. Several sana- 
toriums located at Arlington Heights suggest 
an ideal health resort. Sky Pond is one of the 
most picturesque bodies of water in the vicin¬ 
ity of Boston. h.c.l. 

ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY, 
one of the most beautiful places of burial 



MONUMENT TO THE UNKNOWN DEAD 

In Arlington National Cemetery. The inscrip¬ 
tion is as follows : 

Beneath this stone 

Repose the bones of two thousand one hundred 
eleven unknown soldiers 
Gathered after the war 

from the fields of Bull Run and the route to 
the Rappahannock. Their remains could not be 
identified, but their names and deaths are 
recorded in the archives of their country; and 
its grateful citizens honor them as of their noble 
army of martyrs. May they rest in peace! 
September, a. d., 1866. 

in the United States, at Arlington, Va. About 
18,500 soldiers and sailors of the War of Seces¬ 


sion and the Spanish-American War, including 
a number of high military rank, lie in graves 
surrounding the fine colonial mansion which 
was once Robert E. Lee’s home, but which was 
seized by Federal troops ‘during the War of 
Secession. Headstones and monuments in Ar¬ 
lington cemetery can be seen from the Wash¬ 
ington Monument and other elevated spots in 
Washington, D. C., which lies just across the 
Potomac River. 

The village of Arlington is five miles north¬ 
west of Alexandria and three miles from Wash¬ 
ington. It can be reached from those cities 
by electric railway, but tourists unacquainted 
with this fact pay two dollars for the trip by 
automobile. 

ARM, the term generally applied to the 
upper limbs of the human body. Strictly 
speaking, the arm is that portion of the upper 
part of the body which extends from shoulder 
to elbow, the portion from the elbow to the 
wrist being called the forearm. This distinc¬ 
tion, however, is not usually observed, and 




BONES AND MUSCLES OF THE ARM 

(a) humerus; ( b ) radius; (c) ulna; ( d ) 
muscles of the arm; (e) the muscles of flexion 
and extension. 

when the arm is spoken of the entire upper 
limb above the hand is meant. 

The arms in man, not being needed for 
walking as in the case of many animals, have 
been developed for a number of higher uses, 
their great freedom of motion making this 
possible. Though used by primitive man only 
for climbing, seizing food, preparing it for use 
and conveying it to the mouth, and for pur¬ 
poses of attack and defense, the steady for¬ 
ward march of science and invention has vastly 
broadened their usefulness. The arms are also 


















































ARMADA 


373 


ARMADILLO 


employed as a mode of expression, as seen in 
shrugging the shoulders, in the various move¬ 
ments and positions assumed in talking, and 
finally, in the highest development yet 
achieved, the art of writing. 

The movements of the arm are accomplished 
by sets or groups of muscles, the flexors bend¬ 
ing the arm, the extensors extending it, the 
pronators turning the forearm over (palm 
downward) and the supinators turning it back 
again. The flexors and extensors move and 
control the motions of the hand and fingers. 
The muscles (biceps) of the upper arm bend 
it to an angle and the triceps straighten it out 
again. Then, too, attached to the upper part of 
the upper-arm bone are great muscles (pec¬ 
toral) which pull the arms across the chest; 
another great muscular mass draws the arms 
backwards, and there is also a muscle (the 
deltoid or shoulder muscle) which raises the 
arm above the head. Including the twenty- 
seven bones of the hand there are thirty bones 
in each arm. Those above the hand are the 
long bone of the upper arm, called the 
humerus, and the ulna and radius of the fore¬ 
arm. See Muscle; Joints; Skeleton; Hand. 

ARMADA, ar may' da, a name commonly 
used to mean the Invincible Armada sent out 
by Spain against England in 1588, though in 
reality it means anjr armed force. The great 
Spanish Armada was fitted out by Philip II, 
partially to avenge the death of Mary Queen 
of Scots, and consisted of 131 great war ves¬ 
sels, with over 19,000 soldiers and 8,000 sailors. 
The fleet had scarcely quitted Lisbon on May 
29 when it was shattered b}' a storm, and had 
to be refitted in Coruna. It was to cooper¬ 
ate with a land force collected in Flanders 
under the Prince of Parma, and to unite with 
this it proceeded through the English Channel 
toward Calais. 

As it sailed it was attacked bj^ the English 
fleet under Howard, Drake, Hawkins and 
Frobisher, and the great lumbering Spanish 
vessels suffered severely from the lighter Eng¬ 
lish craft, which could fire and escape before 
the Spaniards could train their guns upon 
them. Driven close to Gravelines, the armada 
was becalmed and thrown into confusion by 
fireships. The duke of Medina Sidonia, the 
commander, at last acknowledged his defeat 
and set out on his return journey round the 
north of Great Britain; but storm after storm 
assailed his ships, scattering them in all direc¬ 
tions and sinking many. Some went dotvn on 
the cliffs of Norway, others in the open sea, 


others on the Scottish coast. Only about fifty 
vessels arrived in Spain. That country’s naval 



power, till then supreme, never recovered from 
this blow. 

ARMADILLO, ar ma dil' o, an animal with an 
armor, which lives in South America. It is a 
harmless creature, and lies burrowed in the 
earth throughout the day, moving about only 
in the dark hours. When alarmed it curls 



THE ARMADILLO 

Showing, also, front and side views of the 
animal when curled into its shell. 

itself into a ball, protected on all sides by its 
hard, bony shell, and rolls away from its 
enemy. In some varieties the armor forms 
two large bands about the shoulders and 
haunches, separated by the narrow and flex¬ 
ible bands; in others, it is composed of a large 
number of small plates. 






















ARMAGEDDON 


374 


ARMENIA 


Armadillos vary in length from three feet 
to only five inches. As a rule they feed on 
fruits and roots, but they will eat anything, 
and some have a liking for carrion. They fre¬ 
quently eat ants, and are sometimes called 
ant-eaters, though differing from the true ani¬ 
mal of that name described in its proper place 
in this work. Their flesh is considered tasty, 
and they are also killed for their armor, which 
is made into baskets and ornaments. 

ARMAGEDDON, ar may ged' on, a name 
given in the Bible to the place in which the 
final great battle is to be fought on the Judg¬ 
ment Day between the forces of good and evil. 
Figuratively it was applied to any spot where 
a decisive conflict occurred, but it had no 
general popular significance until used by 
Theodore Roosevelt during the Presidential 
campaign of 1912. His declaration, “We stand 
at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord,” 
rescued the word from the partial oblivion 
into which it had fallen. 

ARMATURE, ar' ma tnre, in magnetism, the 
piece of soft iron or other substance which is 
placed across the poles of a magnet and is 
attracted by the magnetic force. The arma¬ 
ture, in fact, completes the magnetic circuit. 



ARMATURE 

The arrows (a, a) indicate the drums of the 
armature. 


The principle is the same, whether referring 
to electro-magnets or to permanent magnets, 
and is applied in the electric bell, the telegraph 
sounder and other instruments. See Magnet; 
Electro-Mag net. 

ARMENIA, ar me' ni a, the most persecuted 
country on earth, lies in the region between 
Asia Minor and the Caspian Sea, occupying 


the table-land which extends southward from 
the Caucasus Mountains. Once an independent 
kingdom, Armenia is now divided between the 



' ARMENIA 

The most unfortunate Christian community in 
the world. In the map the area within the 
small crosses marks the extent of Armenia in 
former days. 

Russians, Turks and Persians. In the War 
of the Nations it was the scene of the Grand 
Duke Nicholas’ campaigns against Turkey, and 
the names of many of its towns and lakes 
became familiar to the world, among them 
Erzerum, Bitlis, Urumiah, Erzingan and Lake 
Van. 

For centuries the Armenians, who are mem¬ 
bers of the oldest national Christian Church, 
have been mercilessly oppressed by the Mo¬ 
hammedan Turks and their subjects, the half¬ 
wild Kurds, and have frequently been the 
victims of massacres inspired by the Turkish 
government itself. From 1893 to 1896 at least 
20,000 and perhaps 50,000 of them were slaugh¬ 
tered, apparently according to instructions 
from the Sultan, the excuse being the activities 
of a few hundred revolutionists. At this time 
the threats and protests of outside nations, 
especially Britain, France and Russia, induced 
the government at Constantinople to put an 
end to the massacres, but during the next two 
decades there were many repetitions of them 
on a smaller scale. In 1915 came the crown¬ 
ing inhumanity of all which Ottoman rulers 
have conceived. Claiming that the Armenians 
were giving help to the Russian army which 
rendered it necessary to remove them from 
the scene of war, the Turks gathered all of 
the population which could be found, and 
drove them, women, children and old men 
alike, into the Arabian deserts. Hundreds of 
thousands perished of starvation or exhaustion, 
just how many will never be known. Germany 
and Austria alone were able to bring pressure 
on the Turkish authorities, but the massacre 
in many quarters was looked upon as a neces¬ 
sary military measure. 




















ARMENIA 


375 


ARMOR 


History. Armenia has long figured in the 
world’s story. The Bible gives the resting 
place of the ark as “the mountains of Ararat,” 
which was the ancient name for Armenia, and 
tradition names Noah’s great-grandson Haig 
as the founder of the Armenian race, whose 
members call themselves Haiks. The country 
was subject to the Assyrians and Medes, then 
freed itself but was reconquered by Alexander 
the Great in 325 b. c. Two satraps revolted 
from his successors, the Seleucid kings, about 
190 b. c. and divided the land into Armenia 
Major (Greater Armenia), roughly that part 
east of the Euphrates, and Armenia Minor 
(Lesser Armenia), the land westthe Euphra¬ 
tes. Shortly afterward Armenia Major was 
conquered by the Parthians, and its ruler, 
Tigranes the Great, son-in-law of Mithridates, 
was forced to give tribute to Rome in 69 b. c. 
From then until 387 a. d., when the Persians and 
Byzantines divided Armenia between them, 
the country was sometimes under Roman, 
sometimes under Parthian, sometimes under 
Persian rule. 

The religion of Zoroaster was favored in 
Armenia until 285, when Christianity was 
brought by Gregory the Illuminator. The Ar¬ 
menian faith is often spoken of as Gregorian 
(Christianity. 

The kingdom of Armenia arose in the elev¬ 
enth century, when the Byzantine governor of 
Armenia Minor made himself a free ruler. At 
the time of the Crusades, Armenia touched 
the shores of the Mediterranean in the little 
corner between Antioch and Tarsus, and its 
rulers aided in the fight against the Saracens. 
Shortly before 1400 the kingdom was over¬ 
thrown by the Egyptians and in 1541 fell to the 
Turks. Armenia Major, meanwhile, had been 
in infidel hands since 636, the Arabs first con¬ 
quering it, later the Mongols under Timur, 
then the Turks. For a century after 885 it was 
a subordinate kingdom of the Caliphate of 
Bagdad. Russia obtained its share of Armenia 
in 1828, from Persia. 

The People and Their Land. The Armenian 
race is of Aryan origin, and is thought to be 
very closely related to the ancient Alpine 
people of Europe. Before the War of the 
Nations the Armenians under Turkish rule 
numbered about 2,000,000, of whom only about 
one-third were in their native land. Another 
million were in Russia and half as many in 
Persia. Large numbers have emigrated to 
Europe and America, where they find success in 
many callings. Many of the bankers of Europe 


are Armenians. In spite of the dense ignorance 
of those who have remained in Asia, and the 
oppression to which the race has been sub¬ 
jected for centuries, the Armenians who reach 
the Western world are quick to take advantage 
of their opportunities for education and social 
betterment. 

Armenia is a country which under peaceful 
and just rule may easily become very wealthy 
from the yield of its land. It has rich pas¬ 
tures and fertile grain lands, and valleys where 
cotton, rice and tobacco flourish. Olives, figs 
and dates grow in the south, grapes and other 
non-tropical fruits farther north. Both forests 
and mines hold wealth for the future. The 
highest point is Mount Ararat, 17,000 feet 
above the sea. The principal rivers are the 
Tigris and Euphrates, flowing south; the Halys, 
which reaches the Black Sea on the north; 
and the Aras or Araxes, which discharges in 
the Caspian. Both Lake Van and Lake Uru- 
miah are, like the Caspian, salty. c.h.h. 

Consult Gladstone’s Armenian Question; 
Bryce’s Trans-Caucasia and Ararat. 

ARMOR, ar' mer, defensive covering to pro¬ 
tect the wearer in battle. Such articles are of 
very ancient origin, though the earliest de¬ 
fensive armor consisted only of a shield with 
which to ward off blows from club, sword, 
arrows or spears. In time, the need for greater 
protection was felt, and the shield was supple¬ 
mented by coverings for the most exposed 
parts of the body. Leather and cloth were first 
used, but they eventually gave place to metal. 
Helmets to protect the head were early 
adopted, then came breast plates, and later, 
coverings for the arms and legs. The shield 
and armor varied greatly, according to the 
fancy or requirements of the different nations 
adopting them. The Romans had two shields, 
one large and oblong, carried by the heavily 
armed legionaries to protect the whole body; 
the other, small and round, carried by mounted 
troops and lightly armed footmen. The Ro¬ 
man helmet was small, with a neck guard and 
two pieces fastening under the chin. The 
Greek helmet was large, with a lofty crest; the 
shield was large in the Homeric era, but con¬ 
siderably smaller later. Both Greeks and 
Romans wore greaves, jointed pieces of armor, 
on legs and arms, though the Romans usually 
wore them on the right leg only, the shield 
being relied on to protect the left leg. 

In the days of the Crusades, knights were 
covered with armor from head to foot, even 
the hands being protected by armored gaunt- 


ARMOR 


376 


ARMOUR 



DEVELOPMENT OF ARMOR 

(a) The equipment of a warrior in the Stone age; (b) a German soldier of the third and fourth 
centuries; (c) warrior of ancient Greece; ( d ) Roman soldier; (e) German in full armor at time 
of Maximilian I; (/) soldier of Western Europe in early seventeenth century; (g) French soldier 
of the eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries, the last type of armor-clad fighting men. 


lets. The armor was made of plates of metal 
or of metal rings linked together and worn 
over a leather tunic. The helmet had a visor 
or covering for the face, and when in full 
armor a knight was quite unrecognizable. This 
led to the introduction of armorial devices and 
bearings worn on the shield for purposes of 
identification. The making of armor developed 
into a high art, and the metal was so well 
forged that the wearer was fully protected 
from arrows, spqars and sword thrusts, except 
at the joints of the armor. After the intro¬ 
duction of gunpowder the use of armor grad¬ 
ually decreased, though noted armorers still 
provided armor which could not be penetrated 
by a musket ball. 

Against modern rifle bullets such armor 
would be useless as a protection and its weight 
would make it impossible for the wearer to 
move quickly enough for the requirements of 
modern war. The helmet still survives in 
some modern armies, particularly with the 
Germans, and is of great value as a protection 
against shrapnel. Against the high-powered 
explosives now used by all countries, however, 


armor is of slight value. The only defense, 
entirely inadequate, is a protective coloring in 
uniforms which renders it difficult for the 
enemy to determine that a company of men 
is not a part of the distant landscape. See 
Unib’orm. f.st.a. 

ARMORY, ar'meri, a building in which 
arms and other instruments of war are stored, 
and which very frequently contains rooms for 
the use of troops. These rooms may be merely 
drill rooms, but in the United States the 
armories devoted to the use of state militia often 
have all the fittings and luxuries of a gymna¬ 
sium and club house combined. The state or 
national government pays for the buildings and 
for their upkeep, but the officers and soldiers 
provide the club house features at their own 
expense. An attempt is always made to have 
the buildings present a military appearance, 
and most of them are well adapted to serve as 
places of defense in case of trouble. 

ARMOUR, ar'mer, Philip Danforth (1832- 
1901), an American merchant and philanthro¬ 
pist, one of the founders and for forty-one 
years the head of Armour & Co., the largest 


















ARMOUR INSTITUTE 


377 


ARMS 


pork-packing and dressed-meat establishment 
in the world. He was born at Stockbridge, 
N. Y., and in 1852 went to California, where 
he spent the next four years without marked 
success. In 1856 he engaged in the wholesale 
grocery and grain commission business in Mil¬ 
waukee, Wis., and a few years later joined his 
brother, Herman O. Armour (1837-1901), and 
others in the pork-packing business under the 
name Armour, Plankinton & Co. After 1870 
this firm was known as Armour & Co., and 
rapidly became the greatest of its kind, with 
branches in all parts of the world. Armour 
had many interests outside his business, and 
donated large sums to philanthropic projects. 
He founded Armour Institute of Technology 
(which see). 

Jonathan Ogden Armour (1863- ), his son, 

succeeded his father as head of Armour & 
Co., and he has extended the banking, railroad 
and .other interests of the family. 

ARMOUR INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, 
at Chicago, Ill., was founded by Philip Dan- 
forth Armour in 1892, as a school of col¬ 
legiate rank to combine “broad scientific train¬ 
ing with the elements of liberal culture.” The 
first classes were held in 1893, and the average 
attendance is now about 700, besides an equal 
number who attend the night school. Courses 
are offered in all branches of engineering, in 
architecture, and in many subjects such as 
political science, history, philosophy, English 
composition and literature, which are consid¬ 
ered necessary to a well-rounded education. 
The laboratories and workshops are provided 
with modern equipment, and the institute has 
a reference library of 30,000 volumes. The 
productive endowment is $2,000,000, and the 
annual income is about $200,000. There has 
been but one president, Frank Wakely Gun- 
saulus. 

ARMS, a term generally applied to weapons 
of offense and defense carried in the hands or 
worn attached to supports such as belts, and 
wielded by hand. Weapons with which armies 
and navies are equipped, such as guns and 
cannon, not carried by one man, are classed 
as artillery , under which heading they are fully 
described. 

Modern Arms. The soldiers of the armies 
engaged in the War of the Nations were armed 
with rifles, carbines, bayonets, lances and 
swords. Infantry regiments used only rifle 
and bayonet; cavalry men were provided with 
lance, sword and rifle or carbine, or only sword 
and carbine. Officers of all ranks carried pistols 


or revolvers as well as swords. The bayonet 
is the most modern offensive weapon not a 
firearm, having been invented about 1650 (see 
Bayonet). The weapons now used are fully 
described under their respective titles. See 
Rifle; Sword; Lance; Revolver; Spear; Bow; 
Machine Gun. 

Historical Development. Prehistoric man 
probably found his first offensive and defensive 
weapon in a wooden club which gradually 
gave place to clubs and axes of stone and 
spears with heads of sharpened flint. Clubs 
were no doubt effective weapons at close quar¬ 
ters, but the desire to kill the enemy while at 
a greater distance led to the introduction of 
the bow and arrow and the javelin, which was 
hurled a short distance by hand. The crude 
weapons of the Stone Age were greatly im¬ 
proved upon when the secret of metal working 
was discovered. Swords, knives, axes of bronze 
and lances and javelins with bronze tips came 
into general use. These, in turn, gave place to 
weapons of iron, which give the name of Iron 
Age to the period of their use. These iron 
weapons were made from beaten metal, not 
cast in any mold, hence there was a great 
variety of patterns, each maker suiting his 
individual fancy. 

Among the ancient Egyptians and Assyrians 
the bow was the principal weapon of offense, 
though short swords were worn for use at close 
quarters. The Greeks trusted mainly to the 
lance, javelin and spear, but they also carried 
short swords. The Roman soldier carried a 
sword with two edges, about twenty-four inches 
in length, and its use made Rome mistress of 
the world, none being able to withstand the 
attacks of the phalanxes of the Roman legions. 
In the Middle Ages knights were armed with 
lance, sword and battle axe, or mace, while 
foot soldiers carried bows and swords. For 
centuries the six-foot yew bow, discharging a 
“cloth yard shaft,” an arrow three feet in 
length, was considered the most deadly of all 
weapons. The introduction of the crossbow 
was regarded as an improvement, though many 
of the greatest soldiers retained the older form 
of weapon. The longbow and the crossbow 
were both rendered obsolete by the invention 
of gunpowder, which in battle equalized the 
armed knight and the unprotected foot soldier. 
At the siege of Cambrai in 1339 cannon of 
unwieldy shape and size were used and hurled 
stones and metal balls through ranks of foot 
and horse. Then commenced the development 
of the weapons of modern warfare. f.st.a. 


ARMSTRONG 


378 


ARMY 


ARMSTRONG, Samuel Chapman (1839- 
1893), the founder of Hampton Normal and 
Agricultural Institute (which see) and the man 
who fashioned the educational policy for 
negroes and Indians in America. He was a 
son of an American missionary, and was edu¬ 
cated at Oahu College, Honolulu, and Williams 
College, Massachusetts. He entered the Union 
army, served during the War of Secession and 
was mustered out with the rank of brigadier- 
general of volunteers. 

On leaving the army, he was associated with 
General 0. 0. Howard in the Freedmen’s 
Bureau, and during the two years in which he 
was engaged in this work matured a careful 
plan for educating negroes. He then founded 
Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. 
To the establishment and work of this school 
he devoted the remainder of his life. The 
men and women trained at Hampton return to 
their native states and establish similar institu¬ 
tions there, or into a variety of life occupations 
carry Hampton enthusiasm, and in this manner 
General Armstrong’s ideas have been extended 
throughout the country. 


ARMSTRONG, William George, Lord (1801- 
1900), became famous as the inventor of the 
one-time remarkable Armstrong gun. He was 
an English mechanical engineer, whose interest 
in scientific work had lured him from the 
study of law. The hydro-electric machine and 
the hydraulic crane were among his earlier 
inventions, and in 1854 he invented the rifled 
gun which bears his name. On presenting his 
patents to the British government he was 
knighted by Queen Victoria and appointed 
engineer of rifled ordnance. The universities 
of Cambridge and Oxford conferred honorary 
degrees upon him, and in 1887 he was made a 
peer. 

Armstrong Gun, the breech-loading rifled 
gun invented by William George Armstrong, 
first used by the British in the Chinese War 
in 1860. It was made of wrought iron in coils 
welded together and had an inner tube of 
steel rifled in several grooves. Although it 
marked a great advance when first used, it has 
now been superseded by more efficient weapons, 
which are all, however, based on the principles 
embodied in Armstrong’s model. 



RMY, a term applied to a body 
of men organized and disciplined to act to¬ 
gether to conduct warfare on land, and placed 
at the disposal of a nation or person for that 
purpose. 

Though huge hosts of fighting men were 
gathered in ancient times, the modern army 
is an outgrowth of the fourteenth-century “free 
companies,” which were men organized under 
definitely-appointed leaders for the purpose of 
improving the art or “handicraft” of war, and 
of making their own services more valuable. 
These free companies hired themselves out to 
fight for those who were willing to pay for 
their help. Their members became the most 
efficient fighters and therefore were in great 
demand. But with them war was merely a 
trade. There was no patriotism in their fight¬ 
ing, no desire for personal distinction, no spirit 
of emulation. Soldiers were simply members 


of a well-organized labor union, fighting for 
pay; they lacked love of country or conviction 
of the justice of the cause for which they 
fought. Such a group were the Hessians hired 
by England to fight the American colonists 
in the Revolutionary War. It is of interest to 
note, however, in this connection, that some of 
these Hessians remained in America after the 
war and became citizens of the new nation, and 
that their descendants are to-day among the 
sturdiest and most loyal supporters of the 
government. Gradually came the end of the 
employment of the free companies, as soldiers 
fighting for hearth and home proved superior to 
mere war mechanics. But the methods by 
which the free companies had brought their 
fighting powers to a high state of efficiency have 
been retained and adapted by military authori¬ 
ties to meet modern requirements. This was 
demonstrated in the. War of the Nations. 



























ARMY 


379 


ARMY 


Army Organization 


An army organization is the most efficient 
organization the world knows. When civilians 
proved unequal to the titanic task of building 
the Panama Canal, the army of the United 
States was called in and rapidly and success¬ 
fully completed that work. In the War of 
the Nations, which began in 1914, the thorough¬ 
ness of military methods was even more effec¬ 
tively demonstrated in handling foodstuffs, 
building railroads and organizing all the people 
of a nation in their agriculture and manufac¬ 
tures. It is, in fact, because of this very 
efficiency, gained at the expense of individual 
freedom, that militarism is opposed, for it is 
assumed to threaten the independence of the 
people. 

The principle of army organization is that 
each man is responsible to a superior in every¬ 
thing, and that he must obey absolutely, no 
matter what the command. Tennyson gave 
this truth striking emphasis in The Charge of 
the Light Brigade, wherein are the lines— 

“Forward, the Light Brigade!” 

Was there a man dismayed? 

Not though the soldier knew 
Some one had blunder’d; 

Theirs not to make reply, 

Theirs not to reason why, 

Theirs but to do and die ; 

Into the valley of Death 
Rode the six hundred 

Though all men are born equal, they cease to 
be so when they enter the army. Even officers 
of the same rank are graded, generally accord¬ 
ing to the length of their service. 

Spirit. In war times more than in peace the 
effectiveness of an army depends upon morale, 
the spirit of its men, and upon esprit-de-corps, 
which means loyalty of the men to the organi¬ 
zation. For this reason the volunteer system 
is believed by English, Canadians and Amer¬ 
icans to produce a better body of fighting men 
than enforced service, for volunteers, fight to 
win a cause and not merely to obey their 
superior officers. 

But even in volunteer armies there is a vast 
difference in the degree of democracy believed 
to be productive of the highest discipline. 
There are ordinarily three grades of soldiers, 
commonly spoken of as Officers, N.C.O.’s and 
Men. The officers are more correctly termed 
commissioned officers and include all between 
the ranks of general or field marshal and lieu¬ 
tenants; they are appointed, or commissioned, 
by the government. N.C.O. means non-com¬ 


missioned officer, a sergeant or corporal, whose 
appointment comes only from his own regi¬ 
ment. Men refers to privates, who have no 
authority except, for instance, as they are 
temporarily made sentries. British army offi¬ 
cers never meet N.C.O.’s as equals, even when 
off duty. For one to eat with the other or to 
join him in amusements is considered de¬ 
structive of discipline. In the militia of the 
United States the other extreme is reached, 
and the officers, though receiving their com¬ 
missions from the government, are often 
elected by those whom they are to command. 
Canadian troops in theory follow the English 
idea of the social separation of officers, but in 
practice are democratic. That their indiffer¬ 
ence to discipline while off duty did not ad¬ 
versely affect their esprit-de-corps in the des¬ 
perate fighting of the War of the Nations is 
well known. 

Supplies. In modern warfare the effective¬ 
ness of an army often depends more on its 
organization than on the bravery of its mem¬ 
bers. Troops must be quickly transported to 
their stations and must have a supply of arms 
and ammunition at all times, and in trench 
warfare food and sanitation win more battles 
than do bullets and shells. During the War 
of the Nations hot meals were served to the 
soldiers in the trenches, even during the 
progress of violent battles, for it was found 
that each man did his work with more zeal if 
his hardships were lessened. In the Serbian 
campaigns cleanliness would have been more 
valuable at times than reenforcements in men 
or munitions. 

The Parts of an Army. An army is made up 
of units within a unit. A mob may be organ¬ 
ized to the extent that it will follow a leader, 
but its effectiveness disappears when it is 
divided. An army, on the other hand, can be 
separated into any number of parts to accom¬ 
plish the work in hand. Most of the military 
forces of the world are nearly alike in forma¬ 
tion, the principal differences being in the 
names of the units and of the officers com¬ 
manding them, and in the number of men 
within each unit. The three main arms of the 
service are the infantry, cavalry and artillery. 
The engineers, aviators, signal corps, ambulance 
corps and others are no less important but 
smaller in number. 

A nation may have several armies, each 
responsible, through its commander, only to 


ARMY 


380 


ARMY 


the commander-in-chief of all the forces. An 
army, in this technical sense, is composed of 
two to five army corps, aggregations of from 
30,000 to 35,000 men, and each corps is in turn 
made up of divisions. The division is the 
smallest body normally containing two or more 


arms of the service, and its make-up varies 
according to its description, as an infantry 
division or a cavalry division. In the United 
States and Great Britain the following plans 
of organization prevail, but these are always 
subject to needed modifications: 


heavy battery 


Great Britain 

3 brigades (each 4 battalions) 
1 

4 
2 
1 
1 
1 
1 


squadron 

brigades, 1 

companies 

company 

squadron 

column 

train 


3 ambulances 

598 officers, 18,075 other men, 
6,161 horses, 76 guns. 


TACTICAL, OR INFANTRY, DIVISION 

Infantry 
Cavalry 
Field Artillery 
Engineers 
Signal 
A ero 

Ammunition 
Supply 
Engineer 
Sanitary 


United States 
3 brigades 
1 regiment 
brigade 
regiment 
field battalion 
squadron 
train 
train 
train 

1 train (4 ambulance companies, 
3 field-hospital companies). 


1 

1 

1 

1 

1 

1 

1 


4 brigades 
2 brigades 
4 troops 
1 squadron 
1 squadron 

1 cavalry train 

4 ambulances 

486 officers, 9,410 other men, 
10,195 horses, 24 guns. 


TYPICAL CAVALRY DIVISION 
Cavalry 

Horse Artillery 
Engineers , mounted 
Signal, mounted 
Aero 

Ammunition 

Supply 

Engineer 

Sanitary 


3 brigades 
1 regiment 
1 battalion 
1 field battalion 
1 squadron 
1 train 
1 train 
1 train 
1 train 


A brigade is the largest unit of any one arm. In the United States it is made up as follows: 


Infantry 


Brigade (about 4,000 men) 

I 


I-'——i-1 

Regiment Regiment Regiment 

l l l i 1 l i 

Battalion Battalion Battalion Headquarters Company Machine Gun Company Supply Company 


I 


I- 

Company 


I 

Company 


1 


(4 guns) 


-i—' 

Company 

I 


Company 


Platoon 


1- 

Squad 


—i-1-1 

Platoon Platoon Platoon 

—i -r-—i 

Squad < Squad) (Squad) (two to four squads) 

I 


r 


1 Corporal 7 Privates 

A company consists of 100 men and 3 officers. (May be increased in the discretion of the Presi¬ 
dent by 50 enlisted men.) 


Cavalry 


Regiment 


Brigade 

1 


I 

Regiment 

I 


-1 

Regiment 


i-1-1-1-r-~i 

Squadron Squadron Squadron Headquarters Troop Machine Gun Troop (4 guns) Supply Troop 

j (includes band) 


i-r~—i-r-1 

Troop Troop Troop Troop (Troop) (four to five) 

A troop consists of 70 men, 3 officers. (May be increased in the discretion of the President by 
35 enlisted men.) 













ARMY 


381 


ARMY 


Artillery Brigade 


Regiment Regiment Regiment Headquarters Company Supply Company 


Battalion Battalion 


Battery Battery Battery 

f Such number of guns and howitzer batteries ) 

| as the President may direct. ( 

A battery in the field artillery contains 126 men (which may be increased in the discretion of 
the President by 64 men), 162 horses, 4 guns; in the horse artillery 171 men, 235 horses, 4 guns; 
in mountain artillery 165 men, 4 guns. 


Officers. Army officers are of two types, 
commanding (line) officers and staff officers. 
The latter are the assistants to the commander 
of a regiment or any larger unit. 

In the United States the President is com- 
mander-in-chief of the armed forces. There 
are several grades of general officers, namely, 
generals, lieutenant-generals, major-generals, 
brigadier-generals and the various members of 
the General Staff, such as the quartermaster- 
general, the adjutant-general and the paymas¬ 
ter-general. In times of peace the grades of 
general and lieutenant-general are often allowed 
to lapse. In war time a general would prob¬ 
ably command an army, a lieutenant-general 
an army corps, a major-general a division and 
a brigadier-general a brigade. In Great Britain 
the highest officer is the field-marshal. 

The commander of a regiment is a colonel. 
In the United States a battalion is under the 
charge of a major; in Great Britain, where the 
battalion contains twice as many companies, 
it is assigned to a lieutenant-colonel. A cap¬ 
tain commands a company, assisted by two 

Armies of 

United States. The United States army has 
always been small, in comparison with Euro¬ 
pean armies, and military service has, except 
during the War of Secession, been entirely vol¬ 
untary and based on the principle that “one 
volunteer is worth three pressed men.” In 
1790 the rank and file of the army consisted 
of 1,216 men. In 1861, at the beginning of the 
War of Secession, it totaled about 15,000. Be¬ 
tween 1861 and 1865, however, nearly 4,000,000 
men were enrolled in the contending armies of 
the North and South. These figures eclipsed 
those relating to any previous war and opened 
wide the eyes of the world to what could be 
accomplished by a peace-loving nation without 
a definite military system, if thrown into war. 
During that war, however, the total of the 


lieutenants. A squadron of cavalry is given to 
a major and a troop to a captain. A battery 
is a captain’s command in the United States 
army, a major’s in the British. The lieutenant- 
colonel in the'United States army is merely an 
assistant to the colonel; in the British, he prac¬ 
tically replaces the latter in the handling of 
matters of detail. 

Corporals march in the ranks with the pri¬ 
vates. Sergeants are posted as guides and in 
the line of file closers in rear of the company. 
The first-sergeant has special duties, as have 
also the mess-sergeant and supply-sergeant. 
The color-sergeants, battalion and regimental 
sergeants-major are members of the regimental 
headquarters company. A lance-corporal is a 
corporal whose appointment is not yet made 
permanent. 

An adjutant (which in Latin means one who 
aids ) is an assistant to the commander of a 
regiment, and usually holds the rank of cap¬ 
tain or lieutenant. An aid or aid-de-camp is 
a general’s assistant, and he may have the 
rank of lieutenant or colonel. l.r.g. 

the World 

authorized regular army never exceeded 40,000 
men, the remainder being special volunteers 
who returned to civil life as soon as their 
services were no longer required. The max¬ 
imum war strength of the United States army 
in the Spanish-American War was 10,017 offi¬ 
cers and 213,218 enlisted men, but of these only 
63,000 formed the total of the authorized 
regular army. 

Before the passage of the Chamberlain-Hay 
Bill, approved by the President in June, 1916, 
the regular army of the United States was less 
than 100,000 men. Of these, two-thirds were 
assigned to coast defenses, island possessions, 
recruiting points and other permanent posts, so 
that slightly more than 30,000 were mobile 
troops, To them could have been added m 







ARMY 


382 


ARMY 


time of war 127,000 men and officers of the 
militia. 

The new bill increased the authorized reg¬ 
ular army to a total enlisted force of the line 
of 175,000, and an aggregate of officers and 
men, line and staff corps, of approximately 
225,000. The strength of the militia was made 
425,000 and its members were required to take 
an oath of allegiance to the national as well as 
to their individual state governments. Summer 
training camps for civilians were provided, and 
a board of industrial mobilization whose busi¬ 
ness is to organize munition-making factories 
in war time. A feature of the enlarged United 
States army not known in any other military 
organization in the world is that its soldiers, 
during their seven years of service, receive 
vocational training. 

Congress alone has the power to vote and 
raise money for the maintenance of the army, 
and once during the life of each Congress, 
which is two years, the army appropriation bill 
is passed. In cases of emergency a special vote 
is called. The cost of the small army main¬ 
tained before 1916 was about $95,000,000, or 
about $1 for each citizen. This does not 
include the expenditures of each state on its 
militia. 

It has always been the desire of the United 
States to free its citizens as much as possible 
from the burden of militarism by keeping its 
army as small as is consistent with efficiency 
and national dignity. The United States sol¬ 
dier is envied by European soldiers because 
he is better housed, better paid and perhaps 
treated more as a self-respecting citizen than 
his European brother in arms. The pay table 
in times of peace of soldiers below commis¬ 
sioned rank in the various countries is as fol¬ 
lows, in terms of United States and Canadian 
money: 


United States, with which it has maintained 
over one hundred years of peace, Canada does 
not need a large standing army. The Do¬ 
minion contributed men to Lord Wolseley’s 
Nile expedition in 1885, to the South African 
War, and very notably to the War of the 
Nations, and Canadian soldiers have a reputa¬ 
tion for unexcelled bravery. 

The forces of the country are controlled by 
the Militia Council, of which the Minister of 
Militia is president. In peaceful times thej' 
consist of a permanent militia (including artil¬ 
lery) of 3,500 men, and a non-permanent 
militia with nearly 80,000 members. The lat¬ 
ter drills periodically and trains in camp for 
a short period each year, in the same manner 
as the National Guard of the United States. 
Its members are required to serve for home 
defense only, and all overseas contingents are 
recruited by special volunteers. Canadian sol¬ 
diers are well paid (see the table earlier in 
this article, under the subhead United States), 
and the annual cost of the militia before the 
great European war was from seven to nine 
million dollars, or slightly over $1 for each 
inhabitant of the Dominion. 

British Army. Englishmen and Americans 
have never taken kindly to the idea of com¬ 
pulsory military service, and they object to 
paying for the maintenance of an army of 
which they do not see imperative need. The 
British law enacted in the Bill of Rights in 
1689 expressly declares it illegal for the king 
to maintain an army in time of peace without 
the consent of Parliament. This provision has 
never been revoked. 

The army of Great Britain is divided into 
two parts, one for foreign or colonial service, 
the other for home defense. The territorial 
army, organized after the Boer War, is for the 
latter purpose. The term of enlistment in the 


Rank United States Canada 

First Sergeant.$520 to $820 .... 

Second Sergeant. 360 to 576 .... 

Corporal . 252 to 468 .... 

Private . 180 to 300 $273 


Soldiers of the United States army are 
allowed more freedom of personal judgment 
and more voice in what concerns their own 
welfare than are European troops. In the 
National Guard in some states the men elect 
their own officers, but military men regard this 
as an undesirable feature. 

Canada, Because its only neighbor is the 


England 

France 

Germany 

Russia 

Italy 

$422 

$73 to $270 



$182 

198 

51 to 248 

$76.00 

$8.72 

153 

140 

17 to 139 

37.80 

5.48 

84 

85 

4 to 18 

20.00 

3.78 

73 


regulars is usually twelve years—seven with 
the colors and five with the reserve. The age 
for enlistment, except in cases of national emer¬ 
gency, are from eighteen to twenty-five. The 
military establishment of Great Britain before 
the War of the Nations in 1914 was as follows: 
regular army, 156,110; reserves, 209,914; terri¬ 
torials and militia, 258,437; colonial forces, 
















ARMY 


383 


ARMY 


a 


OUTLINE AND QUESTIONS ON THE ARMY 

\ 


Outline 


I. Origin of Modern Army 

(1) Hired soldiers 

(2) Methods of “free companies” 

II. Organization 

(1) Efficiency 

(2) Principle of army organization 

(3) Difference in rank and grade of offi¬ 

cers and men 

(4) Advantage of volunteer system 

(5) Esprit de Corps 

(6) Importance of supplies and accommo¬ 

dations 

(7) Units of army; corps and divisions 

(a) Comparison of divisions of the 

armies of the United States and 
Great Britain 

(8) Officers 

(a) Commanding 

(b) Staff 

III. Armies of the World 

(1) United States 

(a) Volunteer service 

(b) Militia 

(c) Cost and size of army 

(d) The Chamberlain-Hay Bill 

(e) Vocational training of soldiers 

(f) United States soldiers compared 
with European soldiers 

(2) Canada 

(a) Small standing army 

(b) Militia for home defense 

(c) Reputation for bravery 

(d) Administration and cost 


(3) Great Britain 

(a) “Territorial Army” for home de¬ 
fense 

(b) Division for foreign and colonial 
service 

(c) Enlistment and service 

(d) Administration and cost 

(4) Germany 

(a) Compulsory military service 

(b) Periods of service in various divi¬ 
sions 

(c) Size and cost 

(d) Administration of army 

(5 ) France 

(a) Compulsory military service 

(b) Periods of service in different 
divisions 

(c) Administration and cost of army 

(6) Russia 

(a) Compulsory service 

(b) Terms of service in various divi¬ 
sions 

(c) Character of soldiers 

(d) Size and cost of army 

(7) Italy 

(a) Universal service 

(b) Differences from German system 

(c) Administration and cost of army 

(8) Austria-Hungary 

(a) Organization similar to German 
army 

(b) Size and cost 

(9) Other nations 

(a) Compulsory service, general 


Questions 

Why is it no longer the custom to hire foreign soldiers to fight the battles of a 
country? 

What is the difference between a commissioned and a non-commissioned officer? 
What is the commander of a regiment called? 

Is it correct to speak of the captain of a battalion? 

What are regarded as the three main arms of the service? 

How large was the regular army of the United States in January, 1916? What 
additions were provided for in 1916? 

How many men volunteered for service in the British army in the first year and 

-a half of the War of the Nations? 

Do the majority of nations have voluntary or compulsory service? 

What is a lance-corporal? 

Why does Canada not need a large standing army? 

What plan does Italy follow in placing its recruits, and what is the object? 
















ARMY 


384 


ARMY 


87,114; total, 711,575 men. Of this number 
only the regular army and the reserve were 
available for foreign service except in cases 
where individuals or whole corps of the auxil¬ 
iaries specially volunteered. However, before 
conscription was put into effect over 5,000,000 
men had answered their country’s call between 
August, 1914, and January, 1916. 

The total cost of the British army (exclusive 
of troops for India, of which the cost is borne 
by the Indian government) for a year of peace 
is £28,000,000 (about $135,000,000), or about 
$3 for each person in the kingdom. A com¬ 
parison with the estimated cost of the Panama 
Canal shows that in three years of peace the 
British army in England, exclusive of its over¬ 
sea forces, costs more than was needed to 
complete the canal, which employed over 40,000 
men in peaceful labors for seven years. The 
administration of the army is in the hands of 
an army council and a Secretary of State for 
War. 

German Army. Since 1871, after the close 
of the Franco-German War, there has been 
compulsory military service throughout the 
German Empire. Every male must serve in 
the army or navy unless mentally or plwsically 
unfit. At the beginning of the European war 
in 1914 it was estimated that the German 
Empire could raise a fighting force of 7,900,000 
men, all of whom had undergone military train¬ 
ing. The total strength of the army in peace 
times is 770,000. Each man is expected to 
serve either two or three years in the standing 
army, and the balance of a term of seven 3 ^ears 
in the reserves, after which lie is drafted into 
the landwehr (home defense force). At the age 
of thirt 3 ^-nine he leaves the landwehr for the 
landsturm, where he remains until he reaches 
the age of fort 3 r -five. The landsturm consists 
of those available for service in an emergenc 3 *, 
including both the graduates of the landwehr 
and the younger men who have escaped mili¬ 
tary training. Military service may be re¬ 
quired from the age of seventeen, but actual 
training usually begins at twenty. Sometimes 
the term with the standing army is reduced 
to one year in cases of men of good education 
and intelligence. Each army corps is recruited 
from a particular territory and passes its time- 
expired men into the landwehr of the same 
district, so that local as well as national pride 
is encouraged among the men. See Landwehr ; 
Landsturm. 

The total cost of the army in times of 
peace is estimated at $210,000,000 per year, or 


$3.23 per unit of population. The organization 
and administration is centralized in the kaiser 
and a general staff. 

French Army. In the year 1872, as soon as 
reconstruction could be effected following the 
disastrous Franco-German War, compulsor 3 T 
military service was legalized in France. The 
form of conscription previously in force al¬ 
lowed substitution; a man not desiring to 
serve could pay another to take his place. This 
led to abuses and substitution was abolished. 
Under the law now in force three 3 r ears must 
be spent in the active army, eleven years in 
the reserve, seven in the territorial army cor¬ 
responding to the German landwehr, and seven 
more in the territorial reserve corresponding to 
the German landsturm . It is estimated that at 
the outbreak of the War of the Nations in 
1914 the troops of France totaled 703,000, of 
which 134,000 were in colonial service, many 
of them natives. Altogether there were nearly 
5,000,000 trained men of military age, but it is 
probable that considerably more than this 
number were placed under arms between 1914 
and 1916. The French soldiers are of rather 
small stature, but are wiry, active and en¬ 
thusiastic. Though experts had often expressed 
the opinion that a French attacking force was 
far superior to an equal French force on the 
defensive, the War of the Nations proved the 
heroic resistance of which France is capable. 

The 3 ^early cost of the maintenance of the 
French army in peace times is estimated at 
$290,000,000, or about $7.25 per unit of popula¬ 
tion. The administration consists of a general 
staff and a number of departments under the 
Minister of War. 

Russian Army. After the Russo-Japanese 
War the Russian army became almost an un¬ 
known quantity until the outbreak of the War 
of the Nations. That great changes had been 
made and that the efficienc 3 ^ of the army as a 
whole had been raised was proved by its rapid 
mobilization and stubborn work throughout the 
war. 

The military system of Russia is similar to 
that of Germany and France, each soldier serv¬ 
ing in various ranks, active and inactive, from 
his twentieth to his forty-third year. Cos¬ 
sacks serve for life (see Cossacks). Active 
soldiers at the beginning of the European war 
in 1914 numbered probably about 1,300,000 
and the reserves 6,000,000 or more. Estimates 
of the number of other men available for 
service range from 5,000,000 to 10,000,000. 
Russian soldiers are hard fighters, though 


ARMY 


385 


ARMY WORM 


except in a few picked regiments their standard 
of physique and intelligence is somewhat low. 
There are enormous difficulties for the nation 
to overcome in mobilization, because of the 
vast area of the country and the poor railroad 
communications. Although Russia supports 
the largest standing army in the world the 
burden upon the people has never been heavy. 
It is estimated that its total yearly cost in 
times of peace is abouf $320,000,000, or only 
$1.87 per unit of population. 

Italian Army. The Italian army is also 
organized on the principle of universal liability 
to service. Italy claims war resources to the 
extent of 3,150,000 men, with a total permanent 
force in peace time of about 400,000. 

Italian regiments are not recruited from geo¬ 
graphical sections, but each unit receives 
reenforcements from all parts of the country 
and the troops change their stations every four 
years. This plan, in direct opposition to the 
French and German method, is adopted so 
that the young men from one section of the 
country will make friends with those from 
another, thus welding together the different 
elements of the nation. The army is directed 
by a Minister of War and a general staff. Its 
total yearly cost in peaceful times is estimated 
at $80,000,000, or about $2.25 per unit of popu¬ 
lation. 

Austria-Hungary. The armies of the dual 
monarchy are modeled after those of Germany. 
Before the War of the Nations their strength 
was estimated at 820,000 regular men and about 
2,000,000 trained reservists, but actually over 
4,000,000 men are thought to have served in the 
war. The cost of the army in a year of peace 
is about $121,000,000, or about $2.42 for each 
person in the empire. 

Other Nations. Most of the nations of the 
world follow the system of compulsory service, 
though in varying degrees. Japan, nearly all 
the European countries not named above, and 
some of the South American republics maintain 
military forces of importance. The British 
armies in the War of the Nations were supple¬ 
mented by large contingents of volunteers 
from the Dominion and other colonies, l.r.g. 

Related Subjects. These volumes contain a 
large number of articles which the reader inter¬ 
ested in military affairs will find helpful. 

-GENERAL TOPICS 

Adjutant Armistice 

Aid-de-camp Armor 

Ammunition Armory 

Amnesty Arms 


Arsenal 

Machine Gun 

Artillery 

Magazine 

Battalion 

Major 

Battering Ram 

Marksmanship 

Battery 

Marshal 

Bersaglieri 

Military Academy, 

Blockade 

United States 

Bombardment 

Military Preparedness 

Brevet 

Military Schools 

Brigade 

Militia 

Bugle 

National Guard 

Cadet 

Neutral 

Canteen 

Parole 

Captain 

Phalanx 

Catapult 

Prisoners of War 

Cavalry 

Rank 

Colonel 

Rebellion 

Conscription 

Regiment 

Contraband 

Rocket 

Corporal 

Rough Riders 

Countersign 

Sergeant 

Court-martial 

Shield 

Crest 

Siege 

Draft 

Signal Corps 

Ensign 

Signaling 

Flag of Truce 

Spy 

Fortification 

Squadron 

Gendarmes 

Staff 

Grenadier 

Strategy 

Helmet 

Tactics 

Hostage 

Testudo 

Hussar 

Uhlans 

Infantry 

Uniform and Insignia 

Iron Cross 

Victoria Cross 

Landsturm 

Volunteers 

Lan dwell r 

War 

Lieutenant 

Zouaves 

WEAPONS 

AND AMMUNITION 

Air Bombs 

Gunpowder 

Air Gun 

Hotchkiss Gun 

Bayonet 

Howitzer 

Blunderbuss 

Lance 

Bomb 

Liquid Fire 

Boomerang 

Musket 

Bow and Arrow 

Projectile 

Bowie Knife 

Revolver 

Broadsword 

Rifle 

Bullet 

Shell 

Cannon 

Spear 

Cartridge 

Shot 

Celts 

Shotgun 

Cordite 

Shrapnel 

Fireball 

Slings 

Gas Bombs 

Small Arms 

Gas Clouds 

Smokeless Powder 

Greek Fire 

Sword 

Grenade 

Tomahawk 

Guncotton 

Torpedo 


Consult Jerram’s Armies of the World; Ash¬ 
worth’s Nations in Arms. 

ARMY WORM, a caterpillar which is so 
called because it sometimes appears in hordes 
of enormous numbers that march across the 
fields like great armies and devour every green 
thing they meet. This caterpillar is of a 
dark-gray color striped with yellow and is 
about two inches long. This insect is a native 
of North America, but is now found all over 


ARNHEM 


386 


ARNOLD 


the world. The perfect insect is a yellowish- 
brown moth, marked on each fore wing with a 
white spot. It flies at night and may be 
caught in large numbers around lights or by 



ARMY WORM 

(a) moth; (b) pupa; (c) eggs in natural 
position in grass leaf; (d) army worms on 
growing corn. 

baiting with syrup. It lays its eggs in strings 
of from two to twenty, beneath the sheaths of 
grass stems. The caterpillar continues to grow 
for three or four weeks after hatching and then 
the insect goes into the ground for its inactive 
pupa stage. 

The army worm is best known east of the 
Rocky Mountains, but it is usually so well 
controlled that no serious damage is done by it. 
When these insects appear in large numbers 
the field should be plowed or the crop burned. 
They can be destroyed by Paris green mixed 
with soap suds or by a kerosene emulsion, but 
they are most effectively destroyed by other 
insects which feed upon them, especially by the 
tachina fly. 

ARN'HEM or ARNHEIM, am' hime, a town 
in Holland, capital of the province of Gelder- 
land. It is situated in one of the most beauti¬ 
ful districts of Holland, on the right bank of 
the Rhine, 35 miles southeast of Utrecht. The 
ramparts surrounding the older portion of the 
city, called Arenacum by the Romans, have 
been made into beautiful promenades. The 
city has many fine buildings, the most noted 
being the town hall, which is popularly called 
the Devil House, because of its weird decora¬ 
tions. Its principal church contains the tombs 
of the former Duke of Gelderland, who made 
the city their place of residence. 

The manufactures consist of wagons, furni¬ 
ture, mirrors and scientific instruments, and 
tobacco and grain are exported. During the 
Middle Ages Arnhem was a member of the 
Hanseatic League. In 1795 the city was taken 
by the French, who were driven out by the 
Prussians in 1813. Population, 65,685. 


ARNICA, ar’nika, the name of certain 
plants which yield a juice or a tincture known 


to every child, be¬ 
cause it is used on 
bruises to drive away 
the blood which col¬ 
lects around them. 
The common or 
mountain arnica is 
found in Central 
Europe and in the 
western part of the 
United States. It has 
a twisted root which 
lives from year to 
year, and a stem 
about two feet high 
which bears heads of 
golden-yellow flowers. 
Every part of the 
plant contains the 
arnicin, of which the 
valuable medicine is 
made. 



THE ARNICA PLANT 


AR'NO, a famous river in Tuscany, Italy, 
on whose banks stand Florence and Pisa, the 
former fifty miles from its mouth, the latter 
only six. Its source is in the Apennines, 4,430 
feet above the sea and its mouth on the coast 
of the Ligurian Sea, the arm of the Mediter¬ 
ranean Sea north of Corsica. When the w r ater 
is high boats may ascend the Arno as far as 
Florence, and in the Middle Ages Pisa was 
a maritime port of the first rank. The river 
valley, which bears the musical name Val d’ 
Arno, is one of Italy’s fairest regions. The 
total length of the river is about 150 miles. 

ARNOLD, Benedict (1741-1801), an Amer¬ 
ican general of the Revolutionary period, a 
brilliant man, for long beloved and trusted, 
yet whose ambi¬ 
tion finally led 
him to betray his 
country. After 
his act of treach¬ 
ery, those who 
were seeking his 
arrest for treason 
said that it would 
be right to “bury 
with high military 
honors the leg 
which was in¬ 
jured at Saratoga 
and Freeman’s Farm and hang the rest of him.” 
Arnold was bora in Norwich, Conn, He re- 



BENEDICT ARNOLD 







ARNOLD 


387 


ARNOLD 


ceived'a fair education, and in 1762 went to 
New Haven, where he conducted a book and 
drug store, and later engaged in trade with 
the West Indies. At the outbreak of the 
Revolution he entered the army, and after 
the Battle of Lexington was sent to lead an 
expedition for the capture of Crown Point 
and Ticonderoga. On his way thither he met 
Ethan Allen with a company of soldiers devoted 
to the same purpose and after Allen had taken 
Ticonderoga, Arnold captured Saint John’s. 
In the autumn of the same year Washington 
sent Arnold with 1,000 men to assist in captur¬ 
ing Quebec, and after his juncture with Gen¬ 
eral-Montgomery a combined attack was made. 
The American army was defeated, Montgomery 
was killed, and Arnold’s leg was fractured. 
Congress promoted him to the rank of briga¬ 
dier-general for his bravery in this campaign, 
and he showed that public confidence was not 
misplaced by his conduct during a naval battle 
on Lake Champlain in 1776. 

In 1777 Congress appointed five major-gen¬ 
erals for the army, all of whom were Arnold’s 
juniors. He was stung by this injustice, and 
Washington wrote to assure him that he would 
endeavor to remedy “the error”; but when his 
claims were presented Congress voted him 
thanks, but did not promote him. In the 
same year Washington urged Congress to send 
Arnold north to head off General Burgoyne. 
Arnold consented to serve, and fulfilled his 
part in the campaign faithfully. He joined 
General Schuyler and led an expedition to 
relieve Fort Stanwix, which was besieged by 
a force of British and Indians, and then re-s 
turned to the main army and took part in the 
decisive battle of Saratoga. There Burgoyne 
received from Arnold the quick stroke of arms 
which forced his surrender, although Gates 
received credit for the victory (see Saratoga, 
Battles of). Soon afterward Congress sent 
him his commission as major-general. 

In 1778 he was appointed to the command 
of Philadelphia. He became involved in quar¬ 
rels with the authorities of Pennsylvania and 
was tried by court-martial, but was acquitted 
of intentional wrong-doing, though in some 
respects his conduct was declared improper. 
The sentence was that he should receive 
a reprimand from the commander-in-chief. 
Washington discharged this duty with con¬ 
siderable reluctance and the greatest mildness, 
but the ambitious man had been hurt beyond 
endurance. In 1780, when he was given the 
commapd at West Point, he began at once to 


plan to surrender it to Clinton, with whom he 
had earlier had correspondence. His treachery 
became known through the capture of Major 
Andre, and Arnold escaped to New York City. 
He was given a British brigadier-general’s com¬ 
mission and about $30,000 for losses he claimed 
to have suffered by joining the British. He 
remained in America a year, and led two 
British expeditions which resulted in the burn¬ 
ing of Richmond, Va., and New London, Conn. 
In England, which was thereafter his home, 
he was kindly received by King George III, 
but met only scorn from the social and politi¬ 
cal world. He failed to obtain a commission 
in the armjq and spent most of his remaining 
years as a merchant in the West India trade. 
His wife, faithful through all his troubles, 
cheered his last days, when he was burdened 
with debt, discouraged and an outcast from 
society. a.mc c. 

Consult Todd’s “The Real Benedict Arnold; 
Spark’s Life of Benedict Arnold. 

ARNOLD, Edwin, Sir (1832-1904), an Eng¬ 
lish author, best known for his very popular 
Light of Asia. In 1861, after teaching for five 
years at Poona, in Bombay, he joined the edi¬ 
torial staff of the Daily Telegraph, with which 
he was connected for many years. His works 
include numerous translations from the Greek 
and Sanskrit and several volumes of narrative 
and lyric poems in addition to the Light of 
Asia, which is a poem presenting the life and 
teaching of Gautama, the founder of Buddhism. 

ARNOLD, Matthew (1822-1888), an Eng¬ 
lish author who ranks as one of the greatest 
of English critics. He was a son of Dr. 
Thomas Arnold of Rugby fame, a student at 
Rugby and at Oxford, and was for many years 
a British school 
inspector. Later 
he was for a time 
professor of 
poetry at Oxford. 

As both poet and 
critic, Arnold 
won high praise 
in his own day, 
and his reputa¬ 
tion has grown 
steadily. While 
he does not ap¬ 
peal to as wide 
an audience as Tennyson or Browning, he may 
probably be ranked with them as one of the 
great poets of his age. Besides Sohrab and 
Rusturn and his most popular poems, Balder 



MATTHEW ARNOLD 



ARNOLD 


388 


ARREST 


Dead and Tristram and Isolde, he wrote many 
beautiful but shorter poems, among which are 
The Forsaken Merman, Dover Beach and A 
Summer Night. His Thyrsis stands with 
Lycidas and Adonais as one of the finest elegies 
in English. The bulk of his poetry is rela¬ 
tively small. Of his critical essays the best 
known are contained in the two series of Essays 
on Criticism, which continue to exert a real 
influence on criticism. Among his other prose 
writings are Culture and Anarchy, On Trans¬ 
lating Homer and Literature and Dogma. 

ARNOLD, Thomas (1795-1842), a celebrated 
English scholar, clergyman and teacher, known 
to almost every child as the beloved head¬ 
master in Hughes’s Tom Brown’s School Days. 
He was born at Cowes, Isle of Wight, studied 
at Oxford, and 
while there be¬ 
came known for 
the boldness and 
independence of 
his views and his 
excellent scholar¬ 
ship. His life 
work began when 
in 1827 he was 
elected head¬ 
master of Rugby 
School, which po¬ 
sition he held 
until his death. 

During his administration he completely revo¬ 
lutionized the methods of instruction and dis¬ 
cipline and made such a strong impression 
upon other schools of England that many of 
them adopted his plan, and he is considered 
to have been the means of changing the sys¬ 
tem of education in the English public schools, 
such as Eton, Harrow, Winchester, and the 
like. 

Arnold accomplished his work not so much 
by his direct teaching as by his influence upon 
his pupils and the ideals which he set before 
them. His main purpose was the development 
of character, and this he secured through his 
strong personality, thorough trust in his pupils, 
and the blameless life which he led. See 
Rugby, for an account of the system of self- 
government among pupils which Arnold estab¬ 
lished there. 

Consult Tom Brown’s School Days; Fitch’s 
Thomas and Matthew Arnold and Tlicir Influence 
on English Education. 

ARNPRIOR, arn'prier, Ont., a town in 
Renfrew County, at the junction of the Mada- 


waska and Ottawa rivers and on the Canadian 
Pacific and Grand Trunk railways, thirty-seven 
miles west of Ottawa. Arnprior has large lum¬ 
ber and woolen mills and several cheese fac¬ 
tories. Marble quarries are not far away, and 
there are also lead and iron mines. The 
Ottawa River, which widens at Arnprior into 
Lac des Chats (that is, Cat Lake), provides 
good bass fishing. The town has a beautiful 
site overlooking the lake, and is well laid out. 
Population in 1911, 4,405. 

AROMATIC, airomat'ik, PLANTS. The 
word aromatic comes from a Greek word which 
means spice, and is applied to those plants 
which have a sharp, pleasant taste and a spicy 
odor. They are used in many ways—as a 
flavoring in various foods, as perfume and in 
medicine, either to disguise the unpleasant 
taste of drugs or to exercise some real or 
fancied medicinal power. These aromatic 
plants are numerous, and some of them are 
very well known, for they include cinnamon, 
cloves, vanilla, peppermint, thyme, sage, laven¬ 
der, anise, caraway, ginger, sandalwood and 
many more. All are described in their alpha¬ 
betical places in these volumes. 

ARREST', the legal act which deprives a 
person of his liberty. The term comes from 
a French word meaning to stop. A sheriff, his 
deputy or assistant, a justice of the peace, a 
constable or any police officer may make ar¬ 
rests. A private citizen may arrest a person 
who has committed a crime or a breach of 
the peace in his presence and officers may 
arrest persons suspected of committing a crime. 
Arrests are seldom made in civil cases, but a 
person defrauding his creditors may be arrested. 

Arrest does not necessarily deprive a person 
of his liberty, unless the crime for which he 
is held is of so serious a nature that it is not 
deemed advisable to give him his liberty. 
Otherwise he is allowed to furnish bail for 
appearance for trial. A person accused of 
murder is rarely admitted to bail (see Bail). 

A person under arrest on any charge is 
entitled to a hearing as speedily as the ma¬ 
chinery of the law makes possible. If one 
believes himself unjustly accused he may apply 
to the court for a writ of habeas corpus (which 
see), which makes it obligatory upon his ac¬ 
cusers to show cause for holding him. 

If admitted to bail, the accused may enjoy 
full liberty until his case is called for trial, 
except that without express permission from 
those who furnish his bail he must not leave 
the jurisdiction of the court. 



HM'i 

K'f t X » 


THOMAS ARNOLD 



ARROWROOT 


389 


ARSON 


AR ROWROOT, a delicate starch which is 
so easily digested that it forms one of the 
favorite foods for invalids and children. The 
chief difficulty in the way of its use is that 
it is very often adulterated with potato starch, 



ARROWROOT 


rice starch, or the starch of common white 
flour. Arrowroot is prepared from the root- 
stalks of several species of plants which are 
natives of tropical America but have been 
introduced into other warm countries. Most 
commonly the name is said to suggest the prac¬ 
tice of the South American Indians, who use 
the freshly-cut roots to heal arrow wounds. 

ARROWROCK DAM. See Idaho, subhead 
Irrigation. 

AR'SENAL, a plant owned by the govern¬ 
ment, where arms and munitions of war are 
manufactured, repaired and stored. Naval 
arsenals have to do with ships and their arma¬ 
ment; those in the United States and England 
are called navy yards. Arsenals are usually 
located far from populous districts. They are 
gradually becoming simply storehouses for 
munitions made elsewhere, as private firms are 
increasing their contracts to supply various 
governments with arms. 

The first arsenal in the United States was 
established at Springfield, Mass., in 1777, and 
the manufacture of rifles and other small arms 
is still carried on there. In 1917 the United 
States government maintained arsenals at 
Pittsburgh, Pa.; Augusta, Ga.; Benicia, Cal.; 
Columbia, Tenn.; Fort Monroe, Va.; Phila¬ 
delphia, Pa.; Indianapolis, Ind.; Augusta, Me.; 
New York City (Governor’s Island); Rock 


Island, Ill.; Jefferson Barracks, Mo.; Sandy 
Hook, N. J.; San Antonio, Texas; Dover, 
N. J.; Watertown, Mass.; Watervliet, N. Y., 
and Harper’s Ferry, W. Va. Only at Spring- 
field, Rock Island and Watervliet are manu¬ 
facturing plants, the remaining arsenals being 
storehouses only. 

On the outbreak of the War of the Nations 
arsenals and factories for the manufacture of 
munitions of war were established in all im¬ 
portant commercial centers in Canada to meet 
the demands of the troops sent by the Do¬ 
minion to the aid of Great Britain. Previous 
to this event there had been no permanent 
establishments of the kind in Canada. 

ARSENIC, ar' sen ik, as most commonly 
understood, is a white crystalline powder which 
is one of the deadliest poisons known. It is 
estimated that more deaths are due to it than 
to any other poison. In reality, however, this 
should be called white arsenic, or arsenious 
acid, for it is a combination of oxygen with the 
true arsenic. This latter substance is a metallic 
element which is seldom found in a free state, 
but enters into combination with many other 
substances. It is of a dark-gray color, and 
readily tarnishes on exposure to the air, becom¬ 
ing first yellow and then black. It is as hard 
as copper, extremely bitter, and when burned 
gives off a smell of garlic. 

This element itself is seldom used, but its 
compounds are valuable. The white arsenic 
mentioned above is a remedy for certain skin 
diseases and anaemia, but it should not be 
used without the advice of a physician because 
of its poisonous quality, even in small doses. 
In combination with copper it produces a 
vivid green color which is much employed in 
the arts, especially in the making of calico and 
wall-paper; but there are strong objections to 
such use, for it gives off tiny particles which 
are poisonous. Its use in coloring candies has 
been entirely prohibited. The specific known 
as “606,” a standard remedy for syphilis, is an 
arsenic compound. See Antidote. w.a.e. 

ARSON, ar' sun, in law, is the wilful burning 
of a dwelling-house or other building belonging 
to another person. By the common law arson 
is a crime; it is a capital offense, if any person 
is in the building at the time of firing, and if 
the act results in loss of life it is murder. To 
constitute arson in common law, the building 
burned must belong to another. However, 
burning one’s own buildings for the purpose of 
obtaining insurance is nearly everywhere a 
penitentiary offense. But if there is no insur- 











ART AND THE ARTS 


390 


ARTEMIS 


ance, and no injury to the property of another 
arises from the burning, the act is not con¬ 
sidered a penal offense, although the sanity 
of one committing such an act might be made 
a subject of investigation. 

ART AND THE ARTS. The word art brings 
to the mind a variety of work designed to 
please the eye and excite the esthetic emotions. 
To one person it may suggest a beautiful paint¬ 
ing; to another, a graceful statue; to another, 
a noble cathedral. Beauty is almost always 
associated with it, but not all things that are 
beautiful are works of art. The traveler home 
from Europe will recall with equal pleasure the 
wonders of the Swiss Alps and those of the 
great paintings in the Louvre at Paris, but in 
the one case he will say that nature has given 
man a beautiful group of mountains; in the 
other, man has used his genius to produce 
objects of beauty for the happiness of his 
fellow-beings. Art, therefore, in a very broad 
sense, stands for those things which are the 
creations of man and not of nature. A work 
of art, then, is the product of man’s intellect 
and imagination, as well as the work of his 
hands; in the words of Ruskin, “Art is the 
work of the whole spirit of man.” 

This word art is one of the most elastic in 
the language. The art of a people includes 
their sculpture, painting, architecture, etc., and 
each one of these branches is an art. Further¬ 
more, the power to paint a picture, for instance, 
and the act of doing it are included in the 
term, as well as the rules that are observed. 
Art, however, does not discover the laws by 
which objects of beauty are created. This is 
the work of science, and a convenient way to 
distinguish these two fields of human endeavor 
is to say that science consists in knowing; art 
consists in doing. 

Art has grown out of the vital needs of the 
human race. Primitive man needed tools to 
till the soil, dishes from which to eat and 
drink, weapons to use in hunting and warfare. 
At first he made the unshaped stone, a product 
of nature, do his work for him; then he learned 
how to shape it -to adapt it to his needs; still 
later he discovered the uses of different metals 
and something of the effect of fire on these, 
and he learned how to mold clay vessels and 
how to bake them in the sun or in ovens. In 
the course of time he began to have a sense 
of pride in his achievements, and found satis¬ 
faction in making his tools and dishes beautiful 
as well as useful. He found that when the 
objects about him were harmonious in form 


and color and arrangement they gave him 
much more pleasure than when they were 
disharmonious, and so it has been his constant 
effort to secure that harmony or beauty. 

Scope of the Arts. The use of the word 
arts has so widened that it now includes prac¬ 
tically all of the industries that require skill 
in handwork, not only weaving, embroidering, 
pottery making and the like, but the various 
trades, such as carpentery, blacksmithing, etc. 
These are grouped under the name useful, or 
mechanic arts, while painting, sculpture, archi¬ 
tecture, music and poetry—the arts of beauty— 
are known as the fine arts. Often it is difficult 
to set a hard and fast rule as to the use of the 
above terms, for in some of the arts, notably 
architecture, beauty and usefulness are insep¬ 
arable. B.M.W. 


Related Subjects. The index that follows 
does not show the full extent of the treatment 
given to art in these volumes, for the details 
relating to the fine arts, sculpture, painting, 
architecture and music, are indexed under those 
topics. This list refers only to the more general 
articles: 


Architecture 

Arts and Crafts 

Basketry 

Bookbinding 

Caricature 

Cartoon 

Cast 

China Painting 

Chinese White 

Corcoran Art Gallery 

Crayons 

Daguerreotype 

Distemper 

Drawing 

Ecole des Beaux Arts 

Embossing 

Embroidery 

Enamel 

Engraving 

Etching 

Eti’uscan Art 

Fine Arts 

Gilding 

Halftone 

Intaglio 

Japanning 

Landscape Gardening 


Lapidary 

Lithography 

Metallurgy 

Mezzotint 

Mechanical Drawing 

Costuming 

Mosaic 

Music 

Niello 

Painting 

Perspective 

Photo-Engraving 

Photography 

Photogravure 

Pottery 

Rookwood Pottery 

Sculpture 

Stained Glass 

Steel-engraving 

Stencil 

Stereotyping 

Taxidermy 

Vase 

Wood-engraving 
Wedgewood Ware 
Zinc Etching 


The following are artists, who cannot be clas¬ 
sified under a specific heading, as painters, 
sculptors, cartoonists, or architects: 


Christy, Howard C. Greenaway, Kate 

Cruikshank, George Palissy, Bernard 

DuMaurier, G. L. P. B. Pennell, Joseph 
. Fisher, Harrison Pyle, Howard 

Flagg, James M. Shaw, Henry W. 

Gibson, Charles D. Tenniel, Sir John 


ARTEMIS, ar'temis, the Greek name for 
the twin sister of Apollo, the virgin goddess 
whom the Romans called Diana. 


ARTERIES 


391 


ARTESIAN WELL 


ARTERIES, ar'teriz, are tubes, or vessels, 
through which blood is pumped by the heart 
to various parts of the body. With the veins 
and capillaries they form the pipe-lines of the 
great circulatory system, of which the heart 
is the central pumping station. The details 
of the process by which the blood is sent to all 
parts of the body may be found in these 
volumes under the headings Heart and Circu¬ 
lation of the Blood. The system of arteries 
begins at the heart. A large artery called the 
aorta (which see) rises from the left ventricle 
and carries pure red blood to the tissues of the 
body; from the right ventricle rises the pul¬ 
monary artery, which carries impure blood 
to the lungs. The aorta extends upward from 
the heart and then curves downward so as to 
form an arch. In the region of the abdomen 
it divides into the right and left iliac arteries; 
these are continued into the lower extremities, 
where they are known as the right and left 
jemoral arteries. Branches of the femoral 
arteries form a network through the lower 
limbs. The right and left subclavian arteries 
spring from the aorta and extend to the shoul¬ 
ders, being continued in the brachial arteries of 
the arms. The head is nourished by two 
carotid arteries, and the heart by the coronary 
arteries. 

The large arteries have three coats; these 
are a tough outer elastic coat, a middle mus¬ 
cular coat, and a smooth, thin, inner coat. As 
the arteries proceed from the heart they divide 
and subdivide into tubes which continually 
grow smaller until they become tiny capil¬ 
laries (which see). These latter have but one 
coat, for their walls are merely an extension 
of the thin inner layer of the arteries. Blood 
from a cut artery flows out in spurts or jets, 
and is bright red in color. For methods of 
checking the flow of blood from a cut artery 
see Bleeding, subhead Arterial Bleeding. 

Hardening of the Arteries. Physicians de¬ 
clare that “a man is as old as his arteries.” 
Changes in the composition of the blood, con¬ 
tinuous use of alcoholic liquors, overeating, 
chronic indigestion, over-work of the heart, in¬ 
door occupations without sufficient exercise, 
worry, lead poisoning and disease of the kid¬ 
neys cause hardening of the arteries. No rem¬ 
edy has been found for this disease, which 
often proves fatal. By avoiding the causes 
people usually live to a good old age with¬ 
out contracting the disease. The principal 
cause of hardening of the arteries in present- 
day American life is overeating of albuminous 


food, especially flesh, and the use of alcoholic 
drinks and tobacco. People who live tem¬ 
perately and who have reasonably regular 
habits of exercise and sleep rarely suffer from 
hardening of the arteries. The disease is never 
found in childhood or youth. 

Blood pressure, which depends on the force 
of the heartbeat and on the character of the 
arteries, is an important factor in determining 
this disease. The small arteries are sur¬ 
rounded by muscle fiber, which, by contracting, 
can put the blood under severe pressure. 
Blood pressure is measured by several devices, 
which are operated on the following principle: 
By means of an inflatable rubber bag fastened 
around the upper part of the arm, the artery 
is compressed, the pressure being increased 
until the pulse at the wrist ceases to be felt. 
The point at which this occurs is noted on the 
mercury scale. When the tension is very high 
the blood pressure may read 300 millimeters, 
whereas it is normally 120 to 150. If a person 
finds that his blood pressure is increasing, which 
is evidence of hardening of the arteries, he 
should at once adopt a simple, rational pro¬ 
gram with temperance in everything and he can 
arrest the progress of the disease. w.a.e. 

ARTESIAN, ahrte'zhan, WELL, a well 
formed by boring or drilling into a layer of 
porous rock which brings water from some 



ARTESIAN WELL 

Upper: Cross section showing underground 
relations of a water-bearing sandstone. A shows 
the overlying mass of clay, B, the stratum of 
sandstone, sand, or gravel through which the 
water flows, and <7, the underlying impervious 
rock. Lower: Profile across an artesian basin 
showing hydrostatic grade, which determines the 
“head” or height to which the water will rise. 
The solid line is the land profile ; the broken line 
the hydrostatic grade. In the diagram A is the 
overlying clay; B, the sandstone stratum ; C, the 
granite, or impervious rock; x shows the point 
of intake, and y the outlet or springs; at any 
point below the dotted line x a y, or hydrostatic 
grade, the water will flow, while at points above 
the line, such as b, there will be no flow. 

higher point. Such a layer, or stratum, is 
shown at B, in the upper illustration. The rain 
falls upon it where it is exposed, and seeps 
















ARTHROPODA 


392 


ARTHUR 


inward, prevented by the harder rock below 
from going directly down. If a well is bored 
at any point between the outcropping ends, 
water will be forced up into it, perhaps flowing 
freely at the surface, according to the principles 
explained by the lower half of the illustration. 
The name artesian was formerly restricted to 
flowing wells, and is derived from the province 
of Artois, where this type of well was first 
popular. 

Most artesian wells supply pure drinking 
water, excellent for domestic purposes and for 
stock, though often containing minerals. Ar¬ 
tesian wells are common in many regions where 
surface water of good quality is not easily 
obtained. In recent years a large number of 
them have been bored in New Jersey and 
other states east of the Appalachian Moun¬ 
tains, and many cities now obtain their supply 
of water from them. They are used extensively 
for irrigation in Iowa, Kansas, Colorado, Mon¬ 
tana and Texas, and are numerous in South 
Dakota. Some wells are very deep. One in 
Pittsburgh, Pa., is 4,625 feet, and one in Gal¬ 
veston, Tex., is over 3,000 feet deep. The 
deepest well in the world is at Leipzig, Ger¬ 
many, 5,735 feet. For the method of sinking 
artesian wells, see Well Boring. 

ARTHROPODA, arthrop'oda. This term, 
which comes from tw r o Greek words meaning 
jointed foot, is used to describe a very large 
family of the animal kingdom, all the members 
of which are characterized by having jointed 


appendages. The arthropods range from the 
tiny beach fleas and water fleas to the lob¬ 
sters and king crabs, and include the spiders 
and scorpions, the cockroaches, grasshoppers 
and dragon flies, and the beetles, bees, butter¬ 
flies, gnats and flies, so it may be readily be¬ 
lieved that this is by far the largest of all the 
animal families. The bodies as well as the 
appendages are in joints or segments, and in 
typical forms each segment carries a pair of 
the appendages, which have special functions 
to perform. Most of these are used for walk¬ 
ing, but some are suckers, some are jaws and 
others are organs of sense or offensive or 
defensive weapons. 

The arthropods have an external skeleton or 
shell, though in some members of the family, 
as the flies or moths, this is so soft as scarcely 
to deserve the name. In others, as the lobsters, 
it is very hard and strong. All have an organ 
which resembles a heart; a well-organized nerv¬ 
ous system, and simple or compound eyes. 
See Crustacea; Myriapoda; Insects, and the 
articles therein referred to, with their various 
illustrations. Read also, in this connection, the 
article Zoology. 


Related Subjects. For a detailed discussion 
of the animal forms belonging to this great 
group, see the following articles, and the lists 
included under some of them: 


Arachnida 

Crustaceans 

Hemiptera 

Insect 


Lepidoptera 

Myriapoda 

Neuroptera 

Orthoptera 



THE STORY OF CHESTER ALAN ARTHUR 


The White House in 1881 


: " 


l/i 


RTHUR, Chester Alan (1830-1886), 
the twenty-first President of the United States, 
one of the five men who have become Pres¬ 
ident without being elected to that office; the 
others were Tjder, Fillmore, Johnson and Roose¬ 
velt. In the campaign of 1880 the Republican 
party was divided; one faction, led by Conk- 


ling and Platt, favored the nomination oj 
Grant for a third term; the other was willing 
to unite on any man to defeat Grant. The 
man chosen was James A. Garfield, but tc 
appease the defeated Conkling faction the 
Republicans nominated for Vice-President 
Chester A. Arthur, one of Conkling’s chiet 





























































































































































ARTHUR 


393 


ARTHUR 


lieutenants. Through the tragic death of Gar¬ 
field, Arthur became President. 

Previously, even as Vice-President, he had 
won an unenviable reputation for his activity 
in partisan politics, and he was commonly con¬ 
sidered a clever lawyer and politician who was 
working chiefly for his own interests. To his 
credit, however, stands the record of his Presi¬ 
dential administration, for the new responsi¬ 
bilities thrust upon him worked a great change 
in his character. Though his term was not 
marked by brilliance or events of dramatic 
significance, Arthur proved himself one of the 
fairest, most honest and fearless of Presidents. 
So clear is the division in his career that his 
life is best treated in two sections. 

Early Life and Rise to Power. Chester Alan 
Arthur was born on October 5, 1830, at Fair- 
field, Vt. William Arthur (1796-1875), his 
father, a native of County Antrim, Ireland, 
was a teacher and Baptist minister who seemed 
unable to remain for long in any community; 
he lived at various times in Vermont and in 
Quebec. These family wanderings nearly cost 
his son the Presidency, for in 1880 it was 
charged that Arthur was really born in Canada. 
It is now evident, however, that Fairfield was 
his birthplace. His mother was an American, 
Malvina Stone, who was living in Canada 
when she met and married William Arthur. 

*■ Young Chester seems to have suffered noth¬ 
ing from the family wanderings, and at the 
age of fifteen entered Union College, Schenec¬ 
tady, N. Y., as a sophomore. After his gradua¬ 
tion with honors in 1848, he taught school for 
several years, using all his spare time to study 
law. In 1853 he entered a law office in New 
York City, and within the next six or seven 
years won for himself a leading position at 
the bar. He was associate counsel for the 
state in the Lemmon case, in which the state 
courts held that negro slaves brought into 
New York, even while on the way from one 
slave state to another, became free as soon 
as they set foot in New York. In another 
famous case he won equal rights for negroes 
and whites in the street cars of New York City. 

For two decades he was a successful prac¬ 
ticing lawyer, and at the same time was active 
in Republican politics. During the first two 
years of the War of Secession he rendered 
excellent service as inspector-general and 
quartermaster-general of the New \ork troops. 
After the war he continued his political activi¬ 
ties, worked for the election of Grant to the 
Presidency, and was rewarded in 1871 with the 


position of collector of the port of New York. 
The customs service was honeycombed with 
dishonesty and inefficiency; appointment to it 
was usually a reward for votes delivered at a 
previous election. General Arthur was opposed 
to civil service reform, and managed his office 
according to the time-honored principle, “To 
the victors belong the spoils.” It is true, how¬ 
ever, that Arthur made fewer removals and 
appointments for political reasons than any 
of his immediate predecessors, and his busi¬ 
ness management was never questioned. 

When President Hayes in 1877 undertook the 
reform of the civil service he began with the 
New York Customs House. The report of 
an investigating commission recommended 
numerous changes in its organization, and 
President Hayes demanded the resignation of 
Arthur and his two principal subordinates. 
Although Arthur admitted the existence of the 



CHESTER ALAN ARTHUR 

Vice-President, who by the assassination of 
President James A. Garfield, became the fourth 
“accidental” President of the United States. 

• 

evils, he refused to resign because he felt no 
personal guilt. The abuses were the result, he 
claimed, of a system for which he should not 
bear the blame. Arthur was vigorously de¬ 
fended by Senator Conkling, but during a 
recess of the Senate he was removed by the 
President, on July 11, 1878. Early in 1879 this 
action was approved by the Senate, after vio¬ 
lent controversy, 











ARTHUR 


394 


ARTHUR 


In the Republican national convention of 
1880 Arthur was a delegate-at-large from New 
York, and worked hard for the nomination of 
General Grant for a third term. Garfield, 
however, was nominated for President, but the 
Grant-Conkling faction were allowed to name 
Arthur as candidate for Vice-President (for 
details of the campaign and election, see Gar¬ 
field, James Abram). Immediately after his 
inauguration as Vice-President Arthur sided 
with Conkling against the President in the 
great fight over the patronage in New York 
(see Conkling, Roscoe). The assassination of 
Garfield occurred in July; he died in Septem¬ 
ber, and on September 19, 1881, Arthur became 
President of the United States. 

The Administration of Arthur. The death 
of Garfield at the hands of a disappointed 
office-seeker gave a new impetus to the move¬ 
ment for civil service reform. A National 
Civil Service Reform League was organized 
under the presidency of George William Curtis, 
and in 1883 Congress passed the Pendleton 
Civil Service Act, which provided for a classi¬ 
fied list of government employees and promo¬ 
tion after competitive examination. Though 
previously an advocate of the spoils system, 
President Arthur gave the new system his 
earnest support. 

The Tariff. For a decade after 1879 the 
United States had a steadily-growing surplus 
in the treasury. This condition led first to 
extravagant and wasteful appropriations, such 
as the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1882, which 
Congress passed over the President’s veto. 
This bill appropriated about $18,000,000 for 
“improvements” which were nothing more or 
less than sops handed to the voters of certain 
districts to influence the reelection of Repre¬ 
sentatives. The second effect of the surplus 
was to strengthen the demand for tariff reduc¬ 
tion. The report of a preliminary commission 
recommended a reduction in duties of twenty 
to twenty-five per cent, but the law of 1883, 
when finally approved, actually increased the 
most important revenue-producing duties. It 
did make large reductions in internal revenue 
taxes, but was unsatisfactory to both parties. 

Other Legislation. Two other important laws 
deserve consideration, the Edmunds Anti-. 
Polygamy Act and the Chinese Exclusion Act, 
both passed in 1882. The Edmunds Act pro¬ 
hibited polygamy in territories of the United 
States, and was directed principally at Mor¬ 
mons (which see). The Chinese Exclusion Act 
was passed as the result of the agitation against 


cheap foreign labor, which it was claimed 
would prevent American workmen from obtain¬ 
ing a living wage. It forbade the immigration 
of Chinese for ten years, and prohibited nat¬ 
uralization of Chinamen already in the United 
States. 

Prosperity of the South and West. The 
industrial progress of the New South was 
demonstrated at the Atlanta Cotton Exposi¬ 
tion in 1881 and the New Orleans Cotton Cen¬ 
tennial Exposition in 1884. The cotton crop 
had increased from fewer than 5,000,000 bales 
a year to more than 8,000,000, and the South 
had also begun to raise greater quantities of 
wheat, corn, early fruits and vegetables. There 
was also a marked advance in manufactures, 
and in Alabama mining suddenly became a 
great industry. The West, too, was making 
rapid strides, and three transcontinental rail¬ 
roads were completed. Previously the Union 
Pacific had been the only great road to the 
Pacific coast, but now there were completed 
the Southern Pacific in 1881, the Northern 
Pacific in 1883, and the Atchison, Topeka & 
Santa Fe in the same year. 

Miscellaneous Events. Arthur’s administra¬ 
tion was marked by at least two events whose 
results now are taken as a matter of course 
by every American. One of these was the 
reduction of the postage on letters from three 
cents to two cents an ounce; the other was 
the adoption of the system of standard time 
(which see). The Brooklyn Bridge, at the time 
of its completion regarded as one of the 
wonders of the world, was opened in 1883, and 
Alaska was established as a territory in 1884. 
An event of national importance was the or¬ 
ganization of the American Red Cross Society 
in 1881, under the presidency of Miss Clara 
Barton. 

Presidential Campaign of 1884 • President 
Arthur did not entirely escape the consequences 
of his long association with partisan politics in 
New York state. His intimate friend and 
Secretary of the Treasury, Charles J. Folger, 
was defeated for governor of New York in 
1882, largely as a protest against the methods 
of the Republican party managers. In 1884 
Arthur allowed his name to be presented to 
the Republican convention, but he was easily 
defeated by James G. Blaine. This defeat was 
due not primarily to any faults attributed to 
Arthur, but rather to the ambitions of other 
Republicans. The Democrats nominated for 
President the governor of New York, Grover 
Cleveland, who had defeated Folger in 1882. 








































































































































ARTHUR 


396 


ARTHUR 



Arthur s Tomb, Albany, New York 


si IS 




m 




W ■> 


^==77~^F=y 







MBS 


—-. — T , 




M fizltfisL 



In the campaign that followed there was 
much bitterness and charges and counter¬ 
charges filled the air. The political issues 
were subordinated to the personalities of the 
candidates. The results of the election are 
summarized below: 


In 1881, the year that both Garfield and 
Arthur were inaugurated, immigration broke 
all records. In the next year there were 788,992 
arrivals, more than in any year till 1903, and 
more than in several years since then. 

The Northern Pacific, the second of Amer- 


RESULT 

IN ELECTORAL COLLEGE 


VOTE 

Candidates 

Party 

States 

Popular 

Electoral 

Grover Cleveland 

Democratic 

20 

4,911,017 

219 

James G. Blaine 

Republican 

18 

4,848,334 

182 

John P. St. John 

Prohibition 

— 

151,809 

— 

Benjamin F. Butler 

Greenback 

— 

133,825 

— 


Arthur, defeated for the nomination, gave 
his support to Blaine, although the two men 
had been political foes for years. At the end 
of his term Arthur retired to New York City, 
where he died on November 18, 1886. 

Other Items of Interest. When President 
Arthur signed the bill making Alaska a terri¬ 
tory, that region was still thought of as 
“Seward’s Folly.” It then had only 400 whites 
in its population; in 1910 it had increased to 
over 36,000. 

The two-cent postage rate at first applied 
only to letters of a half-ounce or less. In the 
next administration the limit was made one 
ounce, as it stands now. The reduction from 
three cents did not lessen the post office reve¬ 
nues, even in the first year. 

Another venture of President Arthur’s Post- 
office Department was the introduction of 
postal notes, which were abandoned in 1894. 


ica’s transcontinental railroads, was completed 
in 1883. 

While Arthur was Vice-President his party 
had a bare majority in the lower house and 
depended on his own vote in the Senate. 
After the elections of 1882 there was a Demo¬ 
cratic majority of more than eighty in the 
House and a Republican majority of four in 
the Senate. 

President Arthur was tall and well-formed, a 
man of such distinguished presence as to be 
noteworthy in any assemblage. 

His friends and family were devoted to him, 
and his kindly, affable manner won him the 
enthusiastic regard of those who knew him less 
well. 

He took the oath of office as President in his 
own home on Lexington Avenue, New York 
City, but later he repeated it in the Vice- 
President’s room of the Capitol at Washington. 






































ARTHUR 


397 


ARTHUR 


OUTLINE AND QUESTIONS ON 
CHESTER A. ARTHUR 


Outline 


I. Early Life (2) 

(1) Birth and parentage 

(2) Education 

(3) Practice of law 

(4) Defense of negroes 

( ) 

IT. Political Career 

(1) Collector of the port of New York 

(2) Opposition to civil service reform 

(3 ) Republican national convention of 1880 
(4) Elected Vice-President 

III. Administration 

(1) Legislation 

(a) Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882 

(b) Edmunds Anti-Polygamy Act, (4) 
1882 

(c) Tariff Act of 1883 

(d) Pendleton Civil Service Act, 1883 


Other governmental affairs 

(a) Alaska made a territory 

(b) Bureau of Labor organized 

(c) Two-cent postage adopted 

(d) Standard Time system introduced 
Other events 

(a) Three transcontinental 
completed 

(b) American Red Cross 
formed 

(c) Brooklyn Bridge built 

(d) Deaths of Emerson and 
low 

(e) Prosperity of the South 

1. Atlanta Cotton Exposition 

2. New Orleans Cotton Centen¬ 
nial Exposition 

Election of 1884 

(a) Candidates 

(b) Issues 

(c) Result 


railways 


Society 


Longfel- 


Questions 

Why was it easier to get from the eastern to the western coast of the United 
States at the close of Arthur’s administration than at the beginning? 

What was the “spoils system” of which he was an advocate during his early 
political career? 

What reform undertook to do away with it? 

Why was Arthur chosen for Vice-President? 

What tendencies of the time were shown by the Rivers and Harbors Act and 
how did the President regard the act? 

What two measures were introduced by the Postoffice Department during this 
administration? Have they proved successful? 

How did the elections of 1882 and 1884 express the country’s opinions? 

Did the President’s party control Congress? 

How did he attract public attention during his term as Vice-President? 

Why was Alaska called “Seward’s Folly”? 

What step was taken during this administration in regard to Alaska, and was it 
considered a great event? 

What was the most important measure passed by Congress at this time? 

How did the story of Arthur’s father figure in the campaign of 1880? 

What was done to the tariff in this administration? 

What labor law did President Arthur sign? 

How many men besides Arthur ever became President without having been 
elected to that office? Who were they? 

What showed the prosperity of the South during this administration? 

What “wonder of the world” was completed during Arthur’s term? 























ARTHUR 


398 


ARTICHOKE 


His tact and his breadth of view were shown 
on the occasion of the dedication at York- 
town, Va., of a monument to commemorate the 
surrender of Cornwallis. On that occasion he 
ordered a salute fired in honor of the British 
flag “to show the respect entertained by the 
American people for the illustrious sovereign 
and gracious lady who sits upon the British 
throne.” 

On October 29, 1859, Arthur married Ellen 
L. Herndon, who died the year before his 
election to the Vice-Presidency, leaving two 
children. 

One of the five statesmen mentioned in the 
above article as being elected Vice-President 
and coming into the higher office on the death 
of the President—Theodore Roosevelt—unlike 
the others, was at the next election chosen for 
a full term. w.f.z. 

Consult Stoddard’s Life of Chester A. Arthur; 
Smalley’s Life of Chester A. Arthur. 

ARTHUR, Sir George (1784-1854), a British 
colonial administrator, lieutenant-governor of 
Upper Canada from 1837 until the union of 
Upper and Lower Canada in 1841. After win¬ 
ning distinction during a ten-year career in 
the army, he was in 1814 appointed lieutenant- 
governor of British Honduras, and from 1823 
to 1837 was lieutenant-governor of Tasmania. 
His success in dealing with disturbances in Tas¬ 
mania led to his appointment in 1837 as lieu¬ 
tenant-governor of Upper Canada, where the 
rebellion led by William Lyon Mackenzie had 
just been suppressed. Arthur determined to 
punish all the rebels severely. Two of them 
were executed, the jails were filled with prison¬ 
ers, and only the interference of the British 
government prevented further executions. 
Arthur made the mistake of attempting to 
deal with Canadians as he had dealt with the 
Tasmania colonists, many of whom were ex¬ 
convicts. As governor of Bombay from 1842 
to 1846 he helped to place British rule in India 
on a firm basis. 

ARTHUR, Julia, the stage name of Ida 
Lewis (1869- ), a Canadian actress, born in 

Hamilton, Ont., best known for her perform¬ 
ances of Rosalind in As You Like It and of 
other Shakespearean characters. She made her 
first professional appearance on the stage at 
the age of fourteen as the Prince of Wales in 
Shakespeare’s Richard III. After meeting with 
much success in this and other parts she be¬ 
came in 1895 a member of the company headed 
by Sir Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, with 
whom she played for several seasons, both in 


England and America. In 1898 she married 
B. P. Cheney, Jr., and two years later retired 
from the stage. In 1916, after an interval of 
sixteen years, she again played in Shake¬ 
spearean roles, on the occasion of the celebra¬ 
tion of the ter-centennial of Shakespeare’s 
death. In the same year she was the star in 
The Eternal Magdalene. 

ARTHUR, King, the great national hero of 
the Britons, said to have reigned as their king 
in the sixth century. He married Guinevere, 
a royal princess, and set up his court at 
Caerleon-on-Usk, in Wales. There the king 
and his knights used to gather about a circular 
marble table in the hall of the palace, and 
these became celebrated as the Knights of the 
Round Table. King Arthur drove out the 
invaders of his country, brought peace and 
order to the land, and his knights went about 
doing good. See Round Table, Knights of, 
for illustration. 

The king was an example to his people of 
purity and righteousness; some of his knights 
remained evil and treacherous, however, and 
while he was absent on an expedition to Rome, 
Modred, his nephew, stirred up a rebellion. 
In his contest with the rebellious knights on 
his return, Arthur was mortally wounded. He 
was carried away to an island of Avalon to be 
healed, and for a long time the Britons in the, 
generations which followed believed that he 
would return and again establish his righteous 
rule. This story of Arthur is supposed to be 
part history and part legend. It has been used 
as a basis for many poems, notably Tennyson’s 
Idylls of the King (which see). Lowell makes 
his Sir Launfal in the poem of that name one 
of Arthur’s knights. 



THE ARTICHOKE 


ARTICHOKE, ar' ti choke, a thistle-like plant 
used in some countries as a vegetable. The 
stem is two or three feet high and bears sev- 















ARTICLE 


399 


ARTICLE 


eral branches, on the ends of which are large 
heads of blue and white flowers. The leaves 
are large and prickly. Surrounding the flowers 
are thorny, oval scales, which overlap each 
other. Portions of the flower heads are eaten 
raw as a salad, or boiled in salted water and 
served with melted butter or sauce. The plant 
is well liked by the people of Europe, but 
has not been in general use as a food in 
America except for live stock. However, its 
popularity is slowly increasing. The Jerusalem 
artichoke is a species of sunflower that grows 
in Canada and the upper Mississippi Valley. 
Its roots are used like potatoes. 

ARTICLE, ar' tik’l. There are two articles 
in English grammar —the and a (an )—and they 
classify as limiting adjectives, because they 
point out, without describing. At one time 
they formed a separate part of speech, making 
nine instead of eight, as now taught by gram¬ 
marians. 

Originally the word a or an meant the same 
as one —a meaning still preserved in such 
expressions as two of a kind, nearly of a size, 
three at a time, and the like. In its present 
usage, however, it does not emphasize number 
but is closely akin to the word any; that is, 
a dog refers to any member of the dog family. 
Therefore a and an are called the indefinite 
articles. The, on the other hand, is a weakened 
form of that, and because it points out in a 
more definite way it is called the definite 
article. The dog means the particular animal 
under discussion or about which something is 
to be asserted; or it may mean dogs as a class, 
as in the sentence, “The dog is man’s staunchest 
friend.” The may also be used to emphasize 
supremacy; as, “This is the novel of the year.” 

When to Use “An.” Until the middle of the 
twelfth century, the article had only one form— 
an —but about that time people began to drop 
the n before words beginning with a conso¬ 
nant sound. This tended to make speech more 
euphonious. The rule, however, was not always 
observed, for in the Canterbury Tales Chaucer 
writes, “Thou lookest as thou wouldst find an 
hare,” and in Shakespeare and the Bible are 
expressions like an usurer and an one, where 
spelling rather than pronunciation dictated the 
form of the article. 

The present rule is, “Use an before a vowel 
sound and a before a consonant sound.” This 
means that a word beginning with silent h is 
considered to begin with the vowel that fol¬ 
lows it, and one beginning with e or eu sounded 
like yu is considered to begin with a consonant. 


Thus: 

An apple 
An action 
An exception 
An old shoe 
A plum 
A deed 
A rule 

A new ulster 


An heir 
An honor 
An unused book 
An uphill climb 
A hero 

A humble home 
A used book 
A European tour 


Many of the older text-books teach that it is 
necessary to use an before words beginning 
with h and accented on the second syllable; 
as, an hysterical woman, an historical novel, an 
habitual criminal, an hereditary crown. Some 
modern texts do not endorse the older form. 

Pronunciation of “The.” In the interests of 
euphony, a slight variation is made in the 
pronunciation of the definite article. The e 
is given a longer sound before a vowel and is 
somewhat blurred before a consonant; as, thee 
orange, thuh lemon. 

Articles Used as Other Parts of Speech. In 

the expression, “The sooner the better,” the 
is not an article but an adverb, modifying the 
adverbs sooner and better; the sentence being 
a short form for, “The sooner we go the better 
I shall like it,” or something equivalent. Simi¬ 
larly, a is used as part of an adjective phrase 
in “many a man” and as a preposition in the 
Baby Bunting line, “Papa’s gone a-hunting.” 
Here and in similar expressions like a-flying, 
a-whistling, and the like, the a replaces an old 
preposition, an, meaning the same as our on. 

Repetition of the Article. When a boy an¬ 
nounces, “I have a brown and a white dog,” 
his hearers are justified in crediting him with 
being the master of two dogs, one brown and 
the other white. If he says, “I have a brown 
and white dog,” he means, if he is careful about 
his English, that he has only one dog, a mixed 
brown-and-white in color. Similarly, we are 
correct in saying, “She is the wife and mother,” 
referring to a woman accompanied by her 
husband and children; and “The wife and the 
mother of Senator Harper were both present 
at the reception,” since two different women 
are involved. Again: 

A novelist and artist named DuMaurier was 
the author of Trilby. 

A novelist and an artist were appointed on the 
committee. 

We are studying the life of Burbank, the 
scientist and plant-breeder. 

We are studying the life of the great scien¬ 
tist, Marconi, and the famous plant-breeder, 
Luther Burbank. 

The manager and bookkeeper, Mr. Smith, is 
in charge of that work. 

The manager and the bookkeeper favored dif¬ 
ferent methods of classifying the accounts. 


ARTICLE 


400 


ARTICLE 


The rule involved in all these examples is 
that the article is not repeated before each 
of two or more connected nouns when they 
refer to the same person or object; it must be 
repeated if different persons or things are 
meant. The seeming contradiction in such 
sentences as “He spoke of Washington, the 
soldier, the patriot, the statesman,” is explained 
by the fact that the repetition of the article 
gives additional emphasis. The statement is 
perceptibly weaker if made to read, “He spoke 
of Washington, the soldier, patriot and states¬ 
man.” Macaulay makes use of this rhetorical 
effect in the sentence, “James was declared a 
mortal and bloody enemy, a tyrant, a murderer 
and a usurper.” 

When the Article is Superfluous. “The 
spider is not an insect but a curious kind of 
an animal.” The italicized article is super¬ 
fluous because a refers to one of a class and 
therefore cannot be used with a word referring 
to an entire class, such as kind, sort, species or 
variety. The correct form is, “The spider is 
not an insect but a curious kind of animal.” 
We say, “I had the same sort of experience,” 
“This is an unusual species of fern,” and so on. 
The article is also superfluous before a word 
taken simply as a name. Thus, it is incorrect 
to say, “He does not deserve the name of a 
father”; “Cromwell was given the title of a 
Protector.” These sentences should read, “He 
does not deserve the name of father”; “Crom¬ 
well was given the title of Protector.” 

The article is incorrectly used in such sen¬ 
tences as, “Barrie’s The Little Minister is a 
popular and charming book,” for the reason 
that an article cannot properly come between 
a possessive and the word it governs. The 
correct form is, “Barrie’s Little Minister is a 
popular and charming book,” or, possibly bet¬ 
ter, “Barrie’s novel, The Little Minister, is a 
popular and charming book.” 

Parsing the Article. The points to be cov¬ 
ered are its classification and the noun it modi¬ 
fies. In the sentence, “The sublime is in a 
grain of dust,” the articles would be parsed as 
follows: 

The is a limiting- adjective, called the definite 
article, and modifies the adjective sublime used 
as a noun to denote an abstract idea. A is a 
limiting adjective, called the indefinite article; 
the form used before consonant sounds ; modifies 
the noun grain, referring indefinitely to one grain 
out of an entire class. 

Common Errors. The rule explained in the 
paragraph entitled Repetition of the Article is 
the one most frequently violated, but the con¬ 


struction appears in so many different forms 
that a few additional examples will be found 
helpful. Other frequent mistakes are also in¬ 
cluded in the following list: 

I read the first and last verse, for I read the 
first and the last verse (or, the first and last 
verses). Where different things are referred to, 
the article must be repeated where the noun is 
singular; only the first adjective requires the 
article where the noun is plural. 

The young and old doctor occupied the same 
suite, for The young and the old doctor occupied 
the same suite. The same man cannot be both 
old and young; since different persons are im¬ 
plied, the article must be repeated. 

Either witness or lawyer had made a blunder, 
for Either the witness or the lawyer had made 
a blunder. This omission of the article is a com¬ 
mon error leading to actual obscurity in the 
thought, for the sentence in its first form seems 
to imply that there are two witnesses and no 
lawyers. 

The plumber and carpenter were already on 
the job, for The plumber and the carpenter tvere 
already on the job. Since the plural verb im¬ 
plies two different men and not one man doing 
both the plumbing and the carpentering, the 
article calls for repetition. 

The thought is more clearly brought out in 
the Latin and Greek version, for The thought is 
more clearly brought out in the Latin and the 
Greek version (or, in the Latin and Greek ver¬ 
sions). The same thing cannot be both Latin 
and Greek. 

If such an one is present, let him step for¬ 
te ard, for If such a one is present, let him step 
forward. One being pronounced as though 
spelled won, properly takes the article a. 

I have no patience ivith that kind of a mis¬ 
take, for I have no patience with that kind of 
mistake. The insertion of a makes the mistake 
particular, limiting it to one of a class, whereas 
the word kind has the opposite meaning of an 
entire class. 

The diphtheria is a dangerous disease, for 
Diphtheria is a dangerous disease. The definite 
article can be used only when a particular per¬ 
son or thing is pointed out. It is not required 
before a word taken in a general sense, l.m.b. 

Outline on the Article 

I. Origin and meaning of a and the 

II. When to use an 

III. Pronunciation of the 

IV. Articles used as other parts of speech 

(a) Adverb 

(b) Adjective 

(c) Preposition 

V. Repetition of the article 

(a) Rule and examples 

(b) Exception for rhetorical effect 

VI. When the article is superfluous 

(a) After kind of 

(b) After name, rank or title of 

(c) After a possessive 

VII. Parsing the article 

(a) Two essential things to tell 

(b) Type sentence 

VIII. Common errors 


ARTICLES 


401 


ARTIFICIAL LIMBS 


ARTICLES, The Thirty-nine, the state¬ 
ment of the religious beliefs of the members of 
the Church of England. They are based on 
42 articles drawn up in the reign of Edward VI 
(1551) by a commission of eight bishops, eight 
clergymen, eight civilians and eight lawyers, 
Ridley, Cranmer and Coverdale being among 
the number. Queen Mary would not acknowl¬ 
edge them, but under Elizabeth, Archbishop 
Parker revised them, reducing them to thirty- 
nine. They were confirmed by the queen in 
1563, and were ratified anew in 1604 and 1628. 
By the Clerical Subscription Act of 1866, the 
clergy do not have to sign these articles, but 
declare their belief in them and in the Prayer 
Book. Since 1871 members of Oxford and 
Cambridge Universities are not obliged to sign 
them. The thirty-nine articles are now ac¬ 
cepted by the Episcopalian churches of Scot¬ 
land, Ireland and America. 

ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION, the 
written instrument of government adopted in 
1781 by the thirteen American colonies, or 
new states, who were then fighting for inde¬ 
pendence. It took a brief experience with this 
form of weak confederation to prove that a 
strong government was impossible under such 
a basic law, but out of the trials and mistakes 
of this “critical period of American history” 
were born a new Constitution and a new 
nation, the United States of America. 

The reasons for the failure of the Confeder¬ 
ation were numerous, but they may be summed 
up in the statement that each of the states 
was an independent country, and the thirteen 
states merely formed a more or less “firm 
league of friendship with each other” (Article 
III). Article II stated expressly that “Each 
state retains its sovereignty, freedom and inde¬ 
pendence, and every power, jurisdiction, and 
right which is not by this Confederation ex¬ 
pressly delegated to the United States in 
Congress assembled.” 

The government under the Confederation 
was in the hands of Congress, which included 
not less than two nor more than seven dele¬ 
gates from a state, each state having, however, 
but one vote; the vote of each state was cast 
as the majority of its delegates decided. Con¬ 
gress could decide disputes between the states. 
It had no power to regulate commerce or to 
raise revenue; it could declare war, but could 
not raise troops; it could make appropriations, 
but could not collect taxes; it could pass laws, 
but could not compel their observance; it 
could borrow money, but could not guarantee 


its repayment. When Congress was not in 
session the government was administered by 
a “committee of the states,” composed of one 
delegate from each state. 

The Articles of Confederation w r ere drawn 
by a committee of Congress appointed on the 
same day as was the committee to draw up 
the Declaration of Independence. The Articles 
were reported to Congress July, 1776, but they 
were not adopted until November, 1777. They 
were then submitted to the state legislatures, 
whose unanimous consent was necessary to 
make them effective. By May, 1779, twelve 
of the states had ratified the Articles, but 
Maryland demanded that New York, Virginia, 
Connecticut and the other states give up their 
claims to the lands west of the Alleghany 
Mountains. Not until all the states had agreed 
to cede their claims to the Federal government 
did Maiyland ratify the Articles, on March 1, 
1781. Thus the Revolutionary War was almost 
over before the states could agree on a form 
of government. See Annapolis Convention ; 
Constitution of the United States. 

The text of the Articles of Confederation, too 
long to be inserted here, may be purchased for 
five cents from Directors of the Old South Work, 
Old South Meeting House, Boston. e.d.f. 

ARTICULATION, ar tik u la' shun, in anat¬ 
omy, is a term applied to the joining of the 
bones. This process is described in the article 
Joints (which see). 

Articulation, in speech, is clear and distinct 
utterance. The principles of articulation as 
taught in schools are briefly set forth in the 
well-known lines— 

Speak clearly if you speak at all— 

Carve every word before you let it fall; 

and Shakespeare put into the mouth of Hamlet 
advice on the subject by which others besides 
players might profit: 

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced 
it to you, trippingly on the tongue; for if you 
mouth it as many of your players do, I had as 
lief the town-crier spoke my lines. 

People who do not articulate clearly usually 
fail to bring out the sounds of the consonants 
in words, or certain syllables, as the ing in 
depending or exceedingly . 

ARTIFICIAL, artifish'al, LIMBS, limbs 
made to supply the place of those lost by acci¬ 
dent or in war. From the very earliest days 
those who have lost arms or legs have endeav¬ 
ored by artificial means to replace them, but it 
is only within recent years that the manufac¬ 
ture of limbs has developed into a science. 
In the United States, prior to the War of the 


ARTIFICIAL LIMBS 


402 


ARTILLERY 


Nations, such development had gone further 
than in any other country, but Europe’s vast 
needs in this direction led to notable perfec¬ 
tion in the art of limb making. As the cost of 
artificial limbs would be beyond the means 
of many of the maimed soldiers in the War 
of the Nations, the various governments sup¬ 
plied them to those who suffered loss of arms 
or legs. The United States set the example 
in this matter by supplying the maimed vet¬ 
erans of its wars with artificial limbs, which 
are renewed every five years. Artificial legs, 
arms, eyes and even ears and noses are now 
made with wonderful skill, both in Europe and 
America. 

Artificial legs are usually made of strong, 
light wood, or aluminum, with certain portions, 
such as the soles of the feet, of rubber. When 
amputation is necessary, surgeons carefully con¬ 
sider how best to fit the remaining stump of 
arm or leg to the requirements of an artificial 
limb. A leg is made with joints at knee and 
ankle, to allow of a natural swing when walk¬ 
ing, and are attached by means of a hollow 
portion surrounding the stump to which it is 
laced. Arms are fitted at the shoulder, at¬ 
tached to a corset, or below the shoulder with 
bands around the stump. Elbow joints are 
provided, and hands which with the aid of 
springs can be made to perform many duties, 
such as holding a pen or clasping a piece of 



ARTIFICIAL LIMBS 

(a, a) Shape when amputation is above the 
knee; ( b ) wood and rubber foot; (c) shape 
when amputation is below the knee. 

paper. Sometimes a hand has a socket in 
which a knife or fork can be held. The hand 
usually is removable and can be replaced by 
a hook screwed into the arm socket and capable 
of supporting considerable weight. Artificial 


arms and legs made on the latest scientific prin¬ 
ciples may now be obtained for a sum varying 
from $30 to $60. 

The making of artificial eyes requires great 
care and is a delicate operation. A shell of glass 
is molded and made to the exact size required; 
then pieces of colored glass are worked into 
it in exact imitation, even to tiny blood- 



ARTIFICIAL ARM 


vessels, of the-eye it is to match. An ear is 
made of papier-mache or metal, painted in 
natural colors and supported in its place by 
a spring passing over the head. An artificial 
nose is molded of papier-mache and held in 
place by spectacles or clamped to the remain¬ 
ing stump. In the manufacture of all arti¬ 
ficial limbs the greatest care is taken to ensure 
a perfect fit, as on that depends entirely the 
comfort, and often the health, of the wearer. 
A limb well fitted enables the wearer to use 
it with a good degree of satisfaction. In case 
of a leg, if the natural knee joint is saved, a 
person can walk with sometimes only the 
least perceptible defect; when amputation is 
above the knee the peculiar swing of the 
wooden leg to bring the knee j oint to a straight 
angle discloses the wearer’s affliction, f.st.a. 

ARTILLERY, ar til' er i, the name given to 
guns which are so large they must be mounted 
or fastened on platforms and cannot be carried 
and fired by hand. The term is also applied 
to the troops who operate such guns. Since 
the fourteenth century, when artillery was first 
introduced into warfare, every war has led to 
alterations in the type of guns and the tactics 
governing their employment. Napoleon was 
an emphatic believer in the power of big guns 
and whenever possible concentrated his artil¬ 
lery attack on a point of his enemy’s lines 
which he intended to break. In the Franco- 
German War the French artillery was always 
outclassed in numbers and power, with the 
result that German victories w’ere quickly se¬ 
cured. In the War of the Nations greater 
reliance than ever before in history was placed 
on artillery, and after the very early stages 
the conflict developed into contests between 
big guns. 

Modern artillery can hardly be divided into 
mobile and immobile, as was the previous cus- 















Copyright: International News Service 





























ARTILLERY 


403 


ARTILLERY 


tom. Big guns are now brought into action and 
moved from place to place in such a manner 
as to prove that no artillery is immobile. 
What is regarded as strictly mobile artillery 
consists of field and horse artillery in batteries 
of four or six guns which can keep pace with 
marching troops and go into action with them. 
Field artillery, adjusting its march to the 
pace of infantry, is of heavier caliber than 
horse artillery, which must move w T ith mounted 
men. 

Field Artillery. All modern armies employ 
quick-firing breech-loading guns firing shells 
weighing from thirteen to eighteen and one- 
half pounds. These guns are capable of firing 
from ten to twenty aimed shots per minute 
and have a range varying from three and one- 
half to four and one-half miles. Effective 
range, at which perfect accuracy may be ob¬ 
tained, is usually considered to be between 
two and three miles, while at lower ranges 
such guns create terrific havoc. These guns 
fire common shells and shrapnel (see Ammuni¬ 
tion). Ordinarily each gun in the field artillery 
is drawn by six horses, but in Europe, motor 
vehicles are used wherever possible and draw 
whole batteries of guns. The weight of the 
field gun varies in different armies. The Ger¬ 
man 3.03 caliber field gun with carriage weighs 
nearly a ton; the corresponding gun and car¬ 
riage of the French army weigh 2,500 pounds, 
while the English 3.3 gun and carriage weigh 
2,700 pounds. 

Horse Artillery. The rapid motion of guns 
with mounted troops is naturally of the great¬ 
est importance when advancing or retreating. 
The artillery must manoeuver rapidly to cover 
the troops and also, in case of need, to extricate 
themselves from difficulty. In the United 
States the guns are the same as those of the 
field artillery, and fire shells varying in weight 
from twelve to fifteen pounds. The cannoneers, 
however, are mounted, riding behind the gun 
carriages instead of on the carriages them¬ 
selves; hence the name horse artillery. 

Heavy Artillery. For siege purposes or for 
reducing forts and earthworks very large guns 
are used. The comparative ease with which 
large guns can be moved was one of the out¬ 
standing features the War of the Nations devel¬ 
oped. Against the huge shells, weighing some¬ 
times more than a ton, fired from guns with a 
caliber of seventeen inches, and a range of 
nearly twenty miles, the most scientifically 
constructed forts cannot stand. Masses of con¬ 
crete and steel are quickly leveled to the 


ground, and gaping chasms are dug in earth¬ 
works and trenches by these terrible weapons. 
The howitzer, which proved so effective early 
in the War of the Nations, had been previously 
allowed to fall almost into disuse (see How¬ 
itzer). It is now regarded as one of the most 
deadly of modern weapons. Howitzers of 
5-inch and 6-inch caliber accompany troops on 
the march, while those of greater caliber are 
brought up more slowly and follow in the rear 
of armies. The 6-inch howitzer fires a shell 
weighing from 122 to 200 pounds and has a 
range of four miles. With its carriage it weighs 
9,500 pounds. Until the introduction of the 
German 17-inch howitzer, the 9.4-inch howitzer 
was considered the largest size gun which com¬ 
bined ease of movement and general efficiency. 
However, each of the powers engaged in the 
war endeavored to outclass the others in size 
and range of its guns and projectiles. The 
Krupp 11-inch howitzer fires a shell weighing 
760 pounds against fortifications, and a shrapnel 
shell containing 1,880 bullets against troops 
(see Shrapnel). 

The “75.” One of the most effective of all 
modern guns is that used by French artillery 
and known as the “75 millimeter” or “75.” 
In inches, its caliber is 2.9, and it fires shell or 
shrapnel weighing twelve and fifteen pounds. 
In range, accuracy and speed of fire, and in 
destructiveness it has proved itself superior to 
any other weapon of a similar size. 

The Mortar. This is the type of gun that 
so quickly reduced the forts of Liege, Antwerp 
and Przemysl. Although it was generally un¬ 
derstood that 16-inch Krupp mortars worked 
the great destruction, the credit, or blame, lies 
with an Austrian 12-inch mortar, called a Skoda 
in honor of its inventor, which fires a shell 
weighing 858 pounds. This mortar fires at a 
greater angle of elevation than any other gun, 
and has a range of eight miles. At a distance 
of seven and one-half miles firing at an invis¬ 
ible object, German gunners pierced the roof 
of an Antwerp fort at the first attempt. The 
Skoda mortar is mobile and can be removed 
in forty minutes, while the dismounting and 
removal of the 16-inch mortar from its neces¬ 
sary bed of concrete is a work of hours. The 
12-inch mortar is lowered to a horizontal posi¬ 
tion to be loaded and then swung to the angle 
of elevation desired. It can fire one shot per 
minute, though the usual speed is only one 
shot every two minutes. A crew of 200 men 
is needed, and it requires three 100 horse power 
motor trucks to transport it. 


ARTILLERY 


404 


ARTILLERY 


Anti-Air-Craft Guns. The War of the Na¬ 
tions brought into use a new type of gun, one 
for which there had previously been no de¬ 
mand. The danger from above, in the form 
of bombs, did not exist, or was not realized 
until actual accomplishments showed what an 
important part aeroplanes and dirigible balloons 
were to play in modern warfare. The ideal gun 
to resist aerial attacks, one firing a shell in an 
absolutely verticle line, has not yet been 
evolved, the nearest approach being a gun 
firing at an elevation of seventy-five degrees. 
Airships could not possibly rise above the 
range of big guns firing shells vertically. At 
such an altitude the occupants of the air craft 
would probably die for lack of air. Anti-air¬ 
craft guns are mounted on high buildings, on 
wheeled carriages or on automobiles, and are 
capable of rapid firing, rapid adjustment of 
sights and quick changing of the angle of ele¬ 
vation. Machine guns firing rifle bullets are 
effective against air craft when flying low, but 
heavier guns firing one-, two- and three-pound 
shells are more to be relied on. 

United States Artillery. In the time of the 
War of Secession the United States artillery 
consisted of muzzle-loading “cannon,” as they 
were then called. Improvements, however, 
have kept pace with, and in some cases antici¬ 
pated, those introduced into European coun¬ 
tries. In the Spanish War the American artil¬ 
lery rendered good service, and at present the 
gunners of the United States navy and army 
are as efficient as those of any European power. 
The 3-inch field gun and mortar, 5-inch siege 
gun and 7-inch howitzer are the most modern 
and effective weapons. The forces of Canada 
are armed with guns similar to those used in 
the field and horse artillery of the regular 
British army. 

> How Big Guns are Made. The use of steel 
in the making of big guns is of comparatively 
recent origin and was rendered necessary by 
the constant struggle for supremacy between 
offensive projectiles and defensive armor. As 
it became necessary to use projectiles of greater 
power it became imperative to produce a 
weapon capable of discharging such projectiles 
with accuracy and with safety to those working 
the gun. Bessemer steel was one of the first 
and most important steps in the production of 
modern weapons of destruction (see Steel). 
Other processes have followed by which the 
metal is still further hardened, enabling it, when 
forged or molded into the form of a big gun, 
to withstand the pressure of explosives that 


have steadily increased in power. A modern 
shell, fired from a gun made only a few years 
before the employment of hardened steel, 
would burst the gun and probably do more 
damage to those firing it than to the enemy. 
Modern weapons, however, are made to with¬ 
stand a pressure of at least twenty tons to the 
square inch of surface, and bursting is of very 
rare occurrence. The steel now used is of the 
carbon type, or that with a certain proportion 
of nickel added. Steel with an admixture of 
four per cent of carbon and 0.4 per cent of 
nickel is now considered the strongest possible 
combination. Even this material undergoes 
further hardening processes, such as annealing 
and oil hardening, which will be later described. 

Forging. The first process is naturally to 
procure the molten steel. For this the open 
hearth method is emplojmd (see Steel). The 
molten metal is poured into a mold of the re¬ 
quired size and allowed to cool. The ingot 
thus produced is reheated and transferred to a 
l^draulic press in which it is forged to the 
required shape and size. The steam hammer 
with its mighty blows has been superseded, the 
hydraulic producing greater pressure, amount¬ 
ing sometimes to as much as 10,000 tons. Guns 
of more than 8-inch internal diameter, or 
bore, are forged hollow over a tube cooled by 
running water. When the forging is complete 
the gun is heated again and allowed to cool 
gradually, usually being placed in warm sand; 
this process is termed annealing. A further 
hardening process consists of heating the metal 
to 1,600° F. and plunging it quickly into a bath 
of oil. The forged gun is placed on a lathe 
and the barrel is bored to the required size. 
The rifling, a series of curves or partial curves, 
is cut by machinery so delicately adjusted that 
the cutting may be judged to the thousandth 
part of an inch. 

The Jacket. The above proceedings refer 
only to the inner barrel or tube of the gun. 
Next comes the process of fitting this tube with 
a jacket or covering to give it sufficient strength 
to meet its required test. An outer tube is 
forged of such a size that, when expanded by 
heat, it will fit over the inner tube. As it 
cools, the jacket contracts and grips the inner 
tube as tightly as though both were forged 
from one piece of metal. The completed gun 
is again placed in a lathe, when extra bands 
are shrunk on to strengthen it still further. 
The gun is then ready for its final testing for 
accuracy of bore, the breech mechanism is 
added, and the gun is ready to be mounted. 





10-inch Disappearing Gun and Carriage 
in firing position 


W 42Centimoter (16-3inch) 

German Siege Mortar throws a projectile 
ling one ton,twenty miles 


wei 


12 inch German Siege Gun,called the 
Jack Johnson”becau$e of its“big smoke 


6-inch British Siege Howitzer 


smimm 


U.S. Coast Defense Gun,enroute 

49 feet 3inche$ in length 


Sandy Hook-1915 


iWi 


w&wi*• 





l! < '-iiSs 




m mfa 

v y ?rJ f fj 

1 r l-y, a\{\\ifM 

if' 1 I 





■35 

-M 


ID 


MODERN ARTILLERY 


□ L 


JO 




































































ARTS AND CRAFTS 


406 


ARTS AND CRAFTS 


The Breech. The breech of the cannon is a 
piece of mechanism which opens and closes the 
end of the gun in which the charge is inserted. 
When closed, the breech, or breech block, must 
have sufficient strength to withstand the shock 
of the bursting charge and yet be so easily and 
quickly opened and shut as not to interfere 
with the rapid working of the gun. The mod¬ 
ern form of breech block is fitted with what is 
termed an interrupted screw, being divided 
into twelve sections. The breech is hinged, and 
when pushed forward into position, one-twelfth 
of a turn engages three-fourths of its surface 
in the threads grooved in the breech of the 
gun. One-twelfth of a turn disengages the 
breech block, which is swung open, bringing 
with it the exploded cartridge and, in some 
cases, at the same time raising another charge 
into position to be inserted in the breech. See 
Projectile; Ammunition. 

Coast and Fortress Artillery. Guns for per¬ 
manent defense of coast or towns are mounted 
on carriages and platforms capable only of 
movements to bring the gun into position for 
firing over the defenses, or through embrasures, 
and for lowering so that loading may be done 
while completely under cover. Such guns are 
of large caliber and long range, so war vessels 
may not approach close enough to them to 
inflict damage before themselves being under 
fire. For other guns used in modern warfare 
see Navy, subhead Naval Guns; Howitzer; 
Machine Gun. l.r.g. 

Any book on artillery written prior to the be¬ 
ginning of the War of the Nations (1914) will 
not describe the most modern weapons. Good 
books prior to that date are Bethel’s Modern 
Guns and Gunnery; Spaulding’s Notes on Field 
Artillery. 

ARTS AND CRAFTS, a term comprising all 
the arts, except architecture itself, which go to 
“the making of the house beautiful.” The 
phrase is now generally applied, however, to 
the revival of artistic, individual workmanship, 
as opposed to the labored, uniform designs 
turned out by factories. During the nineteenth 
century, especially in England, the growth of 
the factory system, with its specialized func¬ 
tions for each workman, seemed to have de¬ 
stroyed much of the artistic impulse or feeling 
among workmen. As early as 1840 or 1850 
there was some public interest in w T ood-carving, 
metal work, spinning and weaving, pottery and 
other arts, but it was not until 1888 that the 
Arts and Crafts movement was recognized as 
a distinct break with the past. 


The men who inspired and led this new 
movement in art—Carlyle, Ruskin, William 
Morris, Walter Crane—believed that all work 
should produce a useful, artistic result. Art 
for them was not confined to oil paintings in 
gilt frames but included all the countless prod¬ 
ucts of human hands. “Real art,” said Mor¬ 
ris, “is the expression by man of his pleasure 
in labor.” Ruskin expressed the same idea 
when he said that there are three tests of work; 
it must be honest, useful and cheerful. To 
rescue public taste from the cheap imitations 
of foreign models, to encourage sound work¬ 
manship, and raise the handicrafts to their 
rightful position as arts, these were the aims of 
the leaders. 

The success of the movement was due chiefly 
to the artistic and practical skill of William 
Morris, who in turn mastered the details of 
every craft in which he became interested; 
“he was painter, designer, scribe, illuminator, 
wood-engraver, dyer, weaver, and finally printer 
and paper-maker.” The work of William De 
Morgan in pottery, and of T. J. Cobden-San- 
derson and his pupils in bookbinding, is also 
noteworthy. Thousands of workmen, in¬ 
fluenced by the example of such leaders, now 
realize the dignity of work and its artistic 
possibilities, and nearly every community has 
its enthusiastic arts and crafts devotees. 

The arts and crafts movement was not con¬ 
fined to England, but spread to other Euro¬ 
pean countries and to America, where one of 
its leaders was Elbert Hubbard, founder of the 
Roycrofters. A notable feature of the move¬ 
ment was the popularity of the “mission” style 
of furniture, an imitation of the simple, hand¬ 
made articles of the early Spanish missions in 
the west. 

“Have nothing in your houses which you do 
not know to be useful or believe to be beauti¬ 
ful” was Morris’s ideal. He would prefer a 
single beautiful picture, even though cheap, to 
a dozen ugly or indifferent prints. The fitness 
of an object for its purpose, the sincerity and 
honesty of its workmanship, not the price or 
fashion, were new tests of art. A workman 
should express his personality in the products 
of his hands, and he should regard the material 
and purpose of an object as the controlling 
factors in artistic expression. See Morris, 
William. w.f.z. 

Consult Crane’s An Artists' Reminiscences; 
Mackail’s Life of William Morris; Triggs’ Chan¬ 
ters in the History of the Arts and Crafts Move¬ 
ment, 




ARUM 


407 


ASBESTOS 


ARUM, ay' rum, the name given to a num¬ 
ber of plants which greatly resemble the Jack- 
in-the-pulpit, to which they are related. The 
showy lily-like part which is usually called the 
flower is not really a flower at all, but is known 



ARUM 


Leaves, flower and cross-section of latter. 

as the spathe, while the flowers are tiny incon¬ 
spicuous things massed about the central spike. 
Many varieties are cultivated in hot-houses 
on account of their beauty. The stems and 
leaves contain a bitter juice, and the bulbs 
from which the plants spring contain a starch 
which may be used for food. See Calla; Jack- 

IN-THE-PULPIT. 

ARYAN, ahr' yan, meaning lord of the soil, 
is the name given to that branch of the human 
race whose members are supposed to have 
lived originally in Central Asia, east of the 
Caspian Sea and north of the Hindu Kush 
Mountains. They are also called the Indo- 
European and Indo-Germanic race. With the 
exception of the Turks, the Magyars of Hun¬ 
gary, the Basques of the Pyrenees and the 
Finns of Lapland, all the nations of Europe 
sprang from this branch of the human family. 
Centuries ago the Ayrans became the ruling 
race of India and their ancient language was 
Sanskrit. All modern languages sprang from 
these people. See Languages of the World. 

ASAFETIDA, as a jet' i da, also spelled Asa- 
foetida, is a gumlike drug having a powerful, 
disagreeable odor much stronger than that of 
garlic. It is employed in medicine to prevent 
spasms and to calm mild attacks of hysteria. 


In the latter case, some one says, the patient 
finds the medicine so extremely distasteful that 
he controls himself and thus a second dose is 
unnecessary. 

Asafetida is ob¬ 
tained by drying 
the milky juice 
from the roots of 
a large plant of 
the parsnip fam¬ 
ily that grows in 
Asia. It is found 
on the market 
most commonly 
in the form of 
small, brownish 
lumps. In spite 
of its disgusting 
odor, asafetida is 
used in South America, India, Persia and 
France as a seasoning. Years ago people used 
to hang a little bag containing asafetida about 
the neck as a protecton against scarlet fever, 
but that is one of the beliefs closely allied to 
superstition that now prevails only in very 
ignorant minds. 

ASBESTOS, as bes' tos, a substance properly 
classified as a mineral, although it possesses 
qualities peculiar b6th to the mineral and vege¬ 
table kingdoms. It is, in fact, a species of the 
hornblende family of minerals, composed of 
perfectly smooth, separable fibers, sometimes 
delicate, flexible and elastic, sometimes stiff 
and brittle. It is heavy in its crude state, but 
the fibers can be made as light as down after 
they are treated for commercial uses. Sepa¬ 
rating the asbestos fiber from the mineral gives 
a snowy mass of what might be termed mineral 
wool. Three or four processes of carding bring 
this material into shape to be woven into cloth, 
packing or whatever form may be desired. 
The commercial value of asbestos depends 
upon its quality of indestructibility. It suc¬ 
cessfully withstands the attacks of fire, acids 
and time. By ancient peoples it was made into 
a cloth for shrouds for bodies burned on funeral 
pyres. Asbestos is found in many parts of 
the world; several states of the American 
Union produce it in limited quantities, notably 
California, Wyoming and Montana, but the 
principal supply comes from Quebec. The 
Canadian production has reached 136,000 tons 
yearly, worth nearly $4,000,000. 

It is the fact that asbestos will not burn 
which makes it of so much value. Its uses are 
many and varied. Absolutely pure asbestos- 



ASAFETIDA 

The plant, flower and fruit. 















ASBJORNSEN 


408 


ASCENSION AND DECLINATION 


cloth curtains form one of the safest barriers 
against fire in theaters. After the disastrous 
Iroquois theater fire in Chicago in 1903, many 
cities passed laws requiring theaters to be 
equipped with such curtains. Asbestos is used 
extensively as a covering for steam-pipes, to 
provide against loss of heat, and asbestos 
cement is used for hot-blast pipes and fire- 
heated surfaces. Compressed asbestos fiber 
board may be used for flooring and woodwork 
in general, and when so used may be stained, 
polished and finished the same as wood. As¬ 
bestos is quite frequently used for upholstering 
and for carpets; a peculiarity of the latter is 
that the longer such a carpet is used the 
tougher it becomes, although it does not im¬ 
prove in appearance. Asbestos is also ground 
fine and used in paints. Roofs are made by 
treating strong canvas with a combination of 
asbestos and felt. Mittens for iron and glass 
workers are made from asbestos yarn. Asbestos 
soldering blocks are used by goldsmiths. In 
combination with rubber, it is much used as 
an electrical insulator. Asbestos cloth is used 
for acid filters in all sorts of chemical processes, 
for the reason that no acid will eat it. 

Consult The Production of Asbestos, issued by 
the United States Geological Survey; Circle’s 
Chrysotile — Asbestos, Occurrence, Exploitation, 
Milling and Uses, published by Canadian Depart¬ 
ment of Mines. 

ASBJORNSEN as byurn'sen, Peter Chris¬ 
ten (1812-1885), a distinguished Norwegian 
naturalist and writer of fairy tales, who wan¬ 
dered on foot from one end of Norway to the 
other collecting the legends and folk tales of 
the peasants. He worked with his friend 
Jorgen Moe, and many of the tales which they 
published they wrote together. Asbjornsen 
was an eager student of zoology and forestry, 
but his work as a collector and writer of fairy 
stories overshadows what he accomplished as a 
scientist. 

ASBURY, az'bery, Francis (1745-1816), 
famous as the “Father of American Method¬ 
ism” and as the first bishop of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church to be ordained in the United 
States. He was born near Birmingham, Eng¬ 
land, was converted to Methodism at the age 
of thirteen, and in 1771 went to America as a 
missionary. Through his efforts the member¬ 
ship of the Church rapidly increased, and in 
1784 John Wesley appointed him bishop. This 
appointment was a little later ratified at Balti¬ 
more by a conference which marked the real 
beginning of the Methodist Episcopal Church 


in America. To the end of his life Asbury 
worked with untiring zeal for the Church, and 
during his ministry preached over 16,000 ser¬ 
mons. 

ASBURY PARK, N. J., in Monmouth 
County, sixty miles south of New York City 
and eighty miles northeast of Philadelphia, is 
one of the most popular summer resorts on the 
Atlantic coast. Wesley Lake, on the north, 
separates Asbury Park and Ocean Grove. The 
city is served by the Pennsylvania and the 
Central of New Jersey railroads and by electric 
interurban lines. In 1910 the population was 
10,150; in 1914 it was 12,763. 

The city owns a fine two-mile beach bor¬ 
dered for a part of its length by a board walk 
and bath houses. It has a Federal building, 
public library, municipal hospital, splendid 
hotels, theaters, lecture halls and pavilions, 
several small parks, an aviation field and a 
national rifle range. There are attractive drives 
in all directions. The summer population fre¬ 
quently exceeds 100,000, and the season’s fes¬ 
tivities include a baby parade, lake carnival, 
masque fete and fireworks displays. The 
manufacturing of sleeping garments gives em¬ 
ployment to 300 people. 

Asbury Park, named in honor of Bishop As¬ 
bury (which see), w r as founded in 1869, in¬ 
corporated in 1874 and became a city in 1897. 
In 1914 the commission form of government 
was adopted. The water system and beach 
are owned by the municipality. c.e.w.b. 



(a) Vernal equinox; (b) point on equator at 
which circle through that from pole crosses; 
(c) position of star; (d, e, f ) celestial equator; 
( g, h) horizon of person standing at (i). 

ASCENSION AND DECLINATION OF 
STARS. As the position of places on the 
earth is described by the terms latitude and 







ASCENSION DAY 


409 


ASH, OR ASHES 


longitude, so is the position of heavenly bodies 
defined by the terms right ascension and dec¬ 
lination. It must be remembered, however, 
that the position of heavenly bodies is stated 
with reference to the celestial equator. On 
earth Greenwich is the starting point of meas¬ 
urement of longitude. In the heavens it is the 
“first of Aries,” or the vernal equinox. Thus 
the right ascension of a star is ascertained by 
drawing an imaginary line from the celestial 
pole through that star to the celestial equator. 
The measurement of the arc of the equator 
from the point on the equator where the line 
crosses to the first of Aries, or vernal equinox, 
is the right ascension of the star. The declina¬ 
tion is the distance north or south of the 
celestial equator measured on the arc of the 
imaginary line from the star to the equator. 

ASCENSION DAY, a holy day of the Epis¬ 
copal and Roman Catholic churches, set apart 
to commemorate the ascension of Christ, and 
ranking with Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. 
It falls on the fortieth day after Easter, or ten 
days before Whitsunday, when the day of 
Pentecost is observed, and always occurs on 
Thursday. It is often called Holy Thursday. 

ASCETICISM, asset' esizm, the practice of 
self-denial and bodily suffering for the purpose 
of gaining spiritual strength. The term com¬ 
monly refers to the acts of some of the early 
Christians, whose fastings and self-inflicted 
tortures were often prolonged and severe. But 
asceticism has been preached and practiced 
from times far earlier. The word itself was 
first applied to the training undergone by 
Greek athletes preparing for a contest. Fast¬ 
ing was frequent among Old Testament peo¬ 
ples, and self-denial must have some connec¬ 
tion with sacrificing to deities, a custom of all 
primitive races. The monks of the Middle 
Ages were ascetics, and to a certain extent, the 
Puritans. They first gave up all the attractions 
of the world—money, power and family life. 
The Puritans denied themselves luxuries in 
dress or amusement and made life a business 
of seriousness, but did not withdraw from the 
world and its normal activities. 

ASGARD, as' gahrd, to the ancient Scandi¬ 
navians, was the home of the gods, as Olympus 
was to the Greeks. Here each god had his 
palace, and here was the radiant hall in which 
their councils were held, presided over by Odin 
(which see). But the Scandinavians believed 
that sooner or later evil would triumph over 
the great gods, and that all the bright dwell¬ 
ings of Asgard would be destroyed. 


ASH, a tree of the olive family that sheds 
its leaves in winter. There are over fifty dif¬ 
ferent kinds, found chiefly in Europe and 
North America. The flowers are small and 
appear before the leaves; the fruit is a winged 



THE ASH TREE 

The form of the tree, also shape of leaves and 
appearance of fruit. 

seed vessel with one seed. The leaves are 
light green; they appear late and fall early. 

The ash is a beautiful shade tree, and is a 
favorite in parks. The white ash is one of the 
most useful of trees. Its wood is hard and 
tough, and is valuable in the construction of 
carriage wheels and for turning; it is also 
excellent fuel. The black ash is found in low, 
wet land and can be recognized by its almost 
black bark. Its wood is easily split into thin 
pieces and is extensively used in the manu¬ 
facture of hoops, staves and baskets. The 
blue ash is so called because its bark turns 
water blue. Several trees popularly called ash 
do not belong to the ash botanically. See 
Mountain Ash; Prickly Ash. 

ASH, or ASHES, the substance that remains 
after any material has been burned. The term 
is usually applied to the mineral obtained on 
burning wood, coal, plants and the like. The 
following substances are obtained from burn¬ 
ing: lime, soda, potash, sulphur, phosphorus, 
zinc, copper, iron and sand. It is a well-known 
fact that plants absorb these minerals from the 
soil, and continuous cultivation of the soil 
leaves it poor in mineral substance. It be¬ 
comes necessary, therefore, for these substances 
to be returned to the soil in the form of fertil¬ 
izers, if its productivity is to be maintained. 

From the ashes of sea-weed great quantities 
of iodine are secured, while wood ashes has 
been a source of potash from the earliest times. 
See Alkali; Fertilizer. 




ASHANTI 


410 


ASHEVILLE 


ASHANTI, ashan'tee, a British colony in 
West Africa, inland from the Gold Coast, 
inhabited chiefly by warlike negroes. It has an 
area of 23,000 square miles and a population 
of about 288,000. On the west, it is bounded 
by the French Ivory Coast territory, and it is 
surrounded on all other sides by British West 
African possessions. The chief town is 
Ivumassi, with about 19,000 inhabitants. 

At one time, Ashanti was the greatest slave 
market in the world, slave traders from all 
parts of Africa meeting at Kumassi to dispose 
of their captives. Abolition of this traffic by 
the British authorities has led to the introduc¬ 
tion of peaceful pursuits. Cocoa and rubber 
are extensively grown, and gold to the value 
of about $1,275,000 is yearly exported. A 
railway runs from the coast to Kumassi, open¬ 
ing up important mining and agricultural dis¬ 
tricts. Gold, silver and copper money is in 
use, but the natives in many parts adhere to 
the use of cowries and other shells for cur¬ 
rency (see Cowrie). 

Although nominally under British protection 
since 1874, the country was not formally an¬ 
nexed until 1901, after repeated rebellions and 
serious wars. Ashanti is administered by a 
British resident commissioner, who is responsi¬ 
ble to the governor-general of the Gold Coast. 

ASHBURTON, ash' bur t’n, Alexander Bar¬ 
ing, Lord (1774-1848), a prominent English 
financier and diplomat, best known as one of 
the negotiators of the Webster-Ashburton 
Treaty (which see), between Great Britain and 
the United States. The interests of the latter 
country were in the hands of Daniel Webster. 
For many years before the death of his father 
he was in the firm of Baring Brothers, and on 
his father’s death he became its head. While 
on a trip to the United States he met and 
married Anne Bingham, the daughter of a 
United States Senator from Pennsylvania; and 
when, in 1842, the disagreement between the 
United States and Great Britain in regard to 
the northeast and northwest boundary lines 
had reached a crisis, Ashburton, by reason of 
his American connections and his familiarity 
with American ideas, was appointed to attempt 
the readjustment of the difficulty. 

ASHEVILLE, ash' vil, N. C., a famous sum¬ 
mer and winter health resort and an educa¬ 
tional and manufacturing city. It is the county 
seat of Buncombe County, in the western part 
of the state, and is beautifully situated in the 
Blue Ridge Mountains, near the confluence of 
the French Broad and the Swannanoa rivers. 


The elevation is 2,350 feet, and many of the 
wooded hills near by rise above 6,000 feet. 
The surrounding country, largely agricultural, 
is also noted for its fine timber. The mean 
temperature is 55°. The population was 18,762 
in 1910; in 1916 it was 23,000. Of this number 
ninety-eight per cent are American, of whom 
about twenty-five to thirty per cent are negroes. 
These figures are exclusive of the 200,000 an¬ 
nual visitors. The area is six square miles. 

Asheville is on the Southern Railway. 
Raleigh, the state capital, is 210 miles east; 
northwest 129 miles is Knoxville, Tenn., and 
Atlanta, Ga., is 262 miles southwest. The 
important manufacturing industries of the city 
include furniture and ready-cut houses, caskets, 
leather goods, cotton goods, farm implements, 
and mica. The combined payroll of these 
industries amounts to nearly $2,500,000 an¬ 
nually. 

In the city and surrounding country are a 
number of beautiful parks and places of scenic 
interest, including Round Knob, Richmond 
Hill, Overlook Park, Beaumont, Connally’s 
View, Riverside Park and Lake, and Swan¬ 
nanoa Drive. Fine automobile roads lead to 
all of these places. About two miles southeast 
of the city is Biltmore, the country place of 
George W. Vanderbilt. It is probably the most 
magnificent private estate in America, the 
grounds cover 132,000 acres, including Pisgah 
Forest, a hunting reserve, and rare botanical 
gardens. Pisgah Forest was purchased by the 
National Forest Reservation Commission in 
1914. The splendid chateau on the estate is 
French Renaissance in design. The all-turf golf 
course of the Asheville Country Club is one 
of the finest in the South. 

A number of elegantly-appointed hotels, in¬ 
cluding one said to be the finest tourist hotel 
in America; the Park Memorial Public Li¬ 
brary; the government building; a large audi¬ 
torium, and sanitariums are among the notable 
public buildings. Asheville has a number of 
educational institutions, in addition to the 
public school system. There are the Normal 
and Collegiate Institute, the Home Industrial 
School, both under the auspices of the Board 
of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church, 
St. Genevieve’s College, Asheville School for 
Boys and Asheville School for Girls. 

The settlement of Asheville was begun in 
1792 and received its name in honor of Gov¬ 
ernor Samuel Ashe. It was chartered as a 
town in 1797 and obtained a city charter in 
1883, which was revised in 1901. n.b. 


ASHLAND 


411 


ASHTABULA 


ASHLAND, Ivy., a manufacturing city in 
Boyd County, in the northeastern part of the 
state, 140 miles east and north of Frankfort, 
four miles south of Ironton, Ohio, and fifteen 
miles northwest of Huntington, W. Va. It 
is on the Ohio River near the mouth of the 
Big Sandy, and on the Chesapeake & Ohio and 
the Norfolk & Western railroads. The town 
has connection by an electric interurban line 
with Huntington. The area exceeds two square 
miles. In 1910 the population was 8,688; in 
1914 it was 9,492. 

Ashland was settled in 1854 and became a 
city in 1870. It has a Federal building, erected 
at a cost of $100,000; a public library, two hos¬ 
pitals and attractive church and school build¬ 
ings. Central Park is a natural park in the 
center of the town, and just east is Clyffside 
Park, a reserve of seventy-five acres maintained 
by a private corporation, where the Tri-State 
Chautauqua is held. 

Ashland is in a rich mineral oil and lumber 
region and has an important river commerce in 
manufactured articles and iron ore. The im¬ 
portant industries of the city include manu¬ 
factories of pig iron/ coke, cut and wire nails, 
wire rods, steel billets, sheet steel, fire brick, 
leather, cement, furniture stock and oak and 
poplar lumber. h.r.d. 

ASHLAND, Wis., a shipping point of im¬ 
portance and the county seat of Ashland 
County. It is situated on Chequamegon Bay, 
on the northern coast of the state, sixty miles 
east of Duluth, 180 miles northeast of Saint 
Paul and 250 miles northwest of Milwaukee. 
Besides being a lake port it is the terminus of 
four railway lines—the Chicago & North West¬ 
ern; Chicago, Saint Paul, Minneapolis & 
Omaha; Minneapolis, Saint Paul & Sault 
Sainte Marie and Northern Pacific. In 1914 
the population was estimated at 11,594. The 
area comprises eleven and one-half square 
miles. 

Ashland has one of the best harbors on Lake 
Superior, and the immense ore-docks here were 
built to accommodate the large shipments of 
hematite ore from the Gogebic Iron Range. 
The city has large interests in lumber and 
brown stone and extensive dairying and fruit¬ 
growing industries. Besides these, there are 
lumber mills, pulp mills, large steel works, 
charcoal blast furnaces for the manufacture of 
pig iron, and the machine shops of the Chicago 
& North Western Railway. For advanced 
study there are Northern College, Sacred Heart 
Convent and North Wisconsin Academy. The 


city has the Vaughn Public Library. The 
United States government building and post 
office and the Rhinehart and the Sisters’ hos¬ 
pitals are worthy of note. Apostle Islands, a 
group of twenty-seven islands in Chequamegon 
Bay, are of scenic and historical interest. 

The first settlement was made in 1854; it 
was incorporated in 1863, was chartered as a 
city in 1887 and since 1913 has been under the 
commission form of government. The growth 
of the city began with the development of the 
Gogebic mines in 1885. 

ASHTABU'LA, Ohio, an important shipping 
point, especially for coal and iron. It is sit¬ 
uated in Ashtabula County, in the northeast, 
on Lake Erie, at the point where the Ashta¬ 
bula River discharges into it. Cleveland is 
fifty-four miles southwest, and Buffalo is 129 
miles northeast. Through the service of the 
New York Central Lines, the Pennsylvania 
and the New York, Chicago & Saint Louis 
railroads and the excellent harbor, Ashtabula 
has become a leading transfer shipping point. 
Electric lines extend from Ashtabula to cities 
east, south and west. Finns, Swedes and Ital¬ 
ians comprise thirty per cent of the population, 
which increased from 18,266 in 1910 to 20,478 
in 1914. The area is five and one-half square 
miles. 

Ashtabula is the center of a large agricultural 
and dairying region; it is famous in its terri¬ 
tory for its large greenhouses, where vegetables 
are raised under glass in winter in sufficient 
quantities to supply the larger cities. More 
iron ore is received here annually than at any 
other port in the United States (probably in 
the world), and is reshipped to Pittsburgh, 
Youngstown and other manufacturing cities. 
The course of the river has been improved by 
the city, thereby increasing the facilities for 
commerce and manufacture. Ashtabula has a 
large dry dock, an extensive ship-building 
plant, car-repair shops, tanneries and manu¬ 
factories of farm implements and garden tools. 
It has a Federal building and a Carnegie Li¬ 
brary. The park reservations cover 200 acres 
and extend along the lake shore and river bank. 

The first settlement was made in 1804. The 
town, which included Kingsville, Sheffield and 
Plymouth, was organized in 1808; later, these 
three villages were incorporated separately. 
Ashtabula became a city in 1892, and in 1916 
the commission form of government was 
adopted. A railroad accident on the bridge 
over the river in 1876, yet remembered 
throughout the country as the “Ashtabula dis- 


ASH WEDNESDAY 


412 


ASIA 


aster,” resulted in the loss of more than 100 
lives. t.h. 

ASH WEDNESDAY, the first day of Lent. 
It derived its name from a practice which was 
common in the Church in medieval times and 
still survives in somewhat altered form. It 
was customary to preserve the ashes obtained 
by burning the palms after Palm Sunday 
(which see). The ashes were sprinkled by the 
priest on the heads of those who came as peni¬ 
tents on that day. In the Roman Catholic 
Church to-day the priest blesses the ashes near 


the altar and puts them on the foreheads of 
the clergy and congregation. As he touches 
each forehead he intones in Latin: “Remem¬ 
ber, man, that thou art dust, and into • dust 
thou shalt return.” 

The Protestant Church in Germany does not 
observe the day; and while it is celebrated in 
the Church of England and the Protestant 
Episcopal Church in America, the ceremony 
which gave the daj^ its name has been greatly 
changed and simplified during the past hundred 
3 ^ears. See Lent. 



SI A, the vastest land mass on the 
globe, comprising more than one-third of the 
entire land surface. What the name means is 
not known, but it is held by some authorities 
to be derived from an Assyrian word meaning 
the rising sun, and thus to signify the East, 
just as the word Europe is believed to denote 
the West, or the setting sun. The area of 
Asia, 17,250,000 square miles, is one and a half 
times as great as that of Africa, the second 
largest grand division, five times that of 
Europe exclusive of its islands, and greater 
than that of North America and South Amer¬ 
ica combined. Its estimated population of 
918,000,000 is more than half that of the whole 
world, yet there are w r ithin it vast stretches that 
are uninhabited, and other tracts where the 
population is but five to the square mile. To 
offset this, there are other parts of the conti¬ 
nent where people are crowded together as they 
are nowhere else in the world. 

Political Divisions. A large part of Asia is 
under the control of European governments, 
but there are a number of independent coun¬ 
tries. These are (1) the Chinese republic, 
which includes China proper, with yet some 
claim to Manchuria, Mongolia, East or Chinese 
Turkestan and Tibet; this division has an 
area of about 4,278,000 square miles; (2) Japan, 
with an area of 174,700 square miles; (3) Siam, 
with an area of 230,000 square miles; (4) Per¬ 
sia, 635,000 square miles; (5) Oman, in Arabia, 
82,000 square miles; Nepal and a number of 
small states in Arabia and in the Himalayas. 

The semi-independent countries are Afghan¬ 


istan (250,000 square miles) and Baluchistan 
(134,650 square miles), under the domination 
of Great Britain. Korea was independent until 
1910, w T hen it became a Japanese province with 
the name Chosen. The interests of European 
nations in Asia are as follows: 

France. Pondicherry and four minor pos¬ 
sessions in India; Indo-China, including An- 
nam, Cambodia, Cochin-China and Laos; and 
Kwang Chau Wan, leased from China. Total 
area, 256,000 square miles, of which less than 
400 are outside of Indo-China; total popula¬ 
tion, 17,500,000. 

Germany. Kiauchau, leased from China, 
taken by the Japanese in 1914. Area, about 
200 square miles, population about 192,000. 

Great Britain. Aden colony and protec¬ 
torate; Bahrein Islands (in the Persian Gulf); 
Ceylon; Cyprus; Hong Kong and adjoining 
leased territory; India; Straits Settlements; 
Federated Malay States protectorate ; and 
Weihaiwei, leased from China. Total area, 
about 1,875,000 square miles, of w T hich 1,802,629 
are in India; total population, about 322,- 
000 ,000, of which over 315,000,000 are in India. 

Portugal. Macao, in China; Goa and two 
minor possessions, in India. Total area, 1,642 
square miles; total population, about 600,000. 

Russia. Siberia; Trans-Caucasia; Steppes; 
Turkestan; Trans-Caspia; and the vassal 
states of Bokhara and Khiva. Total area about 
6,400,000 square miles; total population, about 
30,000,000. 

Turkey. Asia Minor; Armenia and Kurdi¬ 
stan; Mesopotamia; Syria; and part of Arabia. 































ASIA 


413 


ASIA 


Total area, 700,000 square miles; total popula¬ 
tion, 20,000,000. 

The countries, rivers and mountains men¬ 
tioned above are all described under their 
proper titles in these volumes, and for detailed 
accounts the reader is referred to those articles. 

The Coast. Three oceans, the Arctic on the 
north, the Pacific on the east, and the Indian 
on the south, bound this great continent on 
three sides, and on the west the boundary is 
formed by the Mediterranean, Caspian, Black 
and Red seas, with Europe, which is really but 
a peninsula of the Asian land mass, stretching 
away to the westward. Only the narrow Bering 
Strait separates Asia from North America on 
the northeast. All of the coasts have deep 
indentations, but those on the north are but 
estuaries at the mouths of rivers, while on the 
east and south there are great seas—to the 
east, Bering Sea, the Sea of Okhotsk, Sea of 
Japan, Yellow Sea and South China Sea, and 
to the south the Bay of Bengal and the 
Arabian Sea, with its extension, the Persian 
Gulf. The coast line of Asia is almost 35,000 
miles, little less than twice that of Africa. 
Along the eastern coast, stretching off to the 
southeast, lie numerous islands and chains of 
islands, some of which are of the utmost im¬ 
portance—the islands of Japan, the Philippines, 
Borneo, Sumatra, Java, New Guinea and the 
thousands of small islands which help to make 
up the Malay Archipelago. 

A Land of Extremes. Asia is the land of 
the most extensive plains, the greatest plateaus 
and the highest mountains in the world. Its 
highest peak, Mount Everest in the Hima¬ 
layas, 29,002 feet, is more than twice as high 
as Pike’s Peak, while its deepest depression, 
the Dead Sea in Palestine, is 1,290 feet below 
sea level. On the steppes of Western Siberia 
a temperature of 90° F. below zero is by no 
means uncommon, and the average winter 
temperature is far lower than that in the polar 
regions; but in parts of Arabia the heat is 
extreme, and Aden, cut off by sheltering cliffs 
from breezes, is the hottest spot in the world. 
Sharp as are these contrasts, there is nothing 
remarkable about them when the vast extent 
of Asia is considered. 

How the Continent Is Divided. In Asia the 
great mountain systems make barriers which 
have proved far more effective in keeping 
people from crossing from one part of the 
continent to another than have the Rocky 
Mountains in North America, for instance; for 
dwellers in North America have been deter¬ 


mined to possess all the land, and have conse¬ 
quently pushed on over the mountains. Cli¬ 
mate and living conditions may differ with 
the varying locations, but the same civilization 
exists on both sides of the great American 
Continental Divide. The Asiatic peoples, how¬ 
ever, for the greater part have not been pro¬ 
gressive enough to attempt to overcome such 
obstacles. Each nation or group of nations 
lives within its own boundaries, holding to its 
own manners and customs, differing decidedly 
from the other nations just over the moun¬ 
tains. Invasions there have been at all times 
in the history of Asia; India, for example, was 
for centuries the prey to any conquering 
hordes that might sweep over the mountains; 
but these invaders either came and withdrew, 
leaving no trace, or settled in the new land 
and were absorbed by its people. They never 
established any relations between the two sides 
of the great barrier. 

The mountains of Asia are not a well-marked 
chain like that which runs through Western 
America, but no other mountain systems can 
vie with them in height and in grandeur. 
The center of the system, if anything so defi¬ 
nite as a center can be claimed for these 
irregular chains, is the Pamir plateau to the 
north of India—the “roof of the world,” as 
dwellers in that region love to call it. This 
is not just a great flat tableland, but a series 
of mountains and valleys so elevated that the 
bottom of the deepest valleys is about 11,000 
feet above sea level. And over all these, lofty 
peaks tower to a height of more than 25,000 
feet, as high above the valley floors as Pike’s 
Peak is above sea level. 

Branching from the Pamirs mountain ranges 
extend in various directions. To the northeast 
is Tian-Shan range, then the Altai Mountains, 
and beyond these the Yablonoi and the 
Stanovoi mountains, ranges of lesser height, 
continue the system to the shores of the Pacific. 
Southeast from the Pamirs are the Karakorum 
Mountains and, loftiest and most impressive of 
all, the Himalayas, in which is included Mount 
Everest; while to the west of the “roof of the 
world” branches off a great system which com¬ 
prises the Hindu Kush, the Elburz, and the 
Caucasus; the latter forms part of the physical 
boundary between Europe and Asia. 

Lesser ranges rise in various parts of the 
continent—ranges which would stand out as 
vast and impressive in a land of less lofty 
plateaus; but the mountains described above 
are those which separate Asia into regions so 


ASIA 


414 


ASIA 


distinct that passage from one to another is 
difficult. 

So definite and isolated are these divisions 
that it is easier to treat of their geography, 



PHYSICAL DIVISIONS 


This map makes it easy to understand the 
description of the land surface of the vast con¬ 
tinent. 

their population and their history separately 
than to consider the continent as a whole. 
These divisions, roughly speaking, may be 
called (1) Northern Asia; (2) Inner Asia; 
(3) Eastern Asia; (4) Southern Asia; (5) South¬ 
western Asia. 

Northern Asia. This is the vastest of these 
regions, with 6,660,000 square miles—an area 
almost as great as that of Canada and the 
United States combined. 

The Land. Northern Asia has great rivers, 
the Ob, the Yenisei and the Lena, which in size 
rank not far below those of North America; 
and wide-stretching plains with which the 
Mississippi Valley cannot compare in extent. 
But the difference between Canada and the 
United States and this Asiatic region, consist¬ 
ing of Siberia, Russian Turkestan and Trans- 
caspia, is incalculable. It is not simply a ques¬ 
tion of development. Northern Asia will 
never, in all probability, merit or repay even a 
small part of the energy which has made the 
United States and Canada what they are. In 
the southern part of the region, in Transcaspia 
and Russian Turkestan, lack of rainfall results 
in extensive regions that are absolutely desert 
in character, supporting only half-savage no¬ 
mad tribes or an occasional group which makes 
its home on an oasis. See Nomad Life. 

To the northward, as the rains become more 
abundant, occurs a grassy region where horses 
and cattle find good pasturage, and still farther 


north there is sufficient moisture for the rais¬ 
ing of temperate-region crops, especially the 
grains. Through this region has been built the 
Trans-Siberian Railroad (which see), for this 
section alone seems now capable o f high devel¬ 
opment. Unbroken forests stretch from the 
northern limit of this region, reaching almost 
to the tundras of the Arctic region. The lower 
parts of the rivers remain frozen long after 
the ice has disappeared in the upper courses. 
As a result, almost the whole northern coast 
region is a flooded morass unhabitable and 
impenetrable. This region, in which nothing 
but a coarse moss grows, is the tundra belt. 
The whole land presents an unspeakably dreary 
and inhospitable appearance. 

Its Inhabitants. Even the stolid Asiatics, 
who are accustomed to misery and to scanty 
food, find most of Northern Asia too desolate 
and too unproductive to afford them a dwelling 
place, and the region as a whole is sparsely 
populated. In the most northerly inhabited 
belt are tribes belonging to the Mongol or 
yellow race. Of these the Samoyads are best 
known. They resemble the Lapps of Northern 
Russia, and also the Eskimos of the American 
continent. Russia, to which much of the region 
belongs, has sent out many colonists, but these 
have almost without exception settled in the 
grain-growing country (see Siberia). The few 
exceptions are the hunters and trappers who 
gain their livelihood by selling the pelts of the 
fur-bearing animals with which the great for¬ 
ests abound. Neither the Russian immigrants, 
the wandering tribes of Turkish stock, nor the 
Mongols to the east have ever made any 
attempt to develop the mineral resources of 
the region, and it cannot be told whether these 
are great or small. 

Centuries ago, before Russia itself was w r ell 
established, adventurers made their way from 
that new empire into the vast plains to the 
east, for the connection between the two conti¬ 
nents is here very close. The scattered inhabi¬ 
tants offered no resistance, nor did any of the 
other European powers oppose, and from the 
sixteenth century Russia continued to assert 
its right to the territory more and more firmly. 

Inner Asia. This region, with an area of two 
and one-half million square miles, includes 
Tibet, Mongolia and Chinese, or East, Turke¬ 
stan. Nearly all of this region is arid; much 
of it is a desert having intensely cold winters, 
very hot summers and terrific sandstorms. 
About all the rain that falls comes in the 
form of cloudbursts. Theoretically, China is 




ASIA 


415 


ASIA 


supreme over all this territory, but practically, 
the Chinese hold on it amounts to almost 
nothing. Russia is far more influential in all 
parts of the region except Tibet, where Eng¬ 
land is the dominant nation. Save as barrier 
states between north and south, these provinces 
are of no great value to any country, for they 
have not even the possibilities of the plains of 
Northern Asia. Sloping down from the tower¬ 
ing Himalayas, the plateau of Tibet is far too 
high and too cold to permit much agriculture, 
and the lower regions are so shut in by moun¬ 
tains that they never receive any rain. Minerals 
there are in abundance, especially gold, but 
the people are too unprogressive ever to have 
made much effort to secure it. The population 
is even more sparse than in Northern Asia, 
for no country has sent into Inner Asia the 
thousands of colonists that Russia has given to 
that northern region, and in all the 2,500,000 
square miles there are but 4,500,000 inhabi¬ 
tants. Many of these depend for their support 
not on the products of the soil, as do the people 
of more favored regions, but upon certain ani¬ 
mals. In the lowlands of Turkestan the Bac- 
trian camel is the chief wealth of the region, 
and above, in high Tibet, the yak is what 
the reindeer is to the tribes of the Siberian 
plain—almost their sole support. See Camel ; 
Reindeer; Yak. 

Eastern Asia. Far more important than 
either of the regions discussed above is this 
third division, which includes China proper, 
Japan, Korea (or Chosen), Manchuria, Indo- 
China and Siam. Quite unlike the other two, 
it has over large sections a very dense popula¬ 
tion—few places in the world are more thickly 
settled. Its area is 2,600,000 square miles, its 
population about 450,000,000. Thus with an 
area little more than two-thirds that of Canada, 
it has a population more than sixty times as 
great. 

The Land and Its Resources. This density 
of population proclaims one great economic 
fact—practically all the land must be utilized. 
And so indeed it is. There are no great forests 
given over to wild animals; no vast plains 
where cattle graze; no deserts where nothing 
but a camel can live. From the northern part 
of China, with its cold winters and its hot 
summers, to Siam with its tropical climate, 
there is everywhere enough rain for agricul¬ 
ture. For all the moisture which the great 
sea winds bring is forced out before these winds 
cross the mountains to the interior, and while 
that fact means desert conditions for Inner 


Asia, it means fertility and luxuriant vegetable 
growth for the regions of Eastern Asia. Of 
the original forest area, very little remains, 
much to the detriment of the people. 

Agriculture is the chief industry, and many 
of the plants which are now cultivated all 
over the world were first grown in this part of 
Asia. Here rice, cotton, sugar cane, pepper, 
cinnamon, bananas and many other fruits were 
grown centuries ago; and to-day the methods 
of production are much as they were when 
Caesar and Alexander in turn ruled the world 
(see China). The kind of farming known as 
intensive is practiced; the farms are not large 
but they are worked to the utmost. Even the 
slopes of the hills are terraced, and many a 
farmer makes a living from a hillside farm so 
steep that strong retaining walls are necessary. 
Animals are comparatively few, for the land is 
too valuable to be used for grazing. 

All through this eastern region minerals 
abound—gold, silver, copper, mercury, and 
most important of all, coal. It is in China 
chiefly that this last mineral is to be found, 
and this is fortunate; for great deposits of 
coal might exist in parts of Southern Asia and 
be of little use to the easy-going, unprogressive 
people. But the Chinese, like most people who 
live in a temperate climate and on a soil 
which yields plentifully in return for hard 
work, are accustomed to labor, and as a result 
the Hoang River region, where much of the 
coal abounds, is becoming increasingly known 
for its manufactures. 

Eastern Asia is fortunate, too, in its rivers, 
especially the Hoaijg and the Yangtze. The 
v latter is of great value for transportation, but 
both have great flood plains which are of as 
much importance to the people who live upon 
them as is the famous flood plain of the Nile. 

Inhabitants. It must be remembered that 
Eastern Asia is simply a geographic region, like 
the others described above; not in any sense 
is it a country or a political entity. Japan, 
China and Siam are independent governments, 
Manchuria is a part of China but, actually, 
it is commercially far more under the domina¬ 
tion of Russia and Japan; Indo-China is a 
colony of France. But the people in this varied 
region are practically all of one race—the 
yellow or Mongol (see Races of Men). Dif¬ 
ferences of climate and environment have pro¬ 
duced variations, the inhabitants of Siam and 
Indo-China, for instance, in the far south being 
much less industrious and progressive than the 
dwellers in the northern section. 


ASIA 


416 


ASIA 


To people in a land like North America, 
which possesses a civilization less than three 
centuries old, largely imported from another 
continent, the ages-old civilization of Eastern 
Asia is almost impossible to understand. Rev¬ 
erence for. the past has been the dominant note 
in the history of the people. If a thing had 
not been done centuries ago, in the days of 
their worshiped ancestors, it does not now com¬ 
mend itself, however strong its appeal to com¬ 
mon sense; and this tendency for centuries 
prevented progress on the part of peoples who 
are beginning to prove themselves capable of 
making vast strides once they are aroused. See 
Ancestor Worship. 

Southern Asia. This is the tropical section 
of Asia—the region of intense heat from which 
European inhabitants must flee if they wish 
to escape fevers; of heavy drenching rains, 
which no lands but the tropics or subtropics 
ever know. Of all the writers who have felt 
the charm of these southern countries, India, 
Burma and the Malay peninsula, and have 
truthfully pictured them, the most widely read 
is Rudyard Kipling, and it is the Southern 
Asia of Kipling with which people are most 
familiar. 

The People. Unlike Eastern Asia, Southern 
Asia is not a region of one race. Over the 
mountains to the north there came in past 
centuries horde after horde of invaders who 
differed in race, in manners, in speech and in 
civilization; whether these conquered or were 
themselves subjected, they left their mark 
upon the country. Of the 300,000,000 inhabi¬ 
tants, some are Aryans, who belong to the 
white race,—but are easily distinguished from 
the white men who have come from Europe; 
some are the yellow or Mongol race, though 
of a different stock from the Chinese or Japa¬ 
nese. Then there are the Malays, or the brown 
race, and various representatives of the black 
race, notably the Dravidians (which see) of 
India and the Negritos of the Malay Archipel¬ 
ago. Nothing can make more clear this great 
diversity than the statement that there are 
spoken in Southern Asia almost 150 languages, 
and these are not tongues which have been 
introduced in recent times, as Bohemian or 
Polish have been introduced into the United 
States by immigrants, but languages which 
have been for centuries the speech of the sec¬ 
tions in which they still exist. 

The Land. Southern Asia has 2,000,000 
square miles, and scattered over this area is a 
population almost as dense as that of Eastern 


Asia. To the north stretch the great mountain 
systems—the Himalaya, Karakorum and other 
lesser ranges; but Southern Asia itself is not 
notably mountainous, save in Burma. Great 
rivers, the Ganges, the Indus, the Brahmaputra 
and the Irrawaddy, drain the country and exer¬ 
cise a great influence on its life and commerce. 
In few places is there scarcity of rainfall, and 
in certain parts, as Assam, which lies just south 
of the Himalayas, more rain falls than in any 
other place in the world. The greatest amount 
ine one year was 800 inches; the average is 500 
inches, or over forty feet. 

As in Eastern Asia, the people of Southern 
Asia have learned through the ages to demand 
little beyond a bare living, but, unlike the 
dwellers in the latter region, they are not here 
forced to work hard for what they have. Few 
places in the world are more fertile than the 
great river plains, and rice, sugar and cotton 
can be grown with very little labor. The 
cocoanut, the sago palm and the breadfruit 
tree flourish in certain sections, and often any 
one of these trees will furnish sustenance for a 
family. 

Animal Life. Southern Asia has the most dis¬ 
tinctive animals of any part of the continent— 
the great jungle beasts which adventurous 
hunters risk their lives to kill. The tiger, the 
elephant and the rhinoceros are peculiar to 
the region, and wolves, monkeys, reptiles and 
birds abound. In his Jungle Book and Second 
Jungle Book Kipling has shown the animal life 
of the jungle as seen through the eyes of 
little Mowgli, foster-child in a wolf family. 
The books make no claim to scientific accur¬ 
acy, for they give to the animals speech and 
the power of reasoning, but in one sense they 
are accurate descriptions, with their account 
of the great drought and its effects, and of the 
method of life of the various kinds of animals. 

As the other sections of Asia have their 
distinctive domestic animals, with the excep¬ 
tion of Eastern Asia, so Southern Asia has its 
own—the elephant, which elsewhere is scarcely 
ever tamed and made a beast of burden. Of 
course the elephant is not used commonly as 
is the horse in North America, but there are 
many tasks which require great strength, as 
the hauling and stacking of heavy teakwood 
logs, for which it is excellently adapted. Of 
cattle, horses, goats or sheep there are few, 
for the fertile farm lands are too valuable to 
be given over to grazing. 

Southwestern Asia. Of all Asia, this is the 
part which has most influenced Western civili- 


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ASIA 


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ASIA 


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Arab Boys at School 


Palestine Shepherd; 
The Same After 2000Years 


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A Popular Cart in China 


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Lake Baikal Region 


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ASIA 


418 


ASIA 


zation. Arabia, Asia Minor, Persia, Armenia, 
Syria and Mesopotamia—every part has its 
vital associations for any student of history. 
On the fertile flood-plains of the Tigris and 
Euphrates rivers grew up one of the oldest 
civilizations in the world, and it is somewhere 
in Southwestern Asia that tradition places the 
Garden of Eden. Chaldea, Babylonia, Assyria, 
Persia, each in succession became a great em¬ 
pire, and with the last-named the first great 
European people, the Greeks, came into close 
contact. 

The People. But in these regions of early 
culture, in which grew up many of the useful 
arts, as that of writing, and many of the 
sciences, as chemistry, astronomy and algebra, 
there exists to-day a far lower state of civiliza¬ 
tion than in regions of a newer growth. Vis¬ 
itors in and near Palestine declare that much 
of the Bible gathers new force and meaning 
to those who have visited the scenes in which 
its narratives are laid, for manners, customs 
and even dress have changed but little in all 
the centuries since the marvelous Biblical his¬ 
tory was written. 

The people of Southwestern Asia are neither 
so varied in race as those of Southern Asia nor 
so entirely of one stock as are those of Eastern 
Asia. Some are Aryans, closely related to the 
peoples of Europe; some are of Mongol descent 
and are closely allied to the Turks; and the 
Arabs, the people who during the Middle Ages 
were building up the sciences which later meant 
so much in the development of Europe, are of 
a race known as Semites, to which the Hebrews 
also belong. But to whatever race these South¬ 
western Asiatics belong, there is one tie which 
unites them—their religion. Almost without 
exception they are Mohammedans, and of the 
strictest type. The crusading zeal which in¬ 
spired the early followers of Mohammed lives 
on in them, and difficult indeed is it for any 
heretics to make a home among them. See 
Mohammedanism. 

To say that the people are Mohammedans 
is equivalent to saying that they are free from 
one vice—drunkenness; but from the vice of 
theft they are by no means free. This, how¬ 
ever, is a result of the sort of life many of them 
lead, and not of their religion. While the 
majority of the population is gathered in vil¬ 
lages and towns, in any section where there is 
water enough to support community life, the 
greater part of the land is given over to tribes 
which wander about with their goats or camels 
and eke out a scanty existence (see Arabs, sub¬ 


head Nomads ). These nomads seem to have 
almost no sense of property rights—they will 
help themselves to whatever they require, no 
matter to whom it may belong, fighting to 
secure it, if necessary. 

The Land. Some fertile, well-watered regions 
there are in Southwestern Asia, but much of 
the land is too dry to produce more than the 
scantiest vegetation. The section has not an 
abundance of rivers like Eastern or Southern 
Asia; only the two mentioned above, the 
Tigris and the Euphrates, attain any impor¬ 
tance. The surface of the land is diversified. 
There are great plains, as in Mesopotamia; 
lofty plateaus; one of the highest mountain 
ranges of the world, the Hindu Kush; and the 
lowest spot in all the earth’s surface, the Dead 
Sea. But highland and lowland are alike in one 
quality; except near the coast they are too 
dry to produce crops without irrigation. Where 
water can be obtained, excellent fruits of the 
temperate and subtropical varieties can be 
raised, but over vast stretches of desert and 
semi-desert land only the date palm flourishes. 
This, therefore, is one of the chief supports of 
the people. Probably no book ever written 
gives a better idea of the life and conditions 
in this southwestern section of Asia than the 
Arabian Nights. 

The Historical Story. In the articles in 
these volumes on the various countries of Asia, 
the long chain of events in their history is 
described, but there have been certain move¬ 
ments which have affected large sections of 
the continent, regardless of political boundaries. 
Asia is generally regarded as the cradle of the 
human race. It possesses in Assyria some of 
the oldest historical monuments in the world; 
and the old Testament contains the earliest 
records of any nation in the form of a con¬ 
secutive narrative. These Old Testament 
countries were Asiatic. 

It is not impossible to believe that the Aryan 
race, the dominant race of Europe and conse¬ 
quently of America, had its origin in the Tigris- 
Euphrates Valley, and spread thence to the 
southeast and southwest. It was in the days 
of the Persian Empire that Europe first came 
into close contact with any section of Asia 
farther inland than Asia Minor and Phoenicia, 
and through the conquests of Alexander the 
Great more and more of the great continent 
came within the knowledge of Europeans. The 
Roman Empire had some of its most prosper¬ 
ous colonies in Western Asia. 

But the intercourse was not to remain always 


ASIA 


419 


ASIA 



The Creamy-White Polar Bear 


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ASIA 


420 


ASIA 


so one-sided—Europeans invading Asia for 
their own profit. After the rise of Moham¬ 
medanism in the seventh century a. d., the 
fanatical Arabs pushed their sovereignty into 
Africa and thence into Spain, and for a time 
it looked as though Europe might become a 
prey to these zealots from the East. This 
danger was averted, but Western Asia remained 
long prominently in the thought of Christian 
Europe by reason of the Crusades, which were 
directed against the Saracens in the Holy Land. 
Meanwhile, a new power was rising in Asia 
which threatened Europe—the Ottoman Turks, 
who in 1453 gained a firm foothold on the west¬ 
ern continent. 

Throughout all this time the rest of Asia 
was all unknown to Europe, but with the 
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries conditions 
changed. Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese and 
British navigators explored the southern and 
southeastern coasts, and their governments 
promptly planted colonies where they had gone 
and laid the foundations for that dominance 
of Asia which persists to-day. In the north, 
Russia was making inroads into Siberia, but 
the Farthest East, China and Japan, remained 
wrapped in the obscurity which had shrouded 
them through all the centuries. Not until the 
nineteenth century did Western nations force 
an entrance into these countries which lived in 
the past, but to-day Western ideals and civili¬ 
zation are making themselves felt throughout 
Asia, and several of the Asiatic nations have 
come to play prominent parts in world politics. 
These statements must not be construed too 
liberally, for while governments may have 
adopted more advanced theories and scholars 
may have discarded much of the old formal 
learning, the bulk of the people in most coun¬ 
tries live to-day as they lived a thousand years 
ago or more, ignoring and even resenting all 
attempts to introduce among them new civili¬ 
zation and new r faiths. Asia thus remains, as 
one writer calls it, the “one stronghold of the 
spirit of the past.” 

Religions in Asia. An extremely interesting 
fact in connection with Asia is that every one 
of the great world religions had there its origin. 
Brahmanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Juda¬ 
ism, with its two offshoots of Christianity and 
Mohammedanism, were all evolved in Asia. 
Most of them have still their stronghold there, 
but Christianity has not made much progress 
in the land of its birth, and has grown slowly 
in Asia only as the results of almost super¬ 
human efforts on the part of missionaries. 


To-day there are fewer than 20,000,000 Chris¬ 
tians in the whole continent, while Brahmanism 
has over ten times that number, Buddhism 
over twenty times and Mohammedanism over 
eight times. Of these great religions, the two 
offshoots of Judaism have been the only really 
militant or missionary faiths. 

Other Items of Interest. A representative of 
the United States Department of Agriculture 
has spent six years in China, Siberia and Tur¬ 
kestan, searching for trees and plants worth 
growing in America.' Jujubes, for the arid 
regions; persimmons suitable for drying; bam¬ 
boos, for eating and for landscape gardening; 
“strawberry” trees, hawthorns, and new varie¬ 
ties of the cherry and the peach are among 
those which are proving successful. 

Nearly four-fifths of the world’s silk comes 
from Asia. 

As far back as 1800 the United States ex¬ 
ported more than a million dollars worth of 
goods to Asia, but until 1897, when the amount 
was $39,000,000, the trade did not equal that 
with South America. In 1905 Asia took $128,- 
000,000 worth of American products, but in 
1909, only a little more than half as much, 
whereupon South American business again be¬ 
came more important until 1915. The annual 
export to Asia is now about $115,000,000, only 
about four per cent of all the exports of the 
United States. 

United States imports from Asia have always 
exceeded exports. In 1800 they were over 
$11,000,000; now they are well over $200,- 
000,000. 

Canada sells about $5,000,000 worth of its 
products to Asiatics, and buys over twice as 
much from them. 

The almost constant struggle between Europe 
and Asia from earliest times is one of the 
interesting phases of history. Beginning, ac¬ 
cording to Herodotus, even earlier than the 
ten-year siege of Troy which forms the story 
of the Iliad, it was continued in the wars in 
which Marathon, Thermopylae and Salamis 
figured, in the expeditions of Alexander, the 
Roman conquests, the invasions of the Huns, 
the Saracen inroads, the Crusades and the 
contest with the Turk which have extended 
into our own time. 

Russia-in-Asia is the largest country on the 
globe. 

Asia is the only continent which rivals North 
America in tobacco growing, to which over a 
million acres are devoted, mostly in India. 
Rice is Asia’s great crop. Its annual produc- 


ASIA 


421 


ASIA 


tion of one hundred billion pounds is one hun¬ 
dred times that of Europe, its nearest rival in 
this respect. 

The finest rugs in the world come from Asia; 
those from Persia, Turkey, Bokhara, Khiva, 
Turkestan and India are especially prized. 

Siberia’s wheat crop is about equal to Sas¬ 
katchewan’s. 

When Marco Polo’s famous book about Asia 
first appeared people thought it was fiction. 
But his stories and those of other travelers 
about the wealth of these far-away regions led 
to the discovery of America, which all early 
explorers thought was a part of Asia. See 
Polo, Marco. 

An interesting contrast is observable in the 
popular names of the founders of two of those 
great religions which originated in Asia. The 
Buddha is known, as in Edwin Arnold’s poem, 
as the “Light of Asia,” while the founder of 
Christianity bears the less-localized title of 
“Light of the World.” j.r. 

Related Subjects. The reader who wishes 
more detailed information as to Asia will find 
it in the following articles: 


UNCLASSIFIED TOPICS 


Cathay 


Malay Archipelago 

East Indies 


Merv 

Gobi 


Pamir 

Khybu Pass 


Saghalien 

Levant 


Tartary 


CITIES AND TOWNS 

Not all of 

the cities 

and towns of Asia are 

listed here, as those of Asia Minor, China, India, 

Japan, Palestine, Siberia and Turkey are indexed 

under those 

headings. 


Acre 


Muscat 

Aden 


Nimrud 

Antioch 

• 

Nineveh 

Bangkok 


Palmyra 

Beirut 


Seoul 

Damascus 


Persepolis 

Gaza 


Rangoon 

Hanoi 


Saigon 

Herat 


Samarkand 

Ispahan 


Shiraz 

Kabul 


Sidon 

Kashgar 


Susa 

Lhasa 


Tabriz 

Malacca 


Teheran 

Mecca 


Tyre 

Medina 


Yarkand 

Meshhed 




COAST 

WATERS 


LAKES AND SEAS 


Aral 

Dead Sea 

Baikal 

Galilee, Sea of 

Balkash 



MOUNTAINS 

Altai 

Hindu-Kush 

Arafat 

Karakorum 

Ararat 

Kuen Lun 

Carmel 

Lebanon, Mountains of 

Caucasus 

Nebo, Mount 

Elburz 

Olives, Mount of 

Everest, Mount Stanovoi 

Fujiyama 

Tabor, Mount 

Ghats 

Taurus 

Hermon 

Tian-Shan 

Himalaya 

Yablonoi 


PEOPLES 

In addition 

to these, there are in the articles 

on the various 

countries subheads treating of the 

people: 


Aino 

Kirghiz 

Arab 

Mahrattas 

Aryan 

Mongols 

Bedouins 

Negritos 

Dyaks 

Semites 

Kalmucks 

Turks 


POLITICAL DIVISIONS 

Afghanistan 

Johore 

Annam 

Kashmir 

Arabia 

Khiva 

Armenia 

Korea 

Asia Minor 

Kurdistan 

Assyria 

Media 

Babylonia 

Mesopotamia 

Baluchistan 

Chosen 

Bhutan 

Oman 

Bokhara 

Palestine 

Cambodia 

Parthia 

Chaldea 

Persia 

China 

Phoenicia 

Cochin-China 

Siam 

French Indo-China Straits Settlements 

Gilead 

Tibet 

Hindustan 

Tongking 

India 

Turkestan 

Indo-China 

Turkey 

Iran 

Yemen 

Japan 



RIVERS 

Amur 

Mekong 

Brahmaputra 

Nerbudda 

Euphrates 

Obi 

Ganges 

Sutlej 

Hoang-Ho 

Syr-Darya 

Hugh 

Tigris 

Indus 

Yalu 

Ira wadi 

Yang-tse-Kiang 

Jordan 

Yenisei 

Lena 



CHARACTERISTIC ANIMALS 


Arabian Sea 
Arctic Ocean 
Bengal, Bay of 
Bering Sea 
Black Sea 
Caspian Sea 
China Sea 


Indian Ocean 
Mediterranean Sea 
Okhotsk, Sea of 
Pacific Ocean 
Persian Gulf 
Red Sea 
Yellow Sea 


Bear 

Buffalo 

Camel 

Cobra 

Crocodile 

Elephant 

Lion 


Orang-utan 

Peacock 

Pheasant 

Rhinoceros 

Tiger 

Yak 

Zebu 


ASIA 


422 


ASIA 


F-~- <■ — - 

OUTLINE AND QUESTIONS ON ASIA 


-- -M- - ■V-"m"-—- 

Outline 


I. Position 

(2) 

Semi-independent countries 

(1) 

Latitude, 1° 16' to 77° 40' north 


(a) Afghanistan 

(2) 

Longitude, 26° east to 169° 40' west 


(b) Chosen 

(3) 

Boundaries (see map) 





VII. European Possessions in Asia 


II. Size 

(1) 

Russia 

(1) 

Length, 6,828 miles from east to west 


(a) Siberia 

(2) 

Breadth, 5,270 miles from north to 


(b) Turkestan 


south. 


(c) Transcaucasia 

(3) 

Area, 17,250,000 square miles 

(2) 

Great Britain 

(4) 

Rank, largest land mass in the world 


(a) India and Burma 

(5) 

Comparative size 


(b) Ceylon 




(c) Straits settlements 


III. Shape and Coast Line 

(3) 

Turkey 

(1) 

Roughly triangular 


(a) Asia Minor 

(2) 

Deeply indented coast line 


(b) Armenia and Kurdistan 


(a) Estuaries on the north 


(c) Mesopotamia 


(b) Great seas on south and east 


(d) Syria and parts of Arabia 

(3) 

Length of coast line 

(4) 

France 

(4) 

Islands 


(a) French Indo-China 



(5) 

The Netherlands 


IV. Climate and Surface 


(a) Islands in the southeastern archi- 

(1) 

Extremes of temperature 


pelago 

(2) 

A land of contrasts 



(3) 

Extensive plains 


VII. Northern Asia 

(4) 

Mountains 

(1) 

Area, 6,660,000 square miles 


(a) Pamir plateaus 

(2) 

Physical features 


(b) Chief ranges 

(3) 

Inhabitants 

(5) 

Steppes 


(a) Nomadic Turkish tribes 

(6) 

Low-lying seas 


(b) Mongol tribes in north 




(c) Russian colonists 


V. People 


(d) Occupations 

(1) 

Isolation of different nations 



(2) 

Characteristics of the yellow race 


IX. Inner Asia 


(a) Reverence for the past 

(1) 

Area, 2,500,000 square miles 


(b) Ancestor worship 

(2) 

A region of barrier states 

(3) 

Malays or brown race in the south 

(3) 

Chinese ownership and Russian influ- 

(4) 

Dravidians and Negritos, the black 


ence 


races 

(4) 

Causes of lack of development 

(5) 

Aryan and Semetic races of the south- 




west 


X. Southern Asia 

(6) 

Religions in Asia 

(1) 

Area, 2,000,000 square miles 


(a) Brahmanism 

(2) 

Surface and climate 


(b) Buddhism 

(3) 

Animal life 


(c) Confucianism 

(4) 

A region of many races 


(d) Judaism 


XI. Southwestern Asia 


(e) Mohammedanism 

(1) 

Historic importance 


(f) Progress of Christianity 

(2) 

Diversified physical features 


VI. Political Divisions 

(3) 

Climate 

(1) 

Independent countries 


XII. History 


(a) China 

(1) 

Oldest history in the world 


(b) Japan 

(2) 

Biblical history 


(c) Siam 

(3) 

Spread of Mohammedanism 


(d) Persia 

(4) 

The Crusades 


(e) Oman 

(5) 

Power of Ottoman Turks 


(f) Nepal and small states in Arabia 

(6) 

Modern exploration and development 


and the Himalayas 


by Western nations 
























ASIA 


423 


ASIA 




Questions 


What are the principal countries under Turkish rule? 

What are the three great rivers of Siberia? The two chief rivers of China? 
What part of the continent has greatly influenced European civilization? 

In what way has Asia been connected with the important religions of the world? 
Is much tobacco grown in Asia? 

Under what European flag do over one-third of the people live? 

What are the tundras? 

What tendency of the people of Eastern Asia has especially retarded their 


progress? 

What is the tie which unites most of the people of Southwestern Asia? 

Name a well-known book about Asia that may have influenced the discovery of 


America. 

What states are independent of European rule? 

What is the “roof of the world”? 

Why is the region of the Hoang River becoming important in manufacturing? 
How do Mohammedans regard drinking? 

What kind of cloth is made largely of material from Asia? 

Where are most of France’s Asiatic possessions? 

What occupations have the people of Northern Asia? 

What are the four great rivers of Southern Asia? 

When did European interest in the Far East begin? 

From what parts of Asia do the best rugs come? 

How have the mountains affected the story of Asia? 

To what race do most of the people of Eastern Asia belong? 

In what part of the continent are some of the oldest records of civilization? 

Does Siberia raise much wheat? 

What is the highest mountain in Asia? 

What writer has made many people familiar with Southern Asia? 

At what time during the Christian Era did it seem that Europe might come 
under the sway of Asiatics? 

What is Asia’s greatest crop? Is it grown to any extent elsewhere? 

Why was it easy for Russia to gain a foothold in Asia? 

Which of Kipling’s books tell us of the animal life? 

How large is the trade between Asia and Canada and the United States? 

What country has four colonies in Asia which could all be put in a space that 
you could drive around in one day in an automobile? 

Why is agriculture important in Asia? 

What is the largest country in the world? 

What are some of the seas which surround Asia? 

What branches of knowledge originated in Asia? 

What interest has Germany in the Far East? 

Where does the elephant come from? 

What are the divisions of Russia-in-Asia? 

When did Europe first learn of the country beyond Asia Minor and Phoenicia? 
What effect has the density of population upon Eastern Asia? 

What countries of Asia are called semi-independent, and why? 

How does the population of Asia compare with that of the world as a whole? 
How many miles above the lowest point on the continent is the highest peak? 
Why is Northern Asia so sparsely settled? 

Why are there so few grazing animals in Eastern Asia? 

















ASIA MINOR 


424 


ASPARAGUS 


Bananas 

Breadfruit 

Coal 

Cocoanut 

Cotton 


PRODUCTS 

Dates 

Gold 

Pepper 

Rice 

Sugar Cane 

HISTORY 


Alexander the Great Christianity 
Assyria Confucius 

Brahmanism Crusades 

Buddhism Mohammedanism 


Consult Ross’s The Changing Chinese; Mahan’s 
The Problem of Asia; Curzon’s Problems of the 
Far East. 

ASIA MINOR, or Smaller Asia, the most 
westerly part of Asia, is the peninsula lying 
west of the upper Euphrates River. Like 
Arabia, it is a geographical, but not a political, 
unit, for never at any time has it had a gov¬ 



That section of the Asiatic continent between 
the Black and Mediterranean seas is called Asia 
Minor. 


ernment of its own. In ancient times it was 
divided into a number of small countries, each 
with its own ruler, and with most of these 
the Greeks came into close relations. Espe¬ 
cially along the coast were Greek colonies 
numerous, and it was the aid which Greece 
rendered to some of the Ionian cities of Asia 
Minor in their attempt to free themselves 
from the rule of Persia which led to the Per¬ 
sian Wars, commanded by Xerxes. 

Under the Roman Empire Asia Minor was 
prosperous, for it possessed a fertile soil and 
a pleasant climate, but in modern times, under 
Turkish rule, it has suffered severely and shows 
few signs of progress. Its present name is 
Anatolia, and as such it is merely one of the 
provinces of the Sultan, with little to suggest 
its former greatness. 

Related Subjects. The following list will 
furnish to the reader more detailed knowledge 
of this historically important region of Asia: 

Abydos Cappadocia 

Bithynia Cilicia 


Ephesus 

Ionia 

Lydia 

Miletus 

Galatia 


Phrygia 

Pontus 

Samos 

Tarsus 

Taurus 


ASP, a species of viper or serpent found 
in Egypt. It has an exceedingly venomous 
bite; the poison acts so quickly that its bite 
is nearly always fatal, death resulting in a 
few minutes. When approached by man or 
some other animal the asp assumes a peculiar 
position of defense; its head is elevated, its 
neck swells out, and the whole body is raised 
almost erect. Jugglers and snake-charmers ex¬ 
tract the poisonous fangs, and train the asp 
to perform various tricks. Cleopatra is said 
to have committed suicide by allowing an asp 
to bite her. 

The name is also given to a serpent com¬ 
mon on the European continent, and to an 
adder of South Africa which the Boers call 
Jhe spitting snake. See Snake; Serpent- 
Charming. 

ASPARAGUS, aspair'agus, a plant which 
furnishes one of the favorite spring vegetables. 



ASPARAGUS 


(a) Wrong method of cutting; (b) right 
method of cutting. Thrust the knife into the 
ground as vertically as possible, in order not to 
injure other shoots. 

It is not the fruit of the asparagus which is 
eaten, but the young shoots, which are cut 
soon after they appear above the ground. 
These are boiled and eaten either hot, with 
a cream or butter sauce, or cold, as a salad. 



















ASPASIA 


425 


ASPHALT 


For salads the blanched or whitened variety 
is much preferred, and it is this variety which 
is placed on the market in cans. Asparagus 
is wholesome, but contains so large a propor¬ 
tion of water that its food value is very low. 

Asparagus plants should be allowed to grow 
three years from the seed before they are 
cut; after that for ten or twelve years they 
will continue to afford an annual supply if 
the beds are protected from frost by straw or 
litter during the winter. The full-grown plant 
has a beautiful feathery top, shaped like a 
miniature tree, and bears small flowers and 
bright red berries. Some varieties are culti¬ 
vated for ornament and are incorrectly known 
as ferns. The United States is one of the chief 
asparagus-growing countries. 

ASPASIA, as pa'shea, the most celebrated 
woman of ancient Greece, was born at Miletus, 
in Ionia. About 460 b. c. she became the wife 
of Pericles, though their marriage was not 
regarded as legal because the laws of Athens 
forbade the union of a citizen with a woman 
of foreign birth. The wit, beauty and intelli¬ 
gence of Aspasia made her a worthy com¬ 
panion of the talented Pericles, and their home 
became the meeting place of the most learned 
and distinguished men of Athens. Their son 
was given the full rights of citizenship by a 
special decree. See Pericles. 

ASPEN, or Trembling Poplar, a species of 
poplar which is native of the cooler parts of 
Europe and Asia, but common in Canada and 
the United States. The tree is hardy and 
grows rapidly. As the slender trunk becomes 



ASPEN 

(a) Young leaves unfolding. The leaves look 
like white flannel when they open early in the 
spring. ( b ) Mature leaves. These are ovate in 
form, sometimes almost round, with fine teeth. 

higher the lower branches drop off, leaving a 
knot surmounted by a roll of bark which ap¬ 
pear like eye and eyebrow against the pearly 
white trunk. The light green, almost circular 
leaves, with saw-tooth edges, are set upon 
long, thin stems and flutter in every breath 


of wind, which suggests the popular name of 
the tree, the quaking aspen. The word is used 
to make charcoal and for making bowls, trays, 
troughs and pails. * 

ASPHALT, as' fait, not as' fawlt, a mineral 
pitch, sometimes called mineral tar when it 
occurs in liquid condition. It is a form of 
bitumen (which see), and in its natural states 
is black or brown in color, brittle and glossy. 
When heated it melts easily and gives off a 
strong odor, much like that of pitch. Pure 
asphalt bums without leaving ashes. Large 
deposits of liquid asphalt are found in the 
vicinity of Santa Barbara, California, and in 
Leyte Province, Philippine Islands. Trinidad 
produces the largest quantity of asphalt in the 
world, Pitch Lake, from which most of the 
product is taken, having an area of 114 acres. 
The asphalt continues to flow into the lake, 
which is the crater of an old volcano, from 
some underground source, so that notwith¬ 
standing the large quantity taken out each 
.year, the supply remains practically undimin¬ 
ished. About 80,000 tons are taken from the 
lake each year. What is known as Bermudez 
asphalt is taken from another lake in Vene¬ 
zuela. Another well-known deposit, called 
Gilsonite, is found in Utah. 

Asphalt Pavement. Crude asphaltum must 
be put through a refining process before it can 
be used to make street paving. As the first 
step the asphaltum is placed in great tanks 
and melted down, the material being stirred 
continually during this process. That the 
material may melt at a lower temperature 
than it would otherwise, a certain portion of 
substance remaining in the tank after crude 
petroleum has been distilled is put into the 
asphaltum; all of the oils in the substance 
are thus saved. The resulting mixture is 
called paving cement. During the process 
sharp, clean sand is being heated in large re¬ 
volving drums to a temperature of about 300°. 
This is added to the mixture according to a 
certain proportion, a specified amount of car¬ 
bonate of lime being also added. Then the 
three substances are thoroughly mixed by 
means of a number of iron arms, all of which 
revolve very rapidly. The entire mixture is 
then ready to be used in laying the pavement. 
It takes three tons of the crude Trinidad ma¬ 
terial to make two tons of refined asphalt. 

A certain amount of preparation is required 
before the street is ready for the paving mate¬ 
rial, for it must be graded and rolled very 
carefully. Then on the road bed is laid a 



ASPHODEL 


426 


ASQUITH 


layer of hydraulic concrete, which consists of 
cement, sand and broken stone. This concrete 
bed is also thoroughly rolled; all of the prelim¬ 
inary work must be very carefully done if the 
pavement is to be durable. The “street mix¬ 
ture,” as the prepared asphalt is called, is laid 
at a temperature of about 250° or 300°, and 
is spread down in two coats; the first, called 
the cushion coat, is from one-half to an inch 
thick, while the outside, or surface, coat is of 
sufficient thickness to make the entire bed of 
asphalt two and one-half inches thick. With 
hot rakes the workmen spread the mixture 
evenly from one side of the street to the other, 
and the surface is smoothed and finished with 
heated iron tampers and smoothers. After pre¬ 
liminary rolling, a great steam roller weigh¬ 
ing about ten tons is run over the top, but 
before this machine is used the surface coat 
is lightly sprinkled with hydraulic cement. 
Asphalt pavement costs more than wood and 
macadam and less than granite pavement. In 
large cities the cost varies from $1.51 to $3.08 
per square yard, with about $2.35 as a fair 
average. See Pavement. 

Rock Asphalt is mined by means of blasting. 
When rock asphalts are used in paving they 
are merely crushed, reduced to powder through 
the agency of heat and then compressed in 
place. Rock asphalt is also made into asphal¬ 
tic cement and mastic. The latter is prepared 
by mixing rock asphalt with sand and asphalt. 
Blocks of this substance are used in making 
floors, sidewalks and roofing. Utah and Ken¬ 
tucky produce asphaltic limestone. b.a.co. 

Consult Richardson’s Asphalt Construction for 
Pavements and Highways; also Twenty-second 
Annual Report of United States Geological Sur¬ 
vey, Part I. 

ASPHODEL, as'fo del, a name applied to 
various plants of the lily family, some of which 
have white, and some yellow, blossoms. The 
name is especially common in the poetry of 
all ages, but does not always mean the same 
flower. Thus Homer, when he speaks of the 
asphodel meadows of Hades, refers to a pale, 
drooping flower which the Greeks believed 
covered the field in the region of the dead, 
while Pope, when he sings— 

By those happy souls who dwell 
In yellow meads of asphodel, 

is referring to the same superstition, but has 
in mind the cheerful yellow daffodil. Indeed 
the word daffodil is but another form of 
asphodel. The true asphodels, which are 
chiefty native to the Mediterranean countries, 
have fleshy roots and funnel-shaped flowers 


arranged in long, loose clusters. They are ex¬ 
cellent garden plants. See Daffodil. 

ASPHYXIATION, as fix e a' shun, the act of 
rendering one unconscious from a lack of oxy¬ 
gen. In asphyxiation the heart continues to 
drive the blood through the system in an 
unpurified condition, until death follows. Suf¬ 
focation from poisonous gases and drowning 
are the two chief causes of asphyxiation. The 
restoration of asphyxiated persons in many 
cases has been successfully accomplished after 
death had apparently come, so the work of 
restoration should be persistently followed- 
without discouragement. An attempt should 
be made to maintain the heat of the body and 
to secure the inflation of the lungs, as in the 
case of the apparently drowned. For a reli¬ 
able method of inducing respiration, see the 
article Drowning. One should never wait for 
a mechanical appliance such as the pulmotor 
to be brought, as the restoration of a par¬ 
tially-suffocated person depends upon imme¬ 
diate efforts at relief. Inducing respiration by 
manual methods has proven in many cases to 
be more advantageous than the use of a 
mechanical device. See Pulmotor. w.a.e. 

ASQUITH, as'kwith, Herbert Henry (1852- 
), an English statesman, Prime Minister 
during one of the most critical periods in 



HERBERT HENRY ASQUITH 

British history. His ministry was notable for 
the budget of 1909 (see Lloyd-George, David), 
for the Parliament Act of 1911 which abolished 
the veto power of the House of Lords, for the 
struggle for Home Rule in Ireland, and finally 














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with water between the creases ; right, digging and loading. 






















ASS 


427 


ASSASSINATION 


for the War of the Nations. Personally con¬ 
sidered cold, somewhat unsympathetic, and 
lacking in magnetism, Asquith yet was able to 
hold together the Liberal party. 

Two years after his graduation with honors 
from Balliol College, Oxford, Asquith began 
the practice of law, and though not a brilliant 
lawyer he was distinguished for sound judg¬ 
ment and clear thinking, qualities which 
marked him in Parliament. His long service 
in the House of Commons began in 1886. In 
1892 he became Secretary for Home Affairs in 
Gladstone’s last ministry", and from 1895 to 
1905 was one of the leaders of the opposition, 
being the recognized spokesman of the Rose¬ 
bery Liberal Imperialists, who supported the 
government during the South African War. 
He opposed Chamberlain’s proposal of a pro¬ 
tective tariff, and made skilful use of this issue 
to unite the various Liberal factions. His 
appointment to the Cabinet in 1905 was a 
natural result, and as Chancellor of the Ex¬ 
chequer he was really the government leader 
because of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s 
poor health. In 1908 he succeeded Campbell- 
Bannerman as Prime Minister, thus becoming 
leader in name as he had been in fact. The 
Asquith Ministry underwent reorganization in 
May, 1915, a number of prominent Conserva¬ 
tives being included to form a coalition, and 
in December, 1916, Asquith himself resigned, 
being succeeded by David Lloyd George. 

ASS, an animal of the horse family, the 
difference between them being observed in the 
larger size and the shorter ears of the horse. 
In shape the ass also resembles the zebra. In 
its wild state, in the plains of Arabia, the ass 
is a handsome animal, fleeter than the horse, 
courageous and intelligent. The domestic ass 
is noted for its dullness, obstinacy and general 
downtrodden appearance. In the East the ass 
has been valued for centuries as a beast of 
burden, and in Africa it is the only beast used 
in certain districts where the deadly tsetse fly 
is found, for it is the only animal immune to 
that insect’s fatal bite. 

The male ass is of high value for breeding 
purposes, the offspring of an ass and a mare 
being called a mule, which is superior as a 
draught animal. The domestic ass is noted for 
its ability to subsist on the coarsest food, and 
small quantities of even that. It responds 
quickly, however, to good treatment, which it 
too seldom gets. The milk of the ass is nutri¬ 
tious, and in parts of Northern Africa large 
herds are kept solely as milk animals. 


The term ass, as one of contempt, is applied 
to human beings who are dull, stupid or obsti¬ 
nate. 

ASSAM, as sam', a province of British In¬ 
dia, with an area of 53,000 square miles. In 
1905 Assam was politically joined to the prov¬ 
ince of Bengal, but in the reorganization of 
the Indian provinces in 1912 it was again 
given its former position as a separate state. 
It lies on the Indian frontier, to the south 
of Tibet. The climate is marked by the 
heaviest rainfall in the world, averaging 500 
inches annually; it has reached 800 inches, or 
nearly seventy feet, records show. Malarial 
diseases are common in the low grounds; other¬ 
wise it is not unhealthful. 

A large part of the province may be desig¬ 
nated as forests or jungle, the trees including 
teak, date and sago palm and the Indian fig- 
tree. In the jungles roam the elephant, rhi¬ 
noceros, tiger, buffalo, leopard, bear, wild hog, 
jackal, fox, goat and various kinds of deer. 
Among serpents are the python and the cobra. 
Pheasants, partridges, snipe, wild peacock and 
many kinds of water-fowl abound. Coal, 
petroleum and limestone are found in abun¬ 
dance, iron is smelted to a small extent and 
gold-dust is found in small quantities. The 
article of most commercial importance is tea, 
the yield of which is now over 295,000,000 
pounds annually. Other crops raised are rice, 
Indian corn, pulse, oil-seeds, sugar cane, hemp, 
jute and potatoes. The population is about 
6,713,700, nearly 4,000,000 of whom are Hindus, 
1,886,500 Mohammedans, and a small part of 
the rest Christians. The seat of the govern¬ 
ment, at the head of which is a British chief 
commissioner, is Shillong. 

ASSASSINA'TION is murder done treacher¬ 
ously, either for pay or for revenge. The 
name came from Assassins, a society which in 
the twelfth century was powerful in Persia and 
Asia Minor and which caused the murder of 
all who opposed the society. The work of 
assassination fell upon a band chosen for the 
purpose, and they were stimulated to carry 
out their orders by the influence of hashish 
(which see). From this habit they obtained 
the name hashishin, or hemp-eaters. 

Assassination, as generally understood, means 
the murder of a public personage. The assas¬ 
sin may be hired by some one who hopes to 
gain his end by the death of his victim, or he 
may commit the murder to satisfy his desire 
to avenge fancied or real grievance, or in 
hope that through the death of his victim he 


ASSAULT AND BATTERY 


428 


ASSESSOR 


will establish some reform, religious or polit¬ 
ical. In ancient times the assassination of 
rulers and other high public officials was often 
applauded. The assassination of Julius Caesar 
and a number of Roman emperors is a good 
illustration. Now, however, the brutal killing 
of a public personage is looked upon as the 
highest possible crime, punishable by death. 

Since 1900 the following European rulers 
have been assassinated: 

Humbert of Italy, July 29, 1900. 

Alexander of Servia and Draga, his queen, 
June 11, 1903. 

King Carlos I and son, of Portugal, Febru¬ 
ary 1, 1908. 

Three presidents of the United States have 
been assassinated: 

Abraham Lincoln, April 14, 1865. 

James A. Garfield, July 2, 1881. 

William McKinley, September 6, 1901. 

The assassination of the Archduke Francis 
Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, June 28, 
1914, was assigned as one of the causes of the 
War of the Nations, which began one month 
later. 

ASSAULT, as salt', AND BATTERY, in 

law, an attempt, real or apparent, to do bodily 
harm to another, the circumstances indicating 
intent and present ability to do actual vio¬ 
lence. When the attacking party reaches and 
touches the person of the victim, battery is 
added to assault; for, to touch in anger, or 
to use violence against another in any way 
constitutes battery. The two offenses are sep¬ 
arate and distinct, but they usually occur 
together and are punished as one. There are, 
however, some instances of assault without 
any battery. Assault and battery is a crime 
punishable by fine or imprisonment, and it is 
also a civil offense. The person injured can 
sue for and recover damages from the offender. 
In applying physical punishment to those 
under their care, parents and teachers must 
use only the force necessary in each case, any 
excess being considered assault and battery. 

ASSAYING, as say' ing, or determining the 
amount of the different metals which are con¬ 
tained in a sample of ore, of bullion or of 
alloy, is carried on in many different ways, 
according to the kind of mineral to be meas¬ 
ured. In general the processes are known as 
wet or as dry. 

The Dry Process. In this method heat is 
usually employed to separate the metals con¬ 
tained in the sample. If, for instance, the 
assayer wishes to find the amount of gold and 
silver in samples of ore, he mixes the latter 


with lead and melts them in a muffle, which 
is a clay oven about the size of a drain tile, 
with an arched roof and air-openings at the 
side. All the impurities flow off, leaving the 
gold and silver surrounded by molten lead and 
oxide of lead. The next step in the process 
is called cupellation. The mass of gold, silver 
and lead is placed in a cupel, a small, exceed¬ 
ingly porous cup made of a paste of bone-ash 
and water. When the cupel is placed in the 
muffle the lead is oxidized by the air which 
passes over it, and all the oxide disappears in 
vapor or is absorbed by the porous walls of 
the cupel. Only gold and silver now remains, 
and these two are separated by the applica¬ 
tion of nitric acid, which dissolves the silver. 
The difference between the weight of the gold 
and silver together and of the remaining gold 
gives the weight of the silver. 

The Wet Process. In this form of assaying, 
the metals are dissolved out of the ore or 
alloy which contains them by applying cer¬ 
tain chemicals, then weighed, or measured 
according to the effect they have chemically. 
Thus, if the silver washed out by the nitric 
acid in the last step of the dry process de¬ 
scribed above is combined with a solution of 
salt and the resulting white powder, chloride 
of silver, is weighed, the amount of silver is 
known from the established chemical formu¬ 
las. In assaying silver bullion at mints and 
essay offices the exact amount of salt solu¬ 
tion necessary to separate the silver is meas¬ 
ured as it is poured out, and from this the 
amount of silver is known. 

Assay Office, a government bureau under 
the direction of the Treasury Department, 
which purchases, refines and sells gold and 
silver bullion, but does not strike coins. There 
are assay offices in the United States at New 
York, Carson City, Nev., Denver, Colo., Boise, 
Ida., Helena, Mont., Charlotte, N. C., Saint 
Louis, Mo., Deadwood, S. D., Seattle, Wash., 
New Orleans, La., and Salt Lake City, Utah. 
In Canada assaying is under the supervision 
of the Royal Mint. f.st.a. 

ASSEM'BLY, one of the names often 
applied to a state legislature, or to the state 
house of representatives as contrasted with the 
senate. See Legislature. 

ASSESSOR, ases' er, an officer whose duty 
it is to make a list of all the property in the 
territory over which his authority extends, for 
purposes of taxation. The list must contain 
the name of the owner and the kind and value 
of his property. If the owner has both real 


ASSIGNMENT 


429 


ASSINIBOIN 


and personal property, each must be listed 
separately. The assessor is usually a town¬ 
ship or city officer. Large cities are divided 
into districts and a deputy assessor is ap¬ 
pointed for each, or there is a board of asses¬ 
sors, as the duties are too burdensome for 
one man. In townships the assessor is usually 
elected by the people. In most instances he 
is not a salaried officer, but is paid for time 
actually employed. 

ASSIGNMENT, a sign'merit, a legal term 
meaning the transfer, or making over, of per¬ 
sonal or real property or rights in that prop¬ 
erty. The person transferring the property is 
the assignor; the one to whom it is assigned 
is the assignee. Assignments are legal only if 
made in writing. A person can assign both 
property which he already possesses and that 
which he expects to possess. A farmer may 
assign his growing crops, and a laborer may 
assign his wages. Contracts for personal serv¬ 
ice, trusts and guardianships cannot be as¬ 
signed. There is no particular legal form nec¬ 
essary to make an assignment valid; a clear 
statement showing intent is sufficient, although 
when the matter at issue is unusually impor¬ 
tant it is advisable to consult an attorney. 

ASSIMILATION, a sim i la ' shun, the process 
by which the nutritive elements of food are 
changed into living tissue. This change takes 
place in the cells (see Cell). In animals and 
man the circulating blood brings to the cells 
the materials which they have the power of 
changing and so adapting to their own uses 
that they grow and become capable of perform¬ 
ing new and even different functions. In order 
that assimilation should take place rapidly 
in any organ, there must be a large supply of 
blood. This is the case in muscle and nerve 
tissue, while in bone, which changes more 
slowly, the blood-vessels or capillaries are 
fewer. The blood itself must circulate with a 
normal degree of rapidity, be of sufficient 
amount and composed of proper materials. 
There must also be taken into the system a 
sufficient quantity of food that is of good 
quality and easily digested. In plant life, it 
involves the transforming of inorganic mate¬ 
rials into tissues. See Diet; Nutrition; 
Secretion. 

Assimilation, when used in regard to the 
operations of the mind, means the interpreta¬ 
tion of any new object or phenomenon by 
means of what one has already learned through 
previous experience with similar objects or 
phenomena. After the period of infancy, one 


rarely learns anything new except by the 
process of assimilation. 

ASSINIBOIA, as ini hoy' a, Sask., a town 
125 miles southwest of Regina and ninety-five 
miles west of Weyburn. It is the first divi¬ 
sional point on the Winnipeg-Lethbridge branch 
of the Canadian Pacific Railway and is also 
the terminus of the branch line connecting it 
directly with Moose Jaw. The first town lot 
was sold on October 11, 1912, and on Janu¬ 
ary 1, 1913, Assiniboia was incorporated. 

From a spot on the prairie it had grown, by 
1916, to a town of 1,500 people. The vicinity 
is a rich mixed-farming district, raising chiefly 
flax, wheat and oats. The business of the 
town is chiefly in grains, agricultural imple¬ 
ments and other farm supplies, and in lumber 
and oil. Within a radius of seven miles are 
large deposits of lignite coal, gravel, sand and 
fire-brick clay. A $25,000 schoolhouse is con¬ 
spicuous among the buildings in the town. 

Assiniboia, a former district of Canada. It 
was organized in 1882 as a part of the North¬ 
west Territories (which see), and in 1905 be¬ 
came a part of the new province of Saskatche¬ 
wan. It extended from the present western 
boundary of Manitoba to a point a short dis- 



The section in solid black was the former dis¬ 
trict of Assiniboia. The light, dotted lines indi¬ 
cate the boundaries of other districts prior to 
1905, and the heavy, broken lines mark present 
provincial boundaries. 

tance beyond the present western boundary 
of Saskatchewan, and from the international 
boundary northward to an east-and-west line 
drawn just south of the city of Saskatoon. 
The area of this district was 90,000 square 
miles. For details of the physical character¬ 
istics, climate, natural resources and products, 
see Saskatchewan. 

ASSINIBOIN, asin'iboyn, which means 
one who cooks by stones, is the name given 
to an Indian tribe of the Sioux family, be¬ 
cause when first known by white men they 







ASSINIBOINE 


430 


ASSOCIATION FOOTBALL 


boiled water by dropping hot stones into it. 
They lived between the Missouri and Sas¬ 
katchewan rivers, on both sides of the 
Canadian border. About 1,250 are now on 
reservations near forts Baldwin and Peck in 
Montana, and a slightly larger number live 
in Canada. 

ASSINIBOINE, a sin' iboyn, a river of 
Southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba, the 
chief tributary of the Red River, into which 
it flows at the city of Winnipeg. The Assini- 
boine proper rises in Eastern Saskatchewan, 
near the Manitoba boundary, and flows south¬ 
ward for 200 miles to meet the Qu’Appelle, 
which rises about fifty miles northwest of 
Moose Jaw and flows eastward for 270 miles. 
From this junction to the mouth of the Assini- 
boine at Winnipeg is a course of about 250 
miles, through some of the richest grain lands 
of the Dominion. Near Brandon, Man., the 
Assiniboine is joined from the south by the 
Souris, which rises in the southeastern corner 
of Saskatchewan, makes a wide bend through 
North Dakota, and then returns northward. 
The drainage area of this combined system is 
52,600 square* miles. 

ASSINIBOINE, Mount, one of the rugged 
and most beautiful peaks in the Canadian 
Rockies. It lies on the boundary between 
Alberta and British Columbia, twenty miles 
south of Banff, and rises to an altitude of 
11,860 feet. Its shape is somewhat triangular, 
like that of the Matterhorn in Switzerland, 
and like the Matterhorn it is extremely diffi¬ 
cult to climb. The east face is a sheer preci¬ 
pice, and the west face, though less steep, is 
covered with ice and snow, which frequently 
break loose in great avalanches. The lower 
part of the northern slope presents three dis¬ 
tinct faces, which attain an angle of 80° where 
they merge into the final spire. The first 
ascent of Mount Assiniboine was made in 1901. 

ASSOCIATED PRESS, an organization com¬ 
posed of the publishers of daily newspapers 
who thus combine to furnish each other with 
the important news of the da}'. No newspaper 
not a member of the Associated Press may 
receive its dispatches. 

With a view to making this service of the 
greatest value, the United States is divided 
into four geographical sections. News dis¬ 
patches are sent to the headquarters of each 
division; those that are of national interest 
are telegraphed to all members in the four 
sections; those of more local importance but 
without general news value are sent only to 


those papers in sections where they are avail¬ 
able for use. 

The Associated Press is a close corporation. 
In great cities a certain number of franchises, 
or memberships, are available, for it would 
clearly be against public interest in a great 
metropolis if there were but one member 
of this greatest news-gathering organization. 
However, in small cities but one paper can 
be a member of the Associated Press. Mem¬ 
bers do not pay a fixed sum per year, but the 
cost of maintenance of the service is pro-rated 
among all members. 

The Associated Press employs correspond¬ 
ents to represent it in all the great cities of 
the world, but no papers in Europe are mem¬ 
bers. European journals are served by their 
local press associations, among which the 
Reuter and the Havas agencies are probably 
the largest. 

There are in the United States other agen¬ 
cies with a wide field, but none other is so 
great or so influential. Among these minor 
organizations may be named the United Press, 
the Scripps League and the International News 
Service. 

ASSOCIATION, Law of, in psychology, de¬ 
notes the way the mind travels from one idea 
to another. The conditions under which a 
thought suggests another are classified by psy¬ 
chologists under four general laws, as follows: 

(1) Those ideas which are perceived together, 
or contiguity; 

(2) Ideas following each other in order of 
time, or succession ; 

(3) Those ideas which bear a close likeness 
to each other, or similarity ; 

(4) Those ideas which are opposite in mean¬ 
ing, or contrast. 

We also recall experiences that have oc¬ 
curred together or in the order in which the}' 
are experienced, by their similarity, and some¬ 
times, though rarely, by their contrast. If 
you will picture your breakfast table in your 
mind’s eye, you will find that this will bring 
up images or memories of the people you saw 
at breakfast, the things that were said there, 
and so on. If you will follow the images that 
come into the mind long enough you will find 
that they come in about the order they were 
experienced through the day. The child re¬ 
members his multiplication table in the order 
of 1, 2, 3, and if he attempts to say it back¬ 
wards he has trouble. See Psychology; 
Habit; Memory. 

ASSOCIATION FOOTBALL. See Football, 
subtitle Association Football. 


ASSUAN 


431 


ASSURBANIPAL 


ASSUAN, asioahn', an Egyptian town 
famous in both ancient and modem times. 
In the days of the Pharaohs, granite for the 
huge obelisks and statues was quarried near 
Assuan, which was at the head of navigation 



ASSUAN DAM 

One of the world’s great engineering works, 
the controlling factor in a vast irrigation project. 

on the Nile, just below the first cataract. 
Five miles south of the town was the famous 
temple of Philae. To-day Assuan owes its rep¬ 
utation to the great dam which British engi¬ 
neers have built four miles above it, to store 
the Nile waters for irrigation. Locally Assuan 
is known as a center for caravan trade with 
Sudan, for the railroad from Cairo ends near 
the first cataract. The population is about 
13,000. 

The Dam. This structure is a mile and a 
quarter long and 144 feet high. It is not a 
solid wall, but is broken by 123 sluice open¬ 
ings for discharging the water as needed for 
irrigation. The discharge through these open¬ 
ings may amount to 1,500 tons per second. 
This dam was begun in 1898 and finished in 
1902, and it is one of the greatest engineering 
works in the world. In 1907-1909 the wall was 
thickened, and raised sixteen feet to its pres¬ 
ent height, submerging the temple of Philae. 
On top of the wall is a driveway twenty-nine 
feet six inches wide. The Nile above the dam 


(to the south) has been converted into a lake, 
which extends up-stream for nearly a hundred 
miles and contains enough water to irrigate 
6,000,000 acres. See Irrigation. 

ASSUMPTION, as sump'shun, Feast of 
the, a festival of the Christian Church, ob¬ 
served on the 15th of August by Roman and 
Greek Catholics, in memory of the miracle 
through which the soul and body of the Virgin 
Mary were taken into heaven by Christ and 
the angels. It was first celebrated in the 
Greek Church in 5S2, and in the Roman 
Church in the seventh century. This festival 
is not observed by the Church of England, nor 
by any other of the Protestant churches. 

The Assumption in Art. The story of the 
Assumption lends itself beautifully to treat¬ 
ment by painters, and is a favorite subject in 
religious art. The Assumption, painted by 
Titian, now in Venice, pictures the Virgin be¬ 
ing carried to heaven on shining clouds, while 
rejoicing angels surround her, and from the 
earth the apostles gaze upward with wonder 
in their faces. Titian has another painting of 
this title in the Cathedral of Verona. The 
painting by Rubens, which was secured by the 
cathedral at Antwerp, Belgium, shows the Vir¬ 
gin ascending to heaven with the angels, and 
below an empty tomb, about which several 
of the apostles and a number of women are 
standing. This picture, with others, was re¬ 
moved from the city for safe keeping when 
the Germans invaded Belgium in the War of 
the Nations, in August, 1914. The Virgin in 
the canvas of Perugino, in Florence, is one of 
that artist’s most beautiful portraits. This 
painting has, besides the Virgin, four saints 
in the foreground. 

Another beautiful canvas is that by Murillo, 
in the Hermitage Museum, Petrograd, in which 
the Virgin is seen floating upward on clouds, 
while bands of cherubs rise with her. Among 
frescoes picturing the ascent of the Virgin are 
those of Correggio, in the cupola of the Cathe¬ 
dral of Parma, Italy, and of Ferrari, in the 
Church of San Cristoforo, in Vercelli, Italy. 
(See each artist named, in his alphabetical 
position in these volumes; also the article 
Painting.) 

ASSURBANIPAL, as shoor bah'ne pal, (668- 
624 b. c.), called by the Greeks Sardanapa- 
lus, was the last great king of Assyria, distin¬ 
guished for his interest in art and literature. He 
erected magnificent buildings in Nineveh, the 
capital city, as well as in other cities of Baby¬ 
lonia, and in his royal palace gathered together 









































ASSYRIA 


432 


ASSYRIA 


8 

8 

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0 

0 

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0 

9 

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0 

0 

0 

0 

0 

0 

s 

0 

0 

g 

0 



©ASSYRIA 


Principal Events B.C. 

Tiglath-Pileser 1.1130 

Assun Nazir-Pal.883 

Tiglath-Pi leser n.745 

Ten Tribes of Israel Captured. 1ZZ 

Sennacherib.701 

Esarhaddon...680 

Assur-Bani Pal.668 

Fal I of Nineveh.606 


Spearman Armed 
for 'Conflict 



m 

C 

Archer of 
Assyrian Army 




Winged Bull 


Cuneiform Writing and Tablet of Baked Clay on Assur 

which Records were Preserved.Envelope forlablet. Chief Assyrian Deity 


8 

0 

0 

8 

8 

0 

0 

o 

D 

D 

0 

0 

d 

U 

d 

d 

d 

d 

d 


a great collection of Assyrian and Babylonian 
writings. The remains of this famous library, 
consisting of thousands of clay tablets, are 
now in the British Museum. Assurbanipal 
was also a great warrior. He fought the 
Egyptians, captured the city of Tyre, and cru¬ 
elly laid waste the country of Elam, to the 
southeast, as a punishment for aiding Baby¬ 
lonia, which had rebelled against him. Eight¬ 
een years after his death the Assyrian mon¬ 
archy came to an end. 

The name of this monarch is also spelled 
Ashurbani'pal. See Assyria. 

ASSYRIA, a seer' i a, the ancient name'of a 
country lying west of the Tigris River and 
north of Babylonia, forming with that country 
the cradle of civilization. Along its eastern 
boundary rose the mountains of modern Kur¬ 
distan; on the north lay the country of Ar¬ 
menia. Assyria was the head of a great mil¬ 
itary empire that in the seventh century b. c. 
stretched from the Black Sea to the Persian 
Gulf, from the frontiers of India to the Medi¬ 
terranean, and included Egypt. So closely con¬ 
nected were the Assyrians and Babylonians in 
their geography, their history and their cus¬ 
toms, that historians do not find it easy to 


treat separately these two ancient peoples, the 
pioneers of the world’s civilization. 

Geography. Assyria was a fertile plain with 
low ranges of hills and shallow valleys, through 
which the great tributaries of the Tigris flowed. 
The Assyrians in early times built a network of 
canals, so that the land was under irrigation 
when rain failed them, and they cultivated 
olives, vines, fruits and vegetables. From the 
hills they procured iron, copper and lead; from 
the neighboring mountains, limestone, sand¬ 
stone, alabaster and basalt. Assur, on the west 
bank of the Tigris, and the city from which 
the country took its name, was the oldest 
capital; Calah, a later capital, lay on the east 
bank, on the site of the modern Nimrud. 
Nineveh, the city that became the permanent 
seat of government, was located twelve miles 
north of Calah. The modern town of Erbil, 
near the mountains on the east, is built on the 
site of the ancient Arbela, which gave its name 
to the famous battle won in 331 b. c. by Alex¬ 
ander the Great. 

People. Assyria was settled, probably as 
early as 2500 b. c., by colonists from Babylonia, 
who were of Semetic stock. Though they re¬ 
sembled their Babylonian kinsmen in many 




















































Assyria 


433 


ASSYRIA 


ways, the Assyrians were the more rugged and 
warlike; their energy in extending their terri¬ 
tory has given them the name “Romans of 
Asia.” The Assyrian kings inflicted the cru¬ 
dest torture on prisoners of war. Stone slabs 
recovered from the ruins of the palaces have 
sculptured on them pictures of conquered kings 
with hooks thrust through their lips; other 
prisoners are being whipped to death, and 
some are having their tongues torn out. 
Hunting, also, was the delight of the kings of 
Assyria, and they were as careful in recording 
the number of wild beasts slain as the number 
of cities that were captured. 

The religion of the Assyrians was practically 
that of the Babylonians, a worship of many 
gods, but the former had a distinct national 
deity in Assur, creator of heaven and earth. 
They were a literary people, using for the most 
part tablets of baked clay as a writing mate¬ 
rial. Assurbanipal, the last great king of 
Assyria, collected a library of thousands of 
these tablets, man}^ of which have been un¬ 
earthed from the ruins of the king’s palace at 
Nineveh, and placed on view in the British 
Museum. The characters on these tablets have 
the shape of a wedge, a form of writing that 
is known as cuneiform (see Cuneiform In¬ 
scriptions). Assyrian literature consisted of 
hymns to the gods, mythological poems, and 
writings on law, science and history. These 
people had a well-organized form of govern¬ 
ment. The kings exercised unlimited power, 
but appointed governors to rule over the cities, 
and were assisted by other officers in various 
ways. 

Art. The Assyrians made remarkable prog¬ 
ress in sculpture. From the ruins of their 
buildings there have been unearthed two¬ 
winged, human-headed lions and bulls twelve 
feet in height, besides a large number of stone 
slabs decorated with raised figures that picture 
scenes in Assyrian life and history. These 
show how the soldiers marched, encamped, 
crossed rivers, attacked cities, cooked, tortured 
enemies and sacrificed to the gods, or picture 
the king banqueting with the queen and hunt¬ 
ing lions with his court. Their sculptors 
worked chiefly in soft limestone. 

Assyrian architecture was more or less a 
copy of the Babylonian. Sun-dried brick, as 
in Babylonia, was used in building, but the 
Assyrians often faced their foundations and 
walls with stone slabs. Their palaces were 
four-sided, and their temples had the shape of 
a pyramid. These buildings were erected on 


great terraces or platforms; that at Nineveh, 
on which the royal palace stood, covered an 
area of about one hundred acres and was nearly 
seventy feet in height. Though only one story 
high, the palaces of the kings were often of a 
magnificence that no age has surpassed, and 
their many courts, chambers and passage-ways 
sometimes spread over twenty or twenty-five 
acres. The decorations, consisting of stucco 
work, panels of precious woods, enameled 
bricks and sculptured slabs, produced a strik¬ 
ing effect. At the gates of the palaces, to 
guard the approach, were placed the great 
man-headed bulls and winged lions. The in¬ 
dustrial arts were highly developed. The king 
and his courtiers dressed in richly embroidered 
and figured stuffs; their arms and armor were 
highly finished; the king’s throne was of carved 
ivory and wrought gold, and he was served 
from superbly decorated gold, silver and bronze 
vessels. 

History. In the dim light of early Assyrian 
history, the names of kings begin to appear 
about 2250 b. c., and the first periods are 
largely records of military campaigns. In the 
twelfth century, under the leadership of 
Tiglath-Pileser I, the Assyrians gained in a 
large measure control over Babylonia. With 
this ruler began that devotion to the arts 
for which Assyrian monarchs were famous. 
After three centuries there arose a strong ruler 
named Assurnazirpal, who waged vigorous wars 
on all sides and made Assyria a great empire. 
Nineveh, which in the eleventh century had 
been made the capital, rose to the position 
of mistress of the Eastern world. The suc¬ 
cessors of Assurnazirpal pushed their armies in 
a westerly direction, making conquests in Syria 
and Phoenicia. 

Sargon II was the founder of the last and 
most glorious dynasty of Assyria (722-705 b.c.). 
He completely conquered Babylonia, over¬ 
came the Hittites, put an end to the King¬ 
dom of Israel and made Judah and the Medi¬ 
terranean cities pay tribute. His successors, 
Sennacherib, Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal 
(Sardanapalus), were kept busy maintaining 
the supremacy of the Assyrian power over the 
broad realm. Under Assurbanipal, Assyria rose 
to the height of its greatness; from the fron¬ 
tiers of India to the Mediterranean Sea its 
rule was supreme. But as the treasures of 
the world poured into the capital, the people 
became fond of ease and luxury and would not 
go to war to protect their foreign possessions. 
Province after province revolted, and after 


ASSYRIA 


434 


ASTER 


V* 


Outline and Questions on 
Assyria 


(1) 

( 2 ) 


( 1 ) 

( 2 ) 

(3) 

(4) 


( 1 ) 

( 2 ) 

(3) 

(4) 

(5) 


( 1 ) 

( 2 ) 

(3) 

(4) 

(5) 

( 6 ) 
(7) 


I. Position nml Size 

Varied in extent 
Present boundaries 

II. The Land 

Fertile plain 
Low hills 

Irrigation and cultivation of the 
soil 

Mineral wealth 

III. Inhabitants 

A Semetic people 
Characteristics 
Religion, learning and art 
Luxury of ancient life 
Industrial arts 

IV. History 

Beginnings of Assyrian power 
Conquest of Babylonia 
Supremacy of Assyria 
Decline of power 
Overthrow of kingdom by Medes 
and Babylonians 
Later conquests 
Turkish possession 


Questions 


How was the winged lion of As¬ 
syria used? * 

In what way was the history of the 
country bound up with Biblical his¬ 
tory? 

In what century did it reach the 
height of its glory? 

How did Nineveh rank among the 
cities of the East? 

Did the Assyrian farmers, in years 
of drought, lose all their crops? 

To how many nations did the terri¬ 
tory known as Assyria belong in the 
course of its history? 

Justify the title, “Romans of Asia,” 
as applied to the Assyrians. 

What brought about the decline of 
power? 

Did the royal palaces indicate a 
high or a low order of civilization? 

What was the form of the written 
characters ? 

How have we learned many facts 
about the military and court life of 
Assyria? 


m 




the death of Assurbanipal the decline of Assy¬ 
rian power was rapid. 

Finally, in 606 b. c., the Babylonians under 
Nabopolassar, the Chaldean, with the aid of 
the Medes, overthrew Nineveh, which Xeno¬ 
phon, 200 years later, leading the retreating 
10,000 Greeks, saw as a crumbling mass of 
ruins, without a name (see Anabasis). Assyria 
was then divided between the Medes and 
Babylonians. It w T as afterwards a province of 
the Persian Empire, was conquered by Alex¬ 
ander the Great, and after his death was ruled 
by his successors. Coming later under Par¬ 
thian, Roman and Persian rule, it was seized 
by the Turks in 1638, and since then has been 
a part of the Turkish Empire. See Babylonia; 
Nineveh ; Assurbanipal. e.d.f. 

Consult Maspero’s The Struggle of the Na¬ 
tions; Smith’s Ancient History from the Monu¬ 
ments. 

ASTARTE, as tahr' te, the principal female 
deity of the Phoenicians, w r as the goddess of 
fruitfulness and fertility. She was worshiped 
under various names by other ancient peoples, 
and was sometimes regarded as the goddess of 
the moon and of hunting. She was identified 
with the Greek Aphrodite and also with 
Artemis, with the Ishtar of the Assyrians and 
Babylonians, and with the Isis of the Egyp¬ 
tians. In the Old Testament this goddess is 
mentioned again and again under the name 
Ashtoreth. In II Kings, XXIII, 13, it is told 
that King Josiah tore down an altar which 
Solomon had built in her honor, and other 
passages show that the Israelites often turned 
from their true religion to her worship. The 
planet Venus was her star. See Aphrodite; 
Artemis ; Mythology. 

ASTER, as' tur, from the Greek word for 
star, a group of plants which w T ere given their 
name because of the star-like appearance of 
their flowers. This group includes several 
hundred species, which grow in abundance in 
North America and more sparingly in Asia, 
Europe and South America. The flowers re¬ 
semble those of the daisy, and in England, 
where asters are in bloom late in September, 
at the time of the feast of Michaelmas, they 
are known as the Michaelmas daisy. 

The various species show many charming 
shades of color, ranging from white to dark 
purple, and including bright rosy-lilac, pink, 
rose, crimson, pale blue and violet. Among 
the more showy varieties, none is more beau¬ 
tiful than the stately China aster, which some¬ 
times grows in gardens to a height of eighteen 


















ASTEROIDS 


435 


ASTHMA 


inches. Asters flower late in summer and in 
some places blossom until November or De¬ 
cember. They adapt themselves readily to 
cultivation and are popular garden plants. 



Every aster in my hand 

Goes home loaded with a thought. 

—From Emerson's The Apology. 


Many poets have told of the late-flowering 
habits of the aster, none more beautifully than 
Bryant, in his Death of the Flowers: 

The windflower and the violet, they perished long 
ago, 

And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the 
summer glow; 

But on the hills the golden rod, and the aster in 
the wood, 

And the yellow sunflower by the brook, in 
autumn beauty stood. 

ASTEROIDS, as'teroyds, or PLANETOIDS, 

the name of a group of many minor planets, 
revolving between the orbits of Mars and 
Jupiter, and occupying a place in the solar 
system which would naturally belong to a 
planet. The diameter of the largest does not 
exceed 488 miles, while most of the others are 
very much smaller, some being less than 
twenty miles in diameter. The known ones 
now number many hundreds, and fresh dis¬ 
coveries are frequently announced. Ceres, the 
first and largest, was discovered January I, 
1801, and within three years three others, 
which were named Pallas, Juno and Vesta, 
were seen. 

The extraordinary smallness of these bodies 


and their nearness to one another gave rise 
to the erroneous opinion that they are but the 
fragments of a planet that had formerly ex¬ 
isted and had been brought to an end by some 
catastrophe. For nearly forty years investi¬ 
gations were carried on, but no more planets 
were discovered till December 8, 1845, when a 
fifth planetoid (Astraea) was found in the same 
region. The asteroids are now considered to 
be parts of a ring, similar to the rings of 
Saturn, broken into minute portions by the 
attraction or disturbance caused by Jupiter. 
Eros, one of the smallest, discovered in 1898, 
approaches the earth more nearly than any 
other body except the moon. The mean dis¬ 
tances of the asteroids from the sun vary be¬ 
tween 135,000,000 and 300,000,000 miles, though 
there may yet be undiscovered ones at far 
greater distance. The periods of revolution 
vary between 643 days for Ceres and more 
than 3,000 daj^s for the most remote. Their 
total mass does not exceed one-fourth that of 
the earth. For location, see charts in article 
Astronomy. 

ASTHMA, az' mah, a distressing malady 
connected with the process of breathing. The 
characteristic symptoms of an attack of asthma 
are difficult breathing, wheezing, coughing and, 
in extreme cases, slight asphyxia. Asthma is 
thought to be due to spasm of the minute 
muscles in the walls of the bronchi. It very 
often is an accompaniment of hay fever, and 
attacks may be brought on by inhalation of 
pollen, as in the latter disease. Some victims 
are affected by particular odors, and suffer a 
paroxysm when brought in contact with one 
of them. Attacks usually begin suddenly, with 
a preliminary feeling of oppression. They are 
liable to be worse at night, and are especially 
bad in a damp, close atmosphere. Storms are 
often responsible for attacks. The paroxysms 
recur at irregular intervals and generally pass 
away in a few hours, though the duration is 
subject to considerable variation. The patient, 
in his efforts to obtain air, may grow purple 
in the face, and his eyes may become blood¬ 
shot. 

Men seem to be subject to asthma oftener 
than women, and a highly-nervous tempera¬ 
ment predisposes one to the disease. Children 
often become asthmatic after attacks of 
measles, bronchitis and whooping cough. 
Change of climate has been known to arrest 
the disease, which tends to become chronic 
after a long period of recurring attacks. Drugs 
are usually of little avail, the best treatment 




ASTIGMATISM 


436 


ASTOR FAMILY 


being along lines of hygiene and dieting. In 
some cases, where the attack is of long dura¬ 
tion, hypodermic injections inducing sleep have 
to be administered to save the patient from 
complete exhaustion. w.a.e. 

ASTIGMATISM, as tig' matiz’m, a form of 
imperfect refraction of the eye, in which 
parallel rays of light are refracted or bent un¬ 
equally in the different planes or meridians. 
This inequality of refraction is due, in the 

O 


CO 


V 1 


A PRACTICAL TEST 

In the above chart, if all the lines do not ap¬ 
pear equally black to the natural eye, astigma¬ 
tism is likely to be present, in greater or less 
degree. 

majority of instances, to the fact that the 
curvature of the cornea (sometimes the lens, 
also) is abnormal. In the normal eye the 
curvature of the cornea is equal in every 
meridian or plane; in the astigmatic eye these 
curves vary like the curvature of a spoon, in 
which the curve from tip to point is long and 
less acute, while the curve from side to side 
is short and sharp. Rays of light passing 
through a cornea of the spoon-shaped variety 
would be bent or refracted unequally, and such 
a condition would be known as astigmatism. 

Astigmatism either exists from birth (con¬ 
genital) or is acquired through disease, prin¬ 
cipally of the cornea of the eye. The vast 
majority' of persons have astigmatism in 
greater or less degree, and it is the most com¬ 
mon cause of “eye strain” and many other 
distressing complaints such as headaches, 
stomach trouble and numerous “nervous symp¬ 
toms.” Properly-fitted glasses, combined with 
sensible regulation of ocular hygiene and at¬ 



tention to the general health, almost always 
relieve such distressing symptoms. 

A much used test for astigmatism is the 
“clock dial chart” which is similar in appear¬ 
ance to a clock dial, with a number of dark 
lines radiating from the center to the differ¬ 
ent hours, as from twelve to six o’clock, three 
to nine, ten to four and two to eight o’clock, 
etc. In the normal eye all the lines on this 
chart should appear equally distinct and of 
the same degree of blackness. In the astig¬ 
matic eye certain lines may appear more dis¬ 
tinct or blacker than those radiating at right 
angles to them. For example, the lines run¬ 
ning from twelve to six may be more distinct 
or blacker than those running from three to 
nine o’clock. This test, while suggestive, is 
not strictly reliable, and other more scientific 
and technical tests made by oculists are neces¬ 
sary to determine with accuracy the presence 
and degree of astigmatism. See Eye. r.j.t. 

ASTOR FAMILY, a family of American 
capitalists, frequently called the “landlords of 
New York City,” because the founder of the 
family invested most of his fortune in real 
estate, and its gradual rise in value has placed 
his descendants among the richest persons in 
the United States. They are America’s near¬ 
est approach to the typical European heredi¬ 
tary, land-owning families. Though the family 
fortune was founded in a commercial enter¬ 
prise, it was soon tied up in real estate, and 
each succeeding generation has added to rather 
than sold the land held by the family. 

John Jacob Astor (1763-1848), w T as born in 
the small village of Waldorf, near Heidelberg, 
Germany, where his father was a butcher. The 
son emigrated to 
New York in 
1783, and almost 
immediately be¬ 
gan to trade in 
furs, even prepar¬ 
ing them for mar¬ 
ket with his own 
hands. So shrewd 
and industrious 
was he that in 
six years he had 
acquired a for¬ 
tune of nearly 
$200,000. His 
business gradu¬ 



JOHN JACOB ASTOR 

The founder of the great 
American house of Astor and 
of the fortune of the family. 


ally expanded, 
and in 1811 he founded Astoria, Oregon, as a 
permanent station for regular trading with the 

















ASTOR FAMILY 


437 


ASTORIA 


Indians. In spite of the War of 1812 he 
prospered, and at his death had commer¬ 
cial connections in every part of the globe. 
Most of his fortune of $30,000,000 he invested 
in real estate in New York, much to the scorn 
of his friends, who thought him crazy because 
he bought farms outside the limits of the city. 
But the land which he bought by the acre 
in the vicinity of Broadway and 42nd Street 
is now sold and leased by the square foot, and 
a square foot is worth several times the price 
he paid for an acre. He bequeathed $350,000 
to the city for a public library, known as the 
Astor Library. 

William Backhouse Astor (1792-1875), son of 
the first John Jacob, inherited most of the 
estate, and by judicious management doubled 
its value. He contributed large sums to the 
Astor Library, founded by his father, and also 
bequeathed to it $250,000 in money and $200,- 
000 worth of books. His two sons were John 
Jacob (1822-1890) and William (1830-1892), 
who divided his estate in equal shares. 

John Jacob Astor (1822-1890), third of this 
name, was the eldest son of William Backhouse 
Astor. He was educated at Columbia, Got¬ 
tingen, and Harvard universities, taking the 
course in law at the last institution to qualify 
himself for the management of the Astor 
estate. Like his father and his grandfather, 
he gave liberally to the Astor Library and to 
many charities. He was a colonel on McClel¬ 
lan’s staff in the War of Secession, and was 
far prouder of his military record than of any 
other achievement in his life. 

William Waldorf Astor, Baron (1848- ), 

son of the preceding, was the first of the 
Astors to abandon the United States as his 
home; he removed to London in 1890 and in 
1899 became a British subject. He served in 
the New York assembly for two terms, and 
from 1882 to 1885 was United States minister 
to Italy. On the death of his father he became 
head of the family and the possessor of an 
estate estimated at $200,000,000. In England 
he became the owner of the Pall Mall Gazette, 
one of the leading Conservative newspapers. 
In 1916 he was created a baron by King 
George V. 

John Jacob Astor (1864-1912), fifth child of 
William Astor and grandson of William B. 
Astor, was one of the ablest members of 
this remarkable family. After graduation 
from Harvard in 1888, he traveled extensively, 
and then devoted most of his time to the 
management of the estate. He owned many 


notable buildings in New York, including the 
Saint Regis, the Knickerbocker and the 
Waldorf-Astoria hotels, all built on lands pur¬ 
chased by his far-seeing great-grandfather. 
He was known as the inventor of numerous 
mechanical devices, including a bicycle brake, 
a machine for developing peat deposits and 
an improved form of turbine engine for ships. 
In 1898 at his own expense he equipped a bat¬ 
tery for service in the Philippines, and he 
himself served on General Shafter’s staff in 
Cuba. He took part in the battle of Santi¬ 
ago and was chosen by Shatter to deliver the 
official notice of Spanish surrender to the Sec¬ 
retary of War. He lost his life by the sinking 
of the steamship Titanic, April 15, 1912; his 
wife of a few months was among the few res¬ 
cued, and a short time later a son was born, 
who perpetuates the name of the founder of 
the line. His vast estate was left in trust, his 
son, William Vincent Astor (born 1891), be¬ 
ing the principal heir. w.f.z. 

ASTORIA, as toh' ria, Oregon, county seat 
of Clatsop County, the location of the largest 
salmon fishing and canning industries of the 
world. It is a port of entry and shipping cen¬ 
ter in the extreme northwestern corner of the 
state, on the south bank of the Columbia River, 
nine miles from the Pacific Ocean and 101 
miles northwest of Portland. It is on the 
Spokane, Portland & Seattle railroad and has 
several steamship lines operating to domestic 
and foreign ports. In 1910 the population was 
9,599; in 1914 it had increased to 10,117. The 
area of the city is nearly five square miles. 

Astoria is situated in a region of marine 
scenery of striking beauty. In 1916 the city 
was in the midst of a reconstruction period; 
the five miles of water front within the city 
limits were being enlarged to constitute one 
of the largest and most complete municipal 
docks on the Pacific coast. A sea wall was 
in course of construction and the grade of 
streets was being raised. The annual product 
of the salmon canneries, mentioned above, is 
approximately $5,000,000; over 3,500 men are 
employed in this industry. Lumbering in the 
dense pine forests of the adjacent country and 
the sawmills give employment to nearly 5,000 
men, not all of whom, however, live in the 
city. The city has an extensive export trade in 
lumber, wheat, oats, live stock, wool, potatoes 
and apples. 

Astoria, named for John Jacob Astor (see 
Astor), was founded in 1811 by his employes, 
and was the first settlement of white men in 


ASTRAKHAN 


438 


ASTROLOGY 


the valley of the Columbia River. Fort Clat¬ 
sop had been built there in 1805 by the Lewis 
and Clark Expedition. The place was to be 
a central depot in a system of fur-trading 
posts extending from the Great Lakes west¬ 
ward. In 1813 it was seized by the English, 
who renamed it Fort George. In 1818 it again 
came into possession of the United States, 
though it was occupied by the Northwest 
Company, English fur traders, until 1845. It 
was incorporated as a city in 1876. c. of c. 

ASTRAKHAN, as' trakan, the name given 
to the fur or wool of a particular variety of 
lamb bred in Southern Russia, Persia and 
Afghanistan, deriving its name from the town 
of Astrakhan in Russia. Its curly, glossy fur 
is in great demand for collars, cuffs, muffs and 
other ornaments for winter garments. The 
wool is of finer texture, more silky and is more 
durable than that of any other variety of 
lamb. Its superior qualities are attributed to 
the action of the climate, as animals of the 
same breed, exported to other countries, pro¬ 
duce inferior wool. The skins of the lambs 
are sold in open market for sums varying from 
25 cents to $1.50, but when dyed and ready 
for wear they are very expensive, a good 
astrakhan collar costing from $12.50 upwards. 

The name astrakhan is also applied to a 
cloth made in imitation of the fur. 

ASTRAKHAN, an important port and manu¬ 
facturing center of Southeastern Russia, cap¬ 
ital of the province of the same name. It is 
situated on the delta of the Volga River, 
about forty miles from the Caspian Sea. Fish, 
caviare, isinglass, leather, furs, astrakhan, silk 
and cotton are extensively exported. Impor¬ 
tant commerce is carried on with all Caspian 
ports and with inland towns by means of the 
great waterway of the Volga. The town is on 
low-lying land and has only a few good build¬ 
ings, the streets being, for the most part, nar¬ 
row and dirty. Population in 1911, 150,100. 

ASTRINGENT, astrin' jent, from words 
meaning to bind or to contract, refers to a 
medicine which contracts the organic textures 
and canals of the body, thereby checking or 
diminishing excessive discharges. There are 
two classes of astringents used by physicians, 
namely, vegetable and mineral. The vegetable 
astringents all contain tannic and gallic acids, 
catechu, kino, oak-bark and rhatany. Mineral 
astringents include mineral acids, zinc, iron, 
lead, silver, nitric and hydrochloric acids, alum, 
lime-water and chalk. 

ASTROLOGY is the predecessor of astron¬ 


omy in that its pursuit required the accumu¬ 
lation of a considerable range of astronomical 
data; this aspect was known as natural astrol¬ 
ogy. But the motive that supported the in¬ 
quiry was that of predicting and controlling 
human fate; this phase was known as judicial 
astrology. The two interests were more de¬ 
tached than was true of the (later) relations 
of alchemy and chemistry. The superstitions 
of astrology (see Superstition) were compre¬ 
hensive and inherent in the underlying ideas 
of the system. Assyria, Arabia, Greece, Rome 
and Western Europe practiced and continued 
the astrological lore. Its practice included the 
determination of fortunate days for various 
enterprises (see Divination) ; fixing the site 
of temples; prophesying the issue of events; 
prescribing medicines according to astrological 
affinities; diagnosing disease by means of the 
relations of the several parts of the body (or 
the vital system) to the positions of the plan¬ 
ets ; and most prominently, the casting of 
horoscopes. 

All these practices were determined by the 
zodiac, which was the name given to that part 
of the heavens containing the paths of the sun, 
moon, and principal planets. It was divided 
into twelve portions by reference to the con¬ 
stellations in the several divisions. Thus, the 
Ram (Aries) leads (“the first house”) and is 
the sign under which the child is born. The 
sign of Jupiter (see Zodiac) is the astrological 
origin of the R which still heads the physi¬ 
cian’s prescriptions. It should be observed 
how naturally the several “occult” sciences 
worked together; the course of events, the 
treatment of disease, the guidance of the 
affairs of life were regulated by notions which 
were at once alchemistic and astrological. 

The underlying conception of astrology is 
that the courses and appearances of the 
heavenly bodies exert a “moral” or prophetic 
influence upon the earth and its inhabitants. 
Divination and prediction were its chief func¬ 
tions. For this purpose an elaborate system 
was devised; for the data were limited to the 
relations of position of sun (moon), planets 
and constellations. To bring these into rela¬ 
tion to human fate, each of the four ages of 
man—childhood, youth, adult life and old 
age—were assigned three divisions (houses) in 
the zodiac, by giving each an ascendant, a 
dominant and a declining “house”. By dis¬ 
tributing the several human virtues of quali¬ 
ties or fates, such as content, cowardice, valor, 
justice, riches, disease, injury, accident, war, 



ASTRONOMY 


439 


ASTRONOMY 


business venture, office, death, over the planets 
and constellations (Jupiter for the jovial, 
\ enus for love-affairs, Mars for war, Mercury 
for business, Leo for courage, Libra for justice, 
etc.,) it was easy to lay out the course of a 
life’s career by means of a horoscope. 

The twelve signs of the zodiac were as¬ 
signed to different portions of the body: Aries 
(rani) for the head; Taurus (bull) for the 
neck and the shoulders; the Twins (Hercules 
and Apollo) for the arms and hands; Pisces 
(fish) for the feet; specific diseases were thus 
predicted and cures prescribed. (The fanciful 
analogy is readily observed: the ram has a 
conspicuous head, the bull a strong neck, etc.) 
The system left room for adjustments in inter¬ 
pretation toward the pleasant fates, especially 
in casting the horoscopes of kings or nobles— 
and while occasional successes were heralded, 
failures or vague issues were naturally ignored. 
The interest in astrology is centered in the 
early religious type of conception out of which 
it grew; as a system of divination, it follows 
the usual elastic adjustment of sign to fate. 
It developed such fantastic predictions as that 
of the end of the earth in 1524 by a flood, 
because three planets would then meet in the 
aqueous sign of Pisces; or that if at the time 


of a theft the “lord of the sixth house” (i.e., 
the constellation conspicuous in the sixth di¬ 
vision of the zodiac) is in the second house, 
the thief is a member of the family. Astrol¬ 
ogy rapidly degenerated to fortune-telling and 
pretense. Its motive was quite unrelated to 
that which made astronomy possible. 

Astrological notions are treated so fully in 
these volumes under Superstition and Divina¬ 
tion that this account is limited to the essen¬ 
tial features of the system. It is interesting 
to note how many words—such as disastrous 
(evil-starred)—have astrological origin. j.j. 


Relating to Wrong Beliefs. The articles 
on the following topics, while not bearing on 
astrology, are of interest in this connection be¬ 
cause they, too, deal with pseudo-sciences or 
superstitions: 


Alchemy 

Clairvoyance 

Conjuring 

Demonology 

Divination 

Faith-Cure 

Hypnotism 

Magic 

Medium 

Mesmerism 

Mind Reading 

Necromancy 

Occult 


Palmistry 

Phrenology 

Physiognomy 

Psychical Research 

Psycho-Analysis 

Spiritualism 

Subconscious 

Suggestion 

Superstition 

Telepathy 

Theosophy 

Trance 

Witchcraft 



STRONOMY. Who that has 
watched the heavens on a calm, clear night, 
when the canopy of blue seems so thickly 
gemmed with stars that room could not be 
found for more, can wonder that the shepherd 
races of the East were thoughtful men? 
Guarding their flocks by night in those cloud¬ 
less lands they must all have felt with David, 
the shepherd king—- 


mass 


THE STORY OF ASTRONOMY 


of the stars a serious business, and had in a 
sense laid the foundations of the modern 
science of astronomy. In the same age, far 
away in the same continent, the Chinese were 
also observing the heavens, and at a time not 
much later the Egyptians and Greeks became 
skilful astronomers. 

In those days all men believed as many did 
in Shakespeare’s time that— 


“When I consider the heavens, the work of thy 
fingers, 

The moon and the stars which thou hast or¬ 
dained, 

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? 

Long before David’s time, even before Abra¬ 
ham came out of Chaldea 4,000 years ago, the 
wise men of that nation had made the study 


“It is the stars, 

The stars above us, govern our conditions,” 

and their studies took the form of astrology 
more than of astronomy; that is, they cared 
more for divining the supposed influence of 
the stars on individual destinies than for ac¬ 
quiring an understanding of their true nature 
and relation to the universe (see Divination), 



































ASTRONOMY 


440 


ASTRONOMY 


Blit they early discovered the fact that five of 
the stars were not fixed in the sky as the 
others seemed to be, but moved in paths like 
the moon’s. These five the Greeks called 
'planets, a word which means wanderers. The 
Chaldeans are said, too, to have been able to 
predict eclipses with accuracy, and to have 
known that the rotation of the four seasons 
occupied 365 1 / 4 days. 

Ptolemy, an Egyptian of the second century 
a. d., outlined the mechanism of the universe 
as he believed it to be, and the world accepted 
his views almost as late as our own time. 
Ptolemy’s earth was an immovable globe in 
the center of the universe; around it revolved 
a huge hollow sphere in whose walls were set 
the stars, and inside of which, at different dis¬ 
tances, traveled the sun, the moon and the 
five planets then known, Mercury, Venus, 
Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. As we watch the 
Great Dipper slowly turn about the North Star 
it is easy to understand how Ptolemy thought 
as he did, though we know now that it is the 
spinning of the earth on its axis that causes 
this effect. 

Early in the sixteenth century Copernicus, 
a Pole, learned that the doctrines of Ptolemy 
were almost entirely wrong, for the sun is the 
center about which the earth and the planets 
revolve. But, as in the time of Pythagoras, 
who had come to the same conclusion a little 
more than 2,000 years earlier, people were not 
ready to believe such teachings, and Coperni¬ 
cus was excommunicated by the Pope. Within 
the next two centuries lived four great astron¬ 
omers, Tycho Brahe, Galileo, Kepler and New¬ 
ton, who made many valuable observations 
and discovered several of the fundamental laws, 
the most vital of which is the one known as 
Newton’s Law of Gravitation (see Newton, 
Isaac). 

What the Heavens Contain. Because of the 
faithful work of these men and those who 
have followed them, astronomers now know 
to a surprising extent how the material uni¬ 
verse is arranged. We no longer think, with 
Milton, that the Creator— 

“made the stars, 

And set them in the firmament of heav’n, 

T’ illuminate the earth,” 

for we know that our own world is a very, 
very small part of the universe which we can 
see, and that beyond the reach of our eyes 
in every direction there must be worlds upon 
worlds and suns upon suns, to a truly infinite 
extent. 


The earth is a planet like the five which the 
ancients knew 7 , like Uranus and Neptune, dis¬ 
covered in modern times, and like the number¬ 
less little earths called asteroids or planetoids, 
many of which are yet undiscovered. All the 
planets travel 
around the sun, 
w’hirling on their 
axes as they go. 

Together with 
their moons, or 
satellites, they 
make up our 
solar system. 

Mercury, the in¬ 
nermost planet, 
has a year only 
as long as three 
of our months, 
while Neptune, 
the farthest out, 
passes around the 
sun only once in 
164.78 of our 
years. Each satellite revolves about its planet 
much as the earth does about the sun, but sev¬ 
eral of them circle in the opposite direction, and 
the satellite of Uranus moves from south to 
north. Saturn is known to have ten moons and 
Jupiter nine, one of which takes tw 7 o years and 
two months to complete each journey. One of 
the moons of Mars is only ten miles in diam¬ 
eter, the other thirty-six. 

But the sun is not, as even Copernicus 
thought, the center of all creation. It, too, 
spins on its axis, once in tw r enty-five days, and 
is carrying the solar system through space at 
a rate of about sixteen miles a second, not 
quite as fast as the earth moves in its annual 
journey. This we know because the stars in 
one direction are gradually spreading apart 
(just as the two sides of a road open in front 
of you as you speed along in an automobile), 
while in the opposite direction they are mov¬ 
ing together. Possibly our sun is revolving 
about some other—w r hat one we do not know. 

All of the stars w 7 e see, the planets alone 
excepted, are suns, some of them thousands 
of times as big as our sun, which is itself 
860,000 miles in diameter. Many of them, 
perhaps all, have companions, some bright 
suns, others dark globes which we cannot see, 
with which they spin about as though they 
were tw-o stones chained together. The period 
of revolution has in some cases been deter¬ 
mined, and in others it can be estimated with 



HOW THE CAMERA DIS¬ 
COVERS PLANETOIDS 

If a portion of the heavens 
is photographed, the tele¬ 
scope being moved by clock¬ 
work to keep pace with the 
fixed stars, a planet will 
show as a streak. In this 
w r ay hundreds of tiny worlds 
have been found. 



ASTRONOMY 


441 ASTRONOMY 


considerable accuracy. The great star known 
as Castor has a companion with which it com¬ 
pletes a revolution once in about a thousand 
years; the two are of course immense distances 
apart, yet to our naked eyes they seem as one 
star. No doubt numbers of the binary sys¬ 
tems, as these doubles are called, require an 
even longer period to turn about. Many of 
the stars have motions which are not yet well 
understood, though it is noticed that some of 
them seem to travel in companies. 

Besides the sun, the moon, the planets and 
the stars there are three types of heavenly 
bodies. The first type, including meteors and 
meteorites, or falling stars, most of us have 
seen. They make such a bright trail through 
the skies that it is hard for some people to 
believe that they are really very small, some¬ 
times only grains of dust. Meteors move 



EVEN THE “FIXED STARS” MOVE 

(a) The “big dipper” and the direction in 
which its stars are moving. 

(fr) As the “dipper” will appear in about 
100,000 years. 

about the sun in streams, one of which is now 
and then crossed by the earth, causing myriads 
of the tiny bodies to be attracted by it. When 
they reach our atmosphere, perhaps 100 miles 
above us, they are heated to a temperature 
of thousands of degrees, and only then do they 
become visible. Comets are not so frequently 
seen as meteors. They are gaseous masses, 
with long, feathery tails which always point 
away from the sun. Some of them journey 
about through space, coming within sight of 
our earth, then passing on to far-off regions, 
never again to be seen. Other comets have 
been captured by our sun, and confine their 
travels to our own solar system, reappearing 
at regular intervals. Halley’s comet, the best 
known of them, visits our skies every seventy- 
five years; its last appearance was in 1909. 
(See Comet.) Nebulae, unlike either meteors 
or comets, do not come near our corner of the 
universe. They are spiral clouds of gas,’some 
white, some green, and are probably suns in 
the making. There are thousands of nebulae 
known, most of them in those parts of the 
sky where the stars are least in number. The 
largest nebula known may be seen with the 
naked eye; it is at the central star in the 


sword handle of the constellation Orion, de¬ 
scribed below. 

Distances That Defy the Imagination. Sup¬ 
pose you were to attempt to construct a dia¬ 
gram of the position of the earth and the sun, 
moon and stars in such a way as to show 
their distances from one another and their 
relative sizes. If you represented the earth’s 
diameter of 8,000 miles by a small pin hole, 
how large a sheet of paper would you need 
for your diagram? 

First of all you would mark the moon, a 
mere pin prick, five-eighths of an inch from the 
earth. The sun, you would represent by a 
circle over two inches in diameter, placed 
more than nineteen feet from the pinhole! 
You have already exceeded the limits of a 
sheet of paper, yet you have only started 
your diagram. 

If you moved out-of-doors to get more room 
for your work, you would continue by placing 
Mercury seven and one-half feet and Venus 
fourteen feet from the sun; both these planets 
are smaller than the earth. Then would come 
Jupiter, one hundred feet from the sun, but 
only three-sixteenths of an inch in diameter. 
One hundred eighty feet away from the sun 
would be Saturn, not as large as Jupiter; a 
little more than twice as far would come 
Uranus, an eighth of an inch wide; nearly 700 
feet from your starting point would be Nep¬ 
tune, only a little larger than Uranus. 

Consider for a moment that the little pin¬ 
hole indicates the earth, which seems quite 
a large place if we travel about it, yet in a 
space of 700 feet, representing nearly three 
thousands of millions of miles, you have 
marked only nine globes, most of them too 
small to be seen. To these could only be 
added the moons of other planets, and the 
tiny asteroids. This gives you some idea of 
the immensity of space, and yet you have only 
dealt with a half dozen of the many, many 
stars that are seen in the heavens. 

Beyond the planets the nearest star to our 
sun is one which may not be seen north of 
Cuba; after Neptune it is the closest heavenly 
body which any one on earth can see. Nep¬ 
tune was marked by 700 feet on your chart; 
this star, called Alpha Centauris, will be 100 
miles away from the pinhole earth! Its true 
distance is about twenty-five millions of mil¬ 
lions of miles. At this enormous distance you 
are just beginning to peep into space. Sirius, 
the brightest star in the sky, is twice as far 
as Alpha Centauris; the north star is prob- 



ASTRONOMY 


442 


ASTRONOMY 


ably a little more than ten times its distance; 
Canopus, second in brightness, is perhaps 
eighty times as deep in space. Most of the 
stars are still farther away, and some that you 
see are separated from us by perhaps 1,000 
times the distance of Alpha Centauris; that 
is, on your chart in which the pinhole repre¬ 
sents the earth’s 8,000 miles, they would be 
100,000 miles from it. Beyond this, stretch¬ 
ing how far no one can guess, are countless 
stars which we cannot see even with the 
strongest telescopes. 

It is not easy to talk in terms of billions, 
trillions and quadrillions of miles, so astrono¬ 
mers measure their distances in light years. 
We know that light travels so fast that in one 
second a ray of it could pass around the earth 
about seven and a half times, or more times 
than you can move your finger around the end 
of a pencil in a second. Light takes a little 
more than a second to reach us from the 
moon, eight minutes from the sun, and over 
four hours from Neptune. But the rays from 
the nearest star travel four years and five 
months, so it is said to be at a distance of 4.4 
light years. The rays which show you the 
location of the north star started on their way 
about forty-four years ago, and some of the 
stars you seem to see may have ceased to exist 
several thousand years ago, but the rays which 
they gave out are still active and are just 
reaching the earth. 

How Astronomers Work. The most striking 
thing about all this is not that there are such 
great distances and so many suns and worlds, 
but that man has been able to learn so much 
about them. There are two kinds of astrono¬ 
mers, the observers and the mathematicians, 
and it is said to be seldom that one man 
combines in himself both characters. Some¬ 
times it is the mathematicians who make dis¬ 
coveries, sometimes the observers. 

This is well illustrated in the romantic story 
of the discovery of the planet Neptune. Ac¬ 
cording to Newton’s law of gravity, “Every 
particle of matter in the universe attracts 
every other particle, with a force in the direc¬ 
tion of a straight line joining the two.” Thus 
the path of each planet is influenced not by the 
sun only, but by each of the other planets 
and stars, as well. After Herschel’s discovery 
of Uranus in 1781 astronomers set to work to 
map its course. They soon found that it did 
not travel in the path or at the speed which 
the location and size of the other planets and 
the sun would dictate, though the variation 


was so slight that it might easily have been 
due to errors in calculation. 

In 1821 a French astronomer suggested that 
an unknown planet was influencing Uranus, and 
in 1843 a young mathematician at Cambridge 
University, England, commenced to work on 
the problem. Two years later he had finished 
his calculations showing where the unknown 
planet must be; these he took to the Astrono¬ 
mer Royal, who laid them aside and forgot 
about them. The next year a young French¬ 
man sent a similar set of calculations to the 
Director of the Berlin Observatory; the very 
night of their receipt an observer commenced 
a search for the new planet and found a small 
star which did not appear in his maps. This 
later proved to be the new planet, which was 
named Neptune. In the meantime the English 
Astronomer Royal had heard of the work 
which the Frenchman claimed to have done; 
he got out the papers which for a year he had 
neglected, and, following the directions con¬ 
tained in them, an English observer discovered 
the planet just a week after his Berlin col¬ 
league. So it was that the great Neptune was 
actually found by two mathematicians who 
themselves had no apparatus to observe the 
stars. 

Three instruments have meant more to the 
progress of astronomy than all others. The 
first is the telescope, which Galileo introduced 
to the field of astronomy; the others are the 
camera and the spectroscope, made helpers in 
the nineteenth century. What the spectro¬ 
scope does for astronomers in the way of 
measuring distances and velocities of stars is 



In summer the earth is 186,000,000 miles from 
its winter position. By observing a star from 
both positions astronomers learn the angle WS 
and by trigonometry figure its distance. But 
inasmuch as the nearest star is more than 
140,000 times 186,000,000 miles away, there are 
very few stars whose distance may be found 
exactly, even with this enormous base line. 

told in the article on that subject. Sometimes 
all three instruments are combined into one, 
known as a spectrograph. 

When a photograph is to be made through a 
telescope the sensitive plate is simply inserted 
in the place where the astronomer’s eye would 


ASTRONOMY 


443 


ASTRONOMY 


otherwise be. No other lens is needed than 
that of the telescope. But there are other 
difficulties. The movement of the stars about 
the North Star, caused by the rotation of the 
earth, is of course magnified in the telescope, 
and to prevent a photograph from becoming 
blurred it is necessary to attach clockwork 
which will keep the telescope pointed in the 
proper direction. For very delicate work even 
this machinery is not sufficient. Many photo¬ 
graphs require several hours exposure, and all 
this time an observer must sit with his eye to 
a parallel telescope, making whatever minute 
adjustments are necessary. At the end of his 
instrument is a cross made of spider’s web, 
which is much finer and smoother than hair; 
at the start some bright star is focused exactly 
at the center of the cross, and if it appears at 
any time to move the slightest distance in any 
direction the observer brings it back by an 
adjustment. 

The tasks assumed by modern astronomers 
are various. Some devote themselves to spe¬ 
cial researches on the sun, the moon or one of 
the planets. Others are mapping specified sec¬ 
tions of the heavens, to facilitate the discovery 
of new stars. Many more are busy with the 
distant stars or the nebulae, determining their 
velocity, their distance or their composition. 
Often what appears to the unaided eye to be 
a single star is shown by the telescope to be 
two or more, sometimes one behind the other 
and having no mutual connection, at other 
times forming a binary system. Again, what 
appear through even the most powerful tele¬ 
scopes to be single stars are proved by the 
spectroscope to be members of binary sys¬ 
tems. Much of the study of nebulae and of 
dark stars, of which one astronomer estimates 
there are four for every bright one, is part 
of the attempt to discover the origin of worlds, 
including our own. It takes so many ages for a 
world to be formed that of course no series of 
observations can be made of any one case, but 
by comparing stars of all sorts, from “babies” 
to “old men,” astronomers will no doubt in 
time reach correct conclusions. 

The Stars and Their Names. To gain the 
greatest pleasure from the stars we should 
make them our friends. We cannot hope to 
know them all, for there are many millions, 
but we can easily learn to recognize many. 
If the stars were arranged in regular order like 
those on many national flags it would be quite 
a task to distinguish them, but fortunately they 
are not. Instead, they form many irregular 


groups, which we call constellations. From 
very early days men have given names to the 
constellations, mostly because of some real 
or fancied resemblance to animals or to char¬ 
acters in mythology. 

The best way to become acquainted with the 
constellations and their principal stars is to 
compare them with the double-page maps ac¬ 
companying this article, which show the best 
known figures in the heavens of the northern 
hemisphere at each of the four seasons, between 
eight and nine in the evening. In using one 
of the maps, hold it over your head, so that 
east, west, north and south will be in their 
proper positions. 

The Heavens in Spring. Suppose you are 
looking at the heavens in spring. A little to 
the north of the zenith (the point directly over 
your head) is one group of stars which nearly 
everyone knows—the Big Dipper. On the map 
it forms the tail and part of the body of the 
Great Bear. From the Dipper it is always easy 
to find the North Star, or Pole Star, for it is 
almost directly in line with the stars Dubhe 
and Merak, which form the front of the bowl. 
The Pole Star is the tip of the Little Bear’s 
tail, or as others have it, the end of the handle 
of the Little Dipper. East of the Little Dipper 
is Draco, the Dragon, whose head is marked 
by four stars, and whose tail winds around 
nearly to the Big Dipper. The star between 
Miz^ir of the Big Dipper and the outer star 
of the bowl of the Little Dipper was our North 
Star 4,000 years ago, byt the constant change 
of the angle of the earth’s inclination to the 
plane of the ecliptic (see Ecliptic; Precession 
of the Equinoxes) has brought the earth’s 
axis gradually to its present position. After 
12,000 years the polar star will be Vega, the 
bright star northeast of the Dragon’s head. 

Vega, it will be noticed, is much brighter 
than the stars about it. It is called a first 
magnitude star, for astronomers have a way 
of classifying stars according to the amount of 
light they give out. There are but twenty of 
the first magnitude, and only three of them— 
Sirius, Canopus and Alpha Centauris—are 
brighter than Vega. Next to Vega in bright¬ 
ness is Capella, west of the Pole Star, and the 
next again is Arcturus, which may be found 
by extending the curve on the Big Dipper’s 
handle towards the east and south. Arcturus 
is one of the largest known suns; its diameter 
is many millions of miles. Two other first 
magnitude stars will be found in the heavens 
at this time, Spica in the constellation of the 


)□( 






















































































m i-m i 




THE HEAVENS IN AUTUMN AND WINTER 




































































ASTRONOMY 


446 


ASTRONOMY 


Virgin, and Regulus, at the end of the handle 
of the Sickle, in the.Lion. 

The Heavens in Summer. In the second of 
the maps will be noticed several new constel¬ 
lations. In spring they could have been seen 
only after midnight. Cassiopeia, in the north¬ 
east, is easily recognized by its resemblance to 
the letter M. Scorpio, the Scorpion, in the 
south, is another constellation not difficult to 
find. Its brightest star, Antares, is red in color. 
Near the eastern horizon is Altair, a star which 
gives ten times as much light as our sun. It 
is only fifteen light years away from us, and 
is traveling in this direction about twenty- 
seven miles in one second, and after 100,000 
years will occupy the same place in the uni¬ 
verse that our solar system does now. But 
by that time we shall be millions of millions 
of miles away. 

The Heavens in Autumn. At this time of 
the year the star of the south is Fomalhaut, 
which may be recognized as the first magnitude 
star at the end of the wavy line which repre¬ 
sents the water flowing from the jar of 
Aquarius, the Water Carrier. The constellation 
Andromeda, toward the east, contains one of 
the two nebulae which may be seen without a 
telescope. This nebula is just north of the 
second magnitude star which marks Andro¬ 
meda’s waist; its length is supposed to be three 
million million (3,000,000,000,000) miles, and it 
is like a huge pinwheel in the skies. The star 
which marks the foot on which Andromeda 
stands is proved by the telescope to be three 
stars, one orange, one green, one blue. Algol, 
on the eastern horizon in Perseus, was known in 
olden times as the Demon, or the Winking 
Star. Ordinarily it is of the second magnitude, 
but for eighteen minutes on every third day 
it sinks one degree in magnitude. The won¬ 
derful spectroscope has proved to us that this 
variation is caused by a dark companion star 
which passes in front of it. 

The Heavens in Winter. No other constella¬ 
tion contains so many bright stars as Orion, 
the Warrior, seen in the south in winter time. 
Two of them are of the first magnitude, Betel- 
geux, whose dull orange-red shows it to be 
a sun whose brilliancy is declining, and Rigel, 
seventh in brightness among all the stars. In 
the sword of Orion may be seen the nebula 
mentioned above. Sirius, the Dog Star, is by 
far the greatest light-giver of all in the heavens, 
and may be seen both north and south of the 
equator. Procyon, the Little Dog Star, is next 
to Rigel in brightness. Aldebaran, a rosy star 


which forms the flaming eye of the Bull, is one 
of those which is moving farther away from us. 
It is directly in the path of the moon, by which 
it is often hidden. Its companion star may 
be seen with a telescope. The Pleiades, at the 
back of the Bull’s neck, are a group of tiny 
twinklers of which from six to eleven may be 
seen by the naked eye, though there are ac¬ 
tually about 3,000. Photography shows them 
to be wrapped in a nebulous cloud, and they 
are thought to be closely related stars which 
are developing from it. In spite of their faint¬ 
ness many of them are a number of times 
brighter than our sun, and separated from-each 
other by several light years. In ancient times 
the Pleiades were supposed to be Atlas, his 
seven daughters and their mother, and there 
is a legend of a lost Pleiad. Castor and Pollux, 
the Twins, are of interest because a few hun¬ 
dred years ago Castor was the more brilliant, 
but is now less bright than Pollux. This is 
because the latter is approaching us, the former 
moving away. Castor is a green star. 

Conspicuous in the sky at all seasons is the 
broad luminous band known as the Milky Way 
or Galaxy. To us it seems but a softly-lighted 
cloud, but to the astronomer with a very pow¬ 
erful telescope it shows itself as a multitude of 
stars, so far away that it takes the light from 
them three thousand years to reach the sun. 
See Milky Way. 

The Planets. Of those worlds which, like 
our own, move about our sun, Venus, Jupiter 
and Mars are most familiar to us. Venus was 
Hesperus, the evening star of the ancients, and 
Lucifer, the morning star as well, for people 
did not know the two were the same. Jupiter, 
whose moons give it an imperfect appearance, 
is nearly as bright as Venus, and Mars may be 
distinguished by its redness. All these '‘wan¬ 
derers” appear at different times in different 
months, because their periods of revolution 
about the sun do not correspond to our own. 
Saturn is a bright, slightly red star. Uranus 
may seldom be seen without a telescope, and 
Neptune is never visible to the naked eye. 
Mercury is difficult to see because of its near¬ 
ness to the sun. c.h.h. 

Consult Hawk’s Boy’s Boole of Astronomy ; 
Newcomb’s The Stars; Martin’s Friendly Stars. 

Related Subjects. To the reader interested 
in astronomy the following list of articles on that 
subject contained in these volumes will be most 
helpful: 

GENERAL 

Apogee Ascension and 

Apsides Declination of Stars 





ASTRONOMY 


447 


ASTRONOMY 


^ - ... ... -g_.., 

OUTLINE AND QUESTIONS ON ASTRONOMY 


Outline 


I. Definition 

II. How It Developed 

(1) Among the Chaldeans 
( 2) Among the Chinese 

(3) Among the Egyptians 

(4) Among the Greeks 

(5) Contributions of modern astronomers 

III. How Discoveries Are Made 

(1) By observers 

(2) By mathematicians 

(a) Discovery of Neptune 

IV. Astronomical Instruments 

V. The Solar System 

(1) The sun 

(a) Size 

(b) Distance from earth 

(c) Not center of universe 

(d) Composition 
( e) Movements 

(f) Importance 

(g) Gravitation 

(h) Satellites 
1. Earth 

a. Size 

b. Form 


c. Movements 

d. Atmosphere 

e. Satellite—the moon 
2. Other planets 

a. Number 

b. Location 

c. Movements 

d. Constitution 

e. Appearance 

(2) Nebular Hypothesis 

VI. Other Heavenly Bodies 

(1) Stars 

(a) Number 

(b) Size 

(c) Distance from solar system 

(d) Constitution 

(e) Double stars 

(2) Meteors 

(3) Comets 

(4) Nebulae 

VII. Popular Phases 

(1) The heavens in spring 

(a) Constellations 

(b) Bright stars 

(c) Planets 

(2) The heavens in summer 

(3) The heavens in autumn 

(4) The heavens in winter 


Questions 

How old will you be when the rays of light which started from the North Star 
last night reach your eyes? 

How long would it take the earth, at the rate it travels in its orbit about the sun, 
to reach Alpha Centauris? 

Does the sun in its journey through space go faster or not so fast as the earth? 

If the earth whirled about on its axis twice as fast as it does at present, what 
would be the result? 

Show by means of a quarter and an electric light bulb how it is possible for the 
moon to cause an eclipse of the sun, which is so much larger. 

How can it be possible that we see stars which no longer exist ? 

Why should spiders be kept in factories where astronomical instruments are made? 

If you can see a star millions of miles away, why can you not see a meteor two 
hundred miles away? 

How long would it take you in an airship going one hundred miles an hour to 
make the round trip to the moon? 

What did Shakespeare mean when he made Cassius say 

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, 

But in ourselves, that we are underlings. 















ASTRONOMY 


448 


ASTRONOMY 



Outline and Questions on Astronomy—Continued 

What legend accounts for the fact that Orion seems to be pursuing the Pleiades 
in the sky? 

How long is a year on Mercury? A day? 

Why are some comets seen at stated intervals, while others appear once and never 
again? 

Draw a circle two inches in diameter to represent the earth. How large a circle 
will represent the moon? The sun? The planet Venus? 

Could a blind man make astronomical discoveries? 

Is the earth the only planet that has a moon? 

If you were lost on the prairies on a starry night, how could you determine 
directions? 

When Caesar said, 

But I am constant as the northern star, 

Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality 
There is no fellow in the firmament, 

was he speaking accurately, or has the North Star changed since the beginning of 
time? 

What star used to be called the Winking Star, and why? 

Which of the planets are visible in the heavens, and when? 

Who were the earliest astronomers? 

What was their chief purpose in studying the stars? 

What does the word planet mean? 

To how many heavenly bodies is it applied? 

What was the center of the universe according to Ptolemy’s system? 

Was Copernicus the earliest astronomer who figured out that the views of 
Ptolemy were not correct? 

What heavenly bodies are a part of the solar system? 

Are there any bodies conspicuous in the heavens which do not belong to this 
system ? 

Which planet is closest to the sun? 

Which, as far as is known, is farthest away? 

Which is the largest body in the solar system? 

Is that same body the largest in the universe? 

Which of the planets is known to have the most satellites? 

Which are more frequently seen, comets or meteors? 

Beyond the farthest planet, what is the nearest heavenly body which may be 
seen from the earth? 

About how far away is the brightest star in the heavens? 

What is meant by light yearsf Why do astronomers measure time by means 
of them? 

What was there especially interesting about the discovery of the planet Neptune? 

Name five astronomers and tell something which each contributed to the science. 

Divide the ‘‘heavenly bodies” listed in the index into stars, planets and constella¬ 
tions. 

What is meant by the “signs of the zodiac”? Name them. 

Name and locate two great observatories. 

What is meant by a “binary system”? 

Pick out on the charts of the heavens four constellations which have names drawn 
from mythology and look up the myths in connection with them. 




< 

















ASUNCION 


ASUNCION 


449 


Asteroids 

Nutation 

Aurora Borealis 

Observatory 

Calendar 

Parallax 

Comet 

Parhelion 

Conjunction 

Perigee 

Constellation 

Perturbations 

Degree 

Planet 

Double Stars 

Precession of the 

Eclipse 

Equinoxes 

Ecliptic 

Satellite 

Fixed Stars 

Solar System 

Halo 

Solstice 

Horoscope 

Star 

Lick Observatory 

Transit 

Meteor 

Universe 

Milky Way 

Yerkes Observatory 

Nadir 

Zenith 

Nebula 

Zodiac 

Nebular Hypothesis 

Zodiacal Light 

Node 


HEAVENLY BODIES 

Algol 

Mars 

Aquarius 

Mercury 

Arcturus 

Moon 

Aries 

Neptune 

Auriga 

North Star 

Bear, Great 

Orion 

Bootes 

Pleiades 

Cancer 

Pole Star 

Canis Major 

Sagittarius 

Capricornus 

Saturn 

Cassiopeia 

Scorpio 

Centaurus 

Sirius 

Corona 

Southern Cross 

Evening Star 

Sun 

Gemini 

Taurus 

Jupiter 

Uranus 

Leo 

Venus 

Libra 

Virgo 

Lira 


INSTRUMENTS 

Chronograph 

Sextant 

Chronometer 

Spectroscope 

Compass 

Telescope 

Lens 

Theodolite 

Mural Circle 

Transit Instrument 

Quadrant 



EMINENT ASTRONOMERS 


Brahe, Tycho 
Burnham, S. W. 
Copernicus 
Flammarion, Camille 
Galileo 
Hall, Asaph 
Halley, Edmund 
Herschel, Sir John F. W. 
Herschel, Sir William 
Holden, Edward S. 


Kepler, Johann 
Laplace, Pierre S. 
Newcomb, Simon 
Proctor, Mary 
Proctor, Richard 
Anthony 
Ptolemy 
Young, Charles 
Augustus 


ASUNCION, ah soon' see ohn, officially known 
as the city of Nuestra Senora de la Asuncion, 
is the capital and chief port of Paraguay, and 
is situated on the east bank of the broad and 
deep Paraguay River. The city is 970 miles, 
by river, almost due north of Buenos Aires. 
The name, piously bestowed, has reference tQ 
the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. 


Asuncion was founded in 1535 by the Spanish 
Ayolas, and was a seat of colonial government 
before Buenos Aires was founded. The work 
of the early missionaries centering here can 
be compared only with that of Saint Patrick 
in Ireland, eleven centuries earlier, in the mag¬ 
nitude and quickness of its results and in its 
peaceful character. 

The struggle of the Spanish government with 
the Jesuits led to deplorable results, undoing 
much of the missionary work. Early in the 
nineteenth century, when the republic was 
ready to start upon its career, there began the 
long tyranny of Doctor Francia and his nephew 
and grand-nephew, which retarded both the 
city and country. When the • younger Lopez 
fell, in 1870, the land was ruined and largely 
unpeopled. Captured and ravaged by the Bra¬ 
zilians in 1870, and blockaded for many weeks 
by a revolution as late as 1905, Asuncion was 
late in entering fully upon its career. But 
the city did not lose courage; and it has 
recently grown with a steady pace which re¬ 
veals the unquestioning confidence of the patri¬ 
otic citizens in the greatness of its future. The 
original purpose of the Spanish in establishing 
a city so far from the coast was to create a 
southern outlet for the gold and silver and the 
commerce of Peru, which then included Bolivia. 
This original purpose may yet be realized, and 
Asuncion will in that event become a great 
midway point of commerce. 

The city contains a population of 84,000. It 
is laid out in regular squares. The principal 
streets have street cars and electric lights and 
are well paved. There is good telephone serv¬ 
ice, and automobiles are much in use. Touring 
cars and motor trucks take the place of rail¬ 
ways over the level country to points not yet 
reached in railway construction. Motor boats 
by dozens run on the river. Although the 
climate is hot, it is very healthful. 

Asuncion contains numerous churches, a 
cathedral (the bishopric dating from 1547), a 
national college, a public library and the palace 
begun by the later Lopez; but its modern 
development did not begin until about 1880, 
and its more notable buildings are so strikingly 
new as to remind the visitor of the young cities 
of North America. Examples of these are the 
courthouse, the national college, the agricul¬ 
tural bank and the municipal building. The 
new “port works,” extensive in plan and in¬ 
cluding docks, wharves and buildings, have 
been undertaken by capitalists from the United 
States, h.m.s. 


ASYLUM 


450 


ATCHISON 


ASYLUM, asy'lum, a term applied to 
various institutions where unfortunate persons 
are carea for. Thus, blind asylum, orphan 
asylum, insane asylum, etc., are expressions fre¬ 
quently heard which carry the meaning in the 
name. The present tendency, however, is to 
use the term hospital in connection with insti¬ 
tutions where the insane receive care and treat¬ 
ment. States, provinces, many counties and 
large cities provide for the building and main¬ 
tenance of such institutions. See Insanity, 
subhead Insane Asylums; Deaf and Dumb; 
Blind, Education of the. 

Ancient Asylums. The name asylum comes 
from the Greek word asylon, meaning a place 
safe jrom violence, and in very early times the 
term was applied to those places where persons 
fleeing from justice or persecution sought ref¬ 
uge. Among the ancient Greeks and Romans 
such places were the temples and altars of 
the gods; among the Hebrews, they were the 
cities of refuge described in Numbers XXXV, 
9-34 (see Cities of Refuge). The latter cus¬ 
tom, slightly varied, passed over into the Chris¬ 
tian Era, and in the time of Constantine the 
churches were appointed asylums for those in 
fear of their lives. In the course of time, 
criminals so abused this privilege that the right 
oj sanctuary, as it was called, was gradually 
abolished. 

Right of Asylum. In the law of nations, 
the term right oj asylum means the right of a 
state to permit those fleeing for proper reasons 
from other countries to remain unmolested 
within its boundaries. Nations make extra¬ 
dition treaties with each other (see Extradi¬ 
tion) so that the right of asylum may not be 
used to defeat the ends of justice. 

ATAHUALPA, ahtawahl'pa, the last ruler 
of a proud race of Indians, the Incas (which 
see), who were conquered during the Spanish 
invasion under Pizarro. Atahualpa became 
king of Quito in 1529, while his brother Huascar 
ruled over the kingdom of Peru. In a war 
between the two brothers, Huascar was de¬ 
feated and imprisoned, and his kingdom fell 
into the hands of Atahualpa. In 1532 the 
Spaniards under Pizarro, and by a trick, seized 
Atahualpa, who to gain his liberty offered to 
fill the room in which he stood with gold as 
high as he could reach. The gold for his 
ransom began to pour in at once, but when 
he demanded his freedom Pizarro basely ac¬ 
cused the prisoner of plotting against his life. 
He was condemned to suffer death by fire, and 
w r as saved from this torture only by consenting 


to receive baptism. Pizarro then ordered him 
to be strangled. See Pizarro, Francisco. 

ATALANTA, atalan'ta, a famous Grecian 
huntress who had declared that she would 
marry no man unless he could defeat her in a 
race. After many youths had met death for 
their failure, Hippomenes overcame her by 
strategem and won her hand. The tale is told 
in full in the article Mythology. 

ATAVISM, at' a vis’m, a term used to ex¬ 
plain the appearance in animals and plants of 
certain special characteristics not possessed by 
their immediate ancestors, but which were 
common to remote ancestors. It is improper 
to use the term atavism unless the throw-back 
is to ancestors more than two generations 
remote. Atavism and reversion, in this sense, 
become like terms. Hybrids in plants, and the 
sixth finger or toe in man, are examples of 
atavism. See Heredity; Evolution; Hybrid. 

ATCHAFALAYA, achajali' ah, an Indian 
term meaning lost river, is a river of Louisiana, 
an outlet of the Red River and occasionally of 
the Mississippi, carrying part of the overflow 
from those streams in times of flood. It flows 
southward, and enters the Gulf of Mexico by 
Atchafalaya Bay. Its length is 220 miles, the 
greater part of which is navigable by small 
river vessels, which carry most of the local 
commerce. 

ATCHISON, atch'is'n, Kan., is the county 
seat of Atchison County, in the northeastern 
part of the state, forty-nine miles northwest of 
Kansas City, and thirty-five miles southwest of 
Saint Joseph. It is on the left bank of the 
Missouri River, which is navigable at this point 
but is little used for freight transportation, and 
on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, the 
Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, the Mis¬ 
souri Pacific, and the Chicago, Burlington & 
Quincy railroads. A fine steel bridge crosses 
the river here. The population, which in 1910 
was 16,429, was 16,635 by a Federal estimate of 
1915. The area is nearly three square miles. 

Atchison is an important railway center and 
handles a vast amount of freight, particularly 
grain, flour, lumber, and live stock. It is also 
the supply center in groceries, drugs and hard¬ 
ware, for a large part of the state. Railroad 
car shops, foundries, grain elevators, flour, corn- 
products and oatmeal mills, lumber mills and 
manufactories of furniture, carriages and har¬ 
ness, are among the important industries. The 
city has Central, Forest and City parks, a fine 
Union depot costing $140,000, Federal build¬ 
ing, courthouse, hospital and public library. 


ATHABASKA 


451 


ATHAPASCAN INDIANS 


It is the seat of Midland College (Lutheran), 
Saint Benedict’s College (Roman Catholic), 
Mount Saint Scholastica’s Academy (Roman 
Catholic), and has a State soldiers’ orphans’ 
home. 

Atchison was named in honor of David Rice 
Atchison, a United States Senator, the leader 
of a group of people in sympathy with slavery, 
who settled here in 1854., The place became a 
city in 1858. 

ATHABASKA, ath abas'ka, or ATHA¬ 
BASCA, an English corruption of the Indian 
word Athepescow, which means a place of hay 
and reeds. The name has been given in turn 
to a tribe of Indians (see Athapascan Indians), 
to a river and a lake in Canada, to a large 
district of the Northwest Territories, to a 
mountain and to a town in Alberta. Each of 
these is described below. 

Athabaska River, in Alberta, a part of the 
great Mackenzie River system. The Athabaska 
rises on the eastern slope of the Rocky Moun¬ 
tains; one of its branches starts near Yellow- 
head Pass, through which the Grand Trunk 
Pacific finds a way over the mountains, and 
another rises farther south, in Athabaska Pass, 
just north of Mount Hooker. From its source 
the river flows east and then north, pouring 
its waters into Athabaska Lake after a course 
of nearly 750 miles. Emerging from the west¬ 
ern end of Athabaska Lake it flows northward 
for fifteen miles and unites with the Peace 
River to form the Slave River, which in turn 
passes into the Mackenzie. The drainage basin 
of the Athabaska River comprises 58,900 square 
miles. 

Athabaska Lake, into which the river flows, 
has an area of 2,842 square miles (considerably 
more than twice the size of Rhode Island), of 
which 1,041 square miles are in Alberta and 
the remainder in Saskatchewan. It is the 
fourth largest lake lying wholly in the Do¬ 
minion. Its average width, from north to 
south, is from twenty to thirty miles, and its 
length from east to west is about 200 miles. 
Its name (see above) accurately describes most 
of the country surrounding the lake, especially 
the southern shores, which are low and sandy. 
The northern banks are higher, rocky and 
covered with timber, chiefly fir, spruce and 
poplar. The level of the lake is about 700 
feet above that of the sea. Small steamers 
ply the lake and the lower Athabaska River. 

Athabaska, a former district of Canada, or¬ 
ganized in 1882 as a part of the Northwest 
Territories. It was enlarged in 1895, and then 


contained 251,300 square miles. It lay between 
the parallels 55° N. and 60° N., and between 
the meridians 100° W. and 120° W. In 1905 the 



ATHABASKA 

Part of Western Canada, showing the former 
district of Athabaska, in solid black. The light, 
broken lines show the boundaries of other dis¬ 
tricts of Northwest Territories before 1905 ; the 
heavier lines are present provincial boundaries. 

district of Athabaska was divided: the western 
part became the northern half of Alberta; the 
central part, the northern half of Saskatch¬ 
ewan; and a small strip on the east w T as given 
to the district of Keewatin. This last part 
in 1912 was added to the province of Mani¬ 
toba. For details of the physical characteristics 
and other interesting information about this 
section, see Alberta; Manitoba; Saskatch¬ 
ewan. 

Athabaska, Mount, one of the lofty snow- 
topped peaks in the Canadian Rockies. It 
towers to a height of 11,700 feet above sea 
level, and is situated in the west central part 
of Alberta, near the British Columbia boun¬ 
dary, only a few miles east of Athabaska Pass, 
in which the river of the same name rises. Its 
position is 52° 10' north latitude. 

Athabaska, formerly called Athabaska 
Landing, a town in Alberta, at the head of 
navigation on Athabaska River, and 100 miles 
north of Edmonton on the Canadian Northern 
Railway. It is in the midst of a rich lumber¬ 
ing district, which gives it its chief industry, 
the milling and shipping of lumber. Athabaska 
was originally a fur-trading post, and its pop¬ 
ulation averaged about 200. With the building 
of the railroad, however, has come an increase 
in population; the estimated population in 
1916 was about 1,000. f.o. 

ATHAPASCAN, ath a pas' kan, INDIANS, 
a widely distributed family of North American 
Indians who were scattered over that vast 
region of Western Canada and the United 
States from Alaska as far south as New Mex¬ 
ico and Arizona. There were three main divi- 








ATHEISM 


452 


ATHENS 


sions. The Northern group occupied the region 
of Alberta, Canada, and lived by hunting and 
fishing; the Pacific group occupied permanent 
villages along the western coast in Oregon and 
California; the Southern division lived in iso¬ 
lated groups in New Mexico and Arizona. 
Such important tribes as the Apache and the 
Navajo are members of this family, which 
exhibited throughout a greater similarity in 
language than in tribal manners and customs. 
With the exception of the two tribes named 
above, they have not been warlike tribes. In 
general, the Athapascans always showed a 
strong tendency to adopt the civilization of 
any other tribes with whom they came into 
contact, and missionaries have found this imi¬ 
tative faculty of great help in dealing with 
them. There are at the present time about 
50,000 Athapascans living in the United States, 
Canada and Alaska. See Indians, American. 

ATHEISM, a' theis’m, the belief of those 
who declare that there is no God. The 
atheist and agnostic are sometimes confused, 
but they are not the same, for the latter 
merely claims that one cannot prove that God 
exists, or that he does not exist (see Agnostic). 
Belief in a Supreme Being is so natural to man¬ 
kind that even those who deny that God exists 
very often set up some sort of an ideal of their 
own to take the place of the God they refuse 
to admit. The term atheist has been applied 
very loosely from earliest times, for in matters 
of religion the tendency in all ages has been to 
call a man an atheist who departs from a 
generally-accepted creed. The ancient Greeks 
imprisoned Socrates for “not believing in the 
gods the city believes in,” and the Romans 


of Nero’s time sent the Christians to their 
death to the cry of “Away with the atheists!” 

ATHELSTAN, ath' elstan (895-940), the 
first ruler to bear the title of king of England, 
was the grandson of Alfred the Great. He 
succeeded his father, Edward the Elder, in 
925, put down a revolt of the Welsh, Scotch 
and English, and after his victory at Brunan- 
burh, which has been celebrated in Saxon song, 
ruled with wisdom and justice. 

ATHENAEUM, ath ene' um, any one of the 
ancient Greek temples dedicated to the god¬ 
dess Athene, but especially that temple in 
Athens where poets and other literary men 
met to read their productions. At Rome, a 
celebrated school on the Capitoline Hill having 
this name was founded by the Emperor 
Hadrian about 135. In the building, which had 
the form of a theater, literary productions were 
read, lectures delivered, and recitations con¬ 
ducted. As teachers who were paid salaries 
were attached to the Athenaeum, it was in a 
measure a university, and as such was in 
existence until the fifth century. Schools of a 
similar character and bearing the name athen¬ 
aeum were founded in various cities of the 
Roman provinces. 

At the present time schools ranking next to 
the universities in Holland and Belgium are 
known by this name, and it is also applied to 
scientific clubs and literary societies, to the 
buildings in which these clubs meet, and some¬ 
times to literary magazines. Among the latter 
is an important periodical founded in London 
in 1828. 

ATHENE, athe'ne, also spelled Athena. 
See Minerva. 




THENS, ath' enz, one of the most 
famous cities the world has ever known. To¬ 
day it is the capital of the kingdom of Greece, 
but its great fame dates from the time when 
it was the capital of ancient Attica. It lies 
on a plain between the mountains and the sea, 
about five miles from the harbor of Piraeus, its 


ancient seaport, and its elevation of 350 feet 
above sea level secures to it a temperate, 
sunny climate. Nowhere are the skies bluer 
and more beautiful than over Athens. 

Its Story. The Athenians boasted that their 
ancestors had not migrated from some other 
section of the world—that they had sprung 


THE STORY OF ATHENS 






































ATHENS 


453 


ATHENS 


from the beloved Athenian soil. Their first 
king, according to these traditions, was Cecrops, 
but the most famous was Theseus, celebrated 
for his victorious conflict with the dreadful 
Minotaur. (See the three titles, in their places 
in these volpmes.) This king united under his 
sway the twelve independent little states of 
Attica, and made Athens reallj^ a capital. In 
time there came a king, Codrus, whom it was 
felt there was no one worthy to succeed, and 
the state was accordingly organized as an oli¬ 
garchy, or government of the nobility, with a 
chief magistrate known as the archon. In time 
the number of archons was increased to nine. 
See Archon. 

Like the early Romans these early Greeks 
in time found their aristocratic form of gov¬ 
ernment very unsatisfactory, for the rulers 
were bound by no written laws and could thus 
practice any oppressions they chose. The 
lower classes, therefore, finally revolted and 
demanded written laws, but when these were 
drawn up about 621 b. c. by Draco (which see) 
they were found to be so severe that they 
bettered matters not at all. Solon, one of the 
wisest of men, was then chosen, about 594 b. c., 
to make a new code, and this gave relief by 
introducing many democratic features (see 
Solon). 

There were still disturbances, however, and 
in 561 b. c. Pisistratus secured the aid of a large 
dissatisfied class and made himself tyrant, or 
absolute ruler. The city prospered under his 
rule, however, and under that of his sons 
Hippias and Hipparchus, and was adorned with 
many beautiful new buildings. But the Athen¬ 
ians could never submit long to even such 
benevolent tyranny, and in 509 b. c. a new 
constitution, proposed by Clisthenes, made of 
the state a democracy. This document, while 
it introduced little that was actually new into 
the government, provided for the new condi¬ 
tions which had grown .up since the time of 
Solon. Athens was divided into 100 divisions 
called demes, and each citizen was enrolled in 
one of these divisions. Ten of the demes, not 
adjacent but as widely scattered as possible, 
composed a ward, and thus the political unity 
of the old clans which had caused so much 
trouble was destroyed. Many of the foreigners 
throughout Attica were also enrolled as citizens. 

In 499 Athens generously sent to the Ionian 
colonies in Asia Minor help in their struggle 
against Persia, and the result was the Persian 
Wars (see Greece, subhead History) which 
freed Greece for all time from the danger of 


invasion by that ambitious power. At the 
close of the conflict Athens was the leader of 
Greece, and proceeded to strengthen its posi¬ 
tion by organizing the Confederacy of Delos. 
The original purpose of this was the protection 
of Greek colonies from Asiatic rule, but it 
speedily developed into a real Athenian Em¬ 
pire. The fifty years following were the most 
brilliant in Athenian history; under Pericles, 
especially, Athens was the literary and artistic 
center of Greece. (See subhead below, The 
Ancient City, and the article Pericles). 

But Sparta, in Southwestern Greece, had 
watched jealously the rise to power of its rival, 
and in 431 b. c. it demanded that Athens break 
up the Delian Confederacy and free all the 
Greek cities. Athens in reply insisted that 
Sparta relinquish its conquests in the Pelo¬ 
ponnesus, the southern peninsula of Greece, 
and the result was the Peloponnesian War (see 
Greece, subhead History), at the close of which 
Athens found itself defeated and under the 
domination of Sparta. A government by 
Thirty Tyrants (which see) was established, 
but before long the democracy was again in 
force. 

Though Athens never regained its former 
political position, it remained the intellectual 
center of Greece. Under Macedonian and later 
under Roman rule people still flocked to it as 
a center of culture, and a number of the Roman 
emperors favored the city to the extent of 
erecting new and gorgeous buildings. It played 
a distinct part in Roman history, for thither 
for centuries were sent the sons of wealthy 
Roman families to finish their education. But 
from the time of Justinian (a. d. 529), who 
closed the schools of philosophy, until the 
eleventh century, the history of Athens was not 
at all important. 

During the twelfth, thirteenth and four¬ 
teenth centuries it was sometimes independent, 
sometimes subject to an Italian city or to 
Turkey, but always growing poorer and more 
wretched. In the fifteenth century the rule 
of Turkey was firmly established, but nothing 
was done to build up the city until it became, 
after the Greek revolution in 1835, the capital 
of the new kingdom of Greece. Since then it 
has had the life and history of an enlightened 
European capital. One of the most interesting 
happenings connected with it in recent years 
has been the establishment of the new Olympic 
games and restoration in 1902 in marble of the 
great Stadium (see Olympic Games; Stadium). 
The excavations carried on in the city and its 


ATHENS 


454 


ATHENS 



ATHENS 




PLAN OF THE 

(1) Acropolis 

(2) Theater of Diony¬ 

sus 

(3) Temple of Diony¬ 

sus 

(4) Olympieum 

(5) Tower of the 

Winds 

(6) Hill of the 

Nymphs 
( 7) Areopagus 
( 8) Theseum 


ANCIENT CITY 

(9) Stadium 

(10) Long Walls 

(11) Sacred Gate 

(12) Lyceum 

(13) Arch of Hadrian 

(14) Aqueduct of 

Hadrian 

(15) Agora, or market 

T~\ 1 O pp 

(16) Parthenon 

(17) Erechtheum 

(18) Temple of Victory 



(19) Propylaea (21) Temple of Rome 

(20) Pedestal of Agrippa 


vicinity during the past decades have resulted 
in the recovery of many monuments of the 
past. 

The Ancient City. When ancient Athens is 
spoken of it is Athens in the time of Pericles 
which is meant, rather than Athens throughout 
its long growth or its later period of decay. 
In the Age of Pericles, then, Athens was a 
strong walled city, built about the Acropolis, 
a rocky elevation about 300 feet above the 
level of the city, having on its summit a com¬ 
paratively level area of somewhat less than 
ten acres (see Acropolis). Originally this was 
the fortress to which the inhabitants retreated 
in time of danger. It could be reached only 
on the west, where a stairway of sixty marble 
steps led to a series of colonnades and porticoes 
called the Propylaea, or Gateway, a magnifi¬ 
cent structure built of white marble and 
trimmed with black marble. Just within the 
entrance was the great statue of Athena, the 
patron and defender of the city, and on the 
right, a little to the rear, was the Temple of 
the Wingless Victory. To the right of the 
center rose the crowning glory of Athens, the 
Parthenon, an exquisitely beautiful temple 


dedicated in 438 b. c. (see Parthenon), and to 
the left stood the Erechtheum, a beautiful tem¬ 
ple of which there still remains the famous 
Porch of the Maidens (see Caryatides). 

The city surrounded the Acropolis on every 
side, extending to a distance of about a mile 
therefrom. To the north and directly in front 
of the Acropolis was the Tower of the Winds, 
an octagonal marble structure erected in 159 
b. c. and still fairly well preserved; to the 
west were the Hill of the Nymphs and the 
Areopagus (Mars Hill), the rocky eminence 
from which Paul is supposed to have preached 
to the Athenians; and to the northwest lay 
the Theseum, which remains the best preserved 
of all the ancient Greek temples. On the 
southwest slope of the Acropolis was the 
ancient Theater of Dionysus, and beyond it the 
stately Olympieum, begun about 535 b. c., but 
not finished until 700 years later. 

Under the Romans, Athens was a flourishing 
city which in the second century Hadrian 
ornamented with many new buildings; but 
after that time much of the beauty of the 
city was destroyed, and the pagan temples 
became for the most part Christian churches 





















ATHENS 


455 


ATHENS 


and, later, mosques. During the seige of Athens 
by the Venetians in 1687 the Parthenon was 
used by the Turks as a powder magazine, and 
was greatty damaged by an explosion. 

The Modern City. Clustered about the foot 
of the Acropolis there lies the so-called Old 
City, a remnant left from the dreary days 
before the revival of Athens in 1835; and in 
a great crescent about it spreads the new city, 
with its broad boulevards radiating from the 
central Square of Harmony, and its handsome 
public buildings. Of these structures the most 
magnificent is the royal palace, a structure of 
Pentelic marble which stands in a beautiful, 
well-kept park somewhat apart from the city. 
The National Archaeological Museum, which 
houses an unsurpassed collection of antiquities; 
the House of Parliament; the National Li¬ 
brary and the National University also have 
noteworthy buildings, while the Stadium, re¬ 
stored through the generosity of an Alex¬ 
andrian Greek, has attracted the interest of all 
the athletic world. 

Though Athens has excellent schools and a 
National University with about 2,500 students, 
ancient Athens so far outweighs the modern 
city in public interest that it is for its archaeo¬ 
logical schools that the city is most generally 



LOCATION OF ATHENS 

The port of Piraeus was occupied by the Brit¬ 
ish and French allied forces in September, 1916, 
in the War of the Nations. 

noted. These, which include the American 
School of Classical Studies, maintained and 
supported by the universities of the United 
States, the French and British schools and the 
German Archaeological Institute, combine in¬ 
struction with investigation, and have made 
discoveries and restorations of great importance. 

Though the financial center of Greece, 
Athens has few manufactures and engages only 
in domestic trade. Rugs, silks, scarfs, brass 
and copper ware—such articles as the tourist 


0 


Outline and Questions on 
Athens 

I. Ancient Athens 

(1) Its beauties 

(a) Location 

(b) Acropolis 

(c) Parthenon 

(d) Erechtheum 

(e) Theseum 

(f) Other buildings 

(2) History 

(a) Legendary period 

(b) Government by archons 

(c) Legislation of Draco 

(d) Legislation of Solon 

(e) The tyrants 

(f) Democracy established 

(g) Persian wars 

(h) Age of Pericles 

(i) Peloponnesian War 

(j) Roman rule 

II. Modern Athens 

(1) Appearance 

(a) The old city 

(b) Streets and buildings 

(c) Institutions 

(d) Industrial Life 

(e) Population 
(2 ) History 

(a) Under Turkish rule 

(b) Capital of new kingdom 

(c) Olympic games 

(d) Archeological investigations 


Questions 


In what way did Athens retain its 
supremacy for centuries after it lost 
its independence? 

What state, through jealousy, 
brought about the downfall of ancient 
Athens? 

In what way is it evident in the 
Athens of to-day that the ancient city 
is of more importance than the mod¬ 
ern? 

When was the period of greatest 
glory? 

What geographic relation does the 
modern city bear to what remains of 
the old city? 

When was the most beautiful build¬ 
ing in the world used as a powder 
magazine? 

What was the difference between the 
laws of Draco and those of Solon? 

What spot in ancient Athens was 
connected with a dramatic event in 
Bible history? 

What was the original purpose of the 
Acropolis? 






















ATHENS 


456 


ATHERTON 


loves to bring back with him from his visit— 
are its most important manufactures. Its pop¬ 
ulation, which at its early period of greatness 
is supposed to have been about 200,000 but 
which shrank, quite gradually, during the Mid¬ 
dle Ages to a few thousands, was, in 1907, 
167,479. a.mc c. 

Further information on the relations of Athens 
to Greece is given in the article Greece, subhead 
History. Consult Butler’s The Story of Athens; 
Gardner’s Ancient Athens. 

ATHENS, Ga., an important seat of learning 
and also a leading cotton market, with a pop¬ 
ulation, largely American, of 16,900 in 1914, 
an increase of 2,087 since 1910. It is situated 
in Clarke County, of which it is the county 
seat, in the northeastern part of the state, t>n 
the Oconee River. Atlanta is seventy-three 
miles southwest, Macon is 105 miles south, 
and Augusta 114 miles southeast. Its rail¬ 
roads are the Georgia, constructed to the city 
in 1841, the Central of Georgia, built in 1888, 
the Gainesville Midland (1906) and the Sea¬ 
board Air Line (1891). The founding of the 
city in 1801 was due to a grant of 600 acres of 
land to the state by John Milledge to establish 
a “seat of learning.” The University of 
Georgia was the first state university founded 
in America (see Georgia, University of). The 
area of the city is about seven square miles. 

In its own territory, Athens is known as the 
Classic City oj the South, on account of its 
educational institutions. It is located at the 
foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, about 
seventy-five feet above the river and sur¬ 
rounded by picturesque scenery. This location 
is in the heart of a rich agricultural region 
that produces fruit, grain and an abundance 
of cotton. Athens is the second largest cotton 
market in the state and its industries are 
largely engaged in the manufacture of this 
product. Eight cotton mills and one cotton-oil 
refinery employ a large number of people; 
besides these, there are two oil mills, one 
sulphuric acid plant and three fertilizing plants. 
The buildings worthy of note are the $115,000 
Federal building, completed in 1911, the $250,000 
Insurance building, built in 1907, the $150,000 
Georgian Hotel, the $175,000 Holman building, 
the $200,000 county courthouse, built in 1914, 
and an $80,000 city hall. Besides the state 
university, with the Peabody Library, there are 
the state normal school, with a Carnegie 
Library, the state college of agriculture, the 
Lucy Cobb Institute, the Knox Institute, the 
Jeruel Academy and two high schools, c.ii.d. 


ATHENS, Ohio, the county seat of Athens 
County and an industrial and educational cen¬ 
ter, situated in the southeastern part of the 
state, seventy-five miles southwest of Colum¬ 
bus. It is on the Hocking River and on the 
Baltimore & Ohio Southwestern, the Toledo & 
Ohio Central and the Hocking Valley railroads. 
Athens is an important coal-mining center and 
has lumber and brick plants. Prominent 
features of the city are the Ohio University, 
opened in 1804, a state hospital for the insane 
and a Carnegie Library. The place was settled 
in 1797 and incorporated in 1811. Its popula¬ 
tion in 1910 was 5,463. 

ATHENS OF AMERICA, The, or The Mod¬ 
ern Athens, a name applied to Boston, Mass., 
at the time when the city was the foremost 
literary center of America. The names of 
Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell and other noted 
writers are forever associated with the place, 
and it still has a claim to the title as a center 
of art, music and education. 

ATHERTON, Gertrude Franklin (1857- 
), an American novelist, a great-grand¬ 
niece of Benjamin Franklin, and one of the 
most alert, independent and forceful of the 
modern group of American writers. She was 
born in San Francisco and educated in Califor¬ 
nia and Kentucky. Mrs. Atherton’s novels 
show a surprising range of background and 
material. Sometimes the scenes are laid in 
her native state, as in The Californians and 
Ancestors; Aristocrats is a story of the Adiron- 
dacks; Senator North gives a brilliant picture 
of the social and political life of the nation’s 
capital; Patience Sparhawk, written in a vein 
of satire, presents life in New York and West¬ 
chester County. The Conqueror, the only one 
of her stories which claims to be a historical 
novel, is based on the life and character of 
Alexander Hamilton, and is the only effort at 
historical writing ever made by her. 

Mrs. Atherton is deeply interested in modern 
social problems, in the democratic movement 
of the times, and in the struggle for woman’s 
rights; these interests are reflected in her 
novels. She has a broad outlook on life, and 
views all of its phases with the clear, far-seeing 
eye of the realist. Her independence makes 
her scornful of accepted literary rules, and she 
has her own methods of style, construction of 
plot and manner of telling a story. This 
independence is so dominant in her writing 
that critics call her an “intellectual anarchist.” 
Her latest novels are Tower of Ivory and 
Julia France and Her Times. 



ATHLETICS 


457 


ATHLETICS 




THE STORY 


OP ATHLETICS 



THLETICS, ath let' iks. Originally 
this term was applied to any kind of outdoor 
sports. More recently, however, its use has 
been restricted largely to trials of speed, 
strength, skill or endurance among a number 
of contestants. 

Professional Athletics. According to the 
way in which they are organized, athletic con¬ 
tests may be divided into two groups—pro¬ 
fessional and amateur. The chief professional 
sport of the United States and Canada is base¬ 
ball ; its popularity fills foreigners with a never- 
ending wonder. The United States has two 
Major leagues and both it and Canada have a 
number of smaller ones, and enormous sums 
are spent annually in hiring players, erecting 
stands and maintaining grounds. Such expense 
can be supported only by heavy gate-receipts, 
and baseball has become a business, conducted 
like any other, for gain, although possessing 
great elements of sporting rivalry (see Base¬ 
ball) . 

Amateur Athletics. Amateur athletic con¬ 
tests, on the other hand, are conducted without 
thought of gain. They are enjoyed as a spec¬ 
tacle, and practiced, in theory at least, for the 
physical benefit of the players. It is the mark 
of the amateur that he does not play for hire, 
and great care is exercised to exclude athletes 
who have accepted money for their athletic 
prowess. Certain ideals of fair play are cher¬ 
ished by the amateur, who makes it a point 
of honor to be a “good loser.” Amateur ath¬ 
letic events are arranged among groups of 
athletic societies, cities, schools and colleges. 
In the United States such events are conducted 
under the supervision of the Amateur Athletic 
Union, which is allied with the Canadian Ama¬ 
teur Athletic Association, or, as in the case 
of the colleges under that of the Intercollegiate 
Association of Amateur Athletes of America. 
The effect of these organizations has been to 
standardize rules and promote regularity. 
They have played a considerable part in ar¬ 
ranging international contests. 

The chief athletic games represented in these 


contests are football, baseball, basket ball and 
lawn tennis, as well as field and track games 
and gymnastics (see Football; Basket Ball; 
Lawn Tennis). The swinging of dumb-bells 
and Indian clubs, weight-lifting and practice 
on the horizontal bar are grouped under gym¬ 
nastics. Track games include running for 
various distances, from twenty-five j^ards to 
two miles or more, and leaping over hurdles. 
Among the more familiar field games are pole 
vaulting, high and broad jumping, putting the 
shot and throwing the hammer, javelin or the 
discus. Canadians share the British fondness 
for cricket, and they excel in playing their 
national game, lacrosse. This is played both 
as a professional and an amateur game. There 
are several lacrosse clubs in the Dominion, 
including the National Lacrosse Association of 
Canada, the Toronto Lacrosse Club and the 
Capital Lacrosse Club (Ottawa). Hockey, too, 
is an exceedingly popular game. 

In the United States, college athletics occupy 
a very prominent place. The chief game, 
from the point of view of popular interest, is 
football, which is almost wholly an amateur 
sport. Enormous crowds, even larger than 
those that witness championship games of base¬ 
ball, crowd the stadium at Harvard or pour 
into the Yale “Bowl” to witness the triumph or 
defeat of a team of eleven young men in dusty 
uniforms, with grotesque leather headguards. 
The excitement is intense, the enthusiasm 
boundless. The desire to produce a winning 
team has resulted, doubtless, in a high degree 
of specialization, so that the benefits of ath¬ 
letics tend to be confined to smaller and 
smaller groups rather than shared by the stu¬ 
dent body as a whole. This has resulted of 
late in no little criticism, and efforts are being 
made to cleanse college athletics of the taint 
of professionalism as well as from too great 
specialization. 

Training. To gain the wind, the skill and 
endurance that will enable him to withstand 
the prolonged strain of contests on field or 
track, the athlete has to subject himself to 























ATHLETICS 


458 


ATHLETICS 


careful training. Athletic organizations com¬ 
monly hire trainers and coaches as well as 
physical directors to help the athletes to get 
into condition and to give them special train¬ 
ing for the games in which they will compete. 
Trainer and coach show the novice how to use 
his effort in the most economical and telling 
way, and perfect him in what is called “form.” 
To acquire skill in pole vaulting, for example, 
requires long and patient practice; and the 
time in which a sprinter can cover a short 
distance, like twenty-five yards, is determined 
largely by the spring-like swiftness of his start. 

During the training season, proper food and 
plenty of sleep are of the first importance. 
Members of athletic teams in the colleges eat, 
usually, at a common table, the dishes of 
which are carefully selected and supervised. 
Simple, wholesome food is the rule; rich and 
exciting sweets are banished. Tobacco and 
liquor are forbidden, since their harmful effects 
are well established. The athlete goes to bed, 
not precisely like the little boy in Stevenson’s 
poem, “by day,” but early enough to get eight 
or nine hours of sleep each night. His muscles 
are regularly rubbed and kneaded by a trainer 
to take out the stiffness and render them sup¬ 
ple. A “rub-down” w T ith alcohol supplements 
regular and frequent bathing. A bath after 
violent exercise on a dusty or muddy field is, 
of course, indispensable, and the shower-bath 
is preferred by most physical directors. 

Athletics an Aid to Health. There is no 
surer road to the goal of perfect health than 
regular exercise in the open air, and every boy 
and girl should have a thorough knowledge 
of at least one sport or recreation, such as 
baseball, hockey, tennis, golf, swimming or 
horseback riding. For stirring up the blood, 
developing the muscles, clearing the head and 
stimulating the appetite—in fact, for building- 
up a strong, healthy body—nothing is better 
than athletic games. Moreover, engaging with 
others in wholesome sports helps one to over¬ 
come many undesirable traits of character— 
laziness, timidity, conceit, lack of consideration, 
etc. It should always be kept in mind, how¬ 
ever, that over-indulgence in sports is as harm¬ 
ful as intemperance in eating and drinking. 
The player should temper his enthusiasm ac¬ 
cording to the limits of his bodily endurance, 
and never subject any part of the physical 
machine to undue strain. One of the common 
errors to avoid is sitting in a breeze “to cool 
off” while the body and clothing are wet with 
perspiration. 



Outline and Questions on 
Athletics 


I. History 

(1) The Olympian Games 

(2) Athletic games of the Romans 

(3) Knightly jousts and tournaments 

(4) Later athletic sports among the 

Anglo-Saxon peoples 

(5) Revival of the Olympian Games 

II. Modern Athletics 

(1) Professional 

(a) Baseball in the United States 

(b) Lacrosse in Canada 

(c) Cricket in England 

(2) Amateur 

(a) As a source of amusement 

(b) As a physical benefit 

(c) Standard rules 

(d) International contests 

(e) College athletics 

(3) Training 

(a) Under directors and coaches 

(b) Regulation of sleep and diet 

(c) Care of the body 

III. Benefit of Athletics 

(1) An aid to health 

(2) An aid in character-development 

(3) Harm in over-indulgence 

Questions 

Is there such a thing possible as 
over-indulgence in athletic sports? 

Distinguish between athletic games, 
gymnastics, track games and field 
games. 

Which nation has kept up the ath¬ 
letic traditions most consistently 
through the centuries? 

Describe the rigorous training which 
members of college teams have to 
undergo. 

What is the Yale “Bowl”? 

Is a player who sulks or protests 
when he loses considered a fair type 
of athlete? 

How do we know that no country 
has ever surpassed Greece in the per¬ 
fection of its physical manhood? 

What did the Olympian Games mean 
in ancient times? What do they mean 
to-day? 

What is regarded as the national 
game of Canada? Of the United 
States? Of England? 

What advantage could come to a 
selfish boy from playing baseball? 

What danger to college athletics 
arises from the keen desire to win 
championships ? 


















ATHLETICS 


459 


ATHOS 


Historical. The recent renewal of the 
Olympian games serves to show the great 
antiquity of many of the athletic contests of 
to-day, while expressing in a definite way the 
indebtedness of the modern world to Greece 
(see Olympian Games). The Greeks were the 
first people of antiquity to organize sports. 
The Greek athlete was as conspicuously hon¬ 
ored by the citizens as the tragic poet or the 
leader in battle. The victor in the Olympian 
games was crowned with a wreath of wild olives 
in front of the temple of Zeus; poets celebrated 
him in verse, and his triumphal return to his 
native city was marked by songs and proces¬ 
sions. Greek sculpture preserves for us the 
comely bodies of the athletic youth of the best 
period, bodies in which grace and strength are 
marvelously blended (see Sculpture). The 
Romans, who learned much from the Greeks, 
imitated them also in their games, but without 
that moderation which was the ideal of the 
Greek philosophy and which was reflected in 
detail in the daily lives of the people of Athens. 

Chivalry carried on the tradition of bodily 
prowess, the knightly jousts corresponding 
somewhat to the games of the classic world (see 
Chivalry). Later on, however, in the refine¬ 
ments of court life and in their zest for social 
pleasures, the Latin peoples of the south of 
Europe neglected athletic sports, and their 
interest in them has only recently been revived. 
In the North the case was different. For a 
short period only did interest in sports languish 
in England, for the athletic tradition is very 
strong among Anglo-Saxon peoples, and boxing 
and wrestling are regarded almost as English 
sports. The Scandinavians and the Germans 
have also cultivated sports with great zeal. w.c. 

Consult Spaulding’s editions of rules and games 
of all kinds ; Barbour’s Book of School and Col¬ 
lege Sports; Anderson’s The Making of a Perfect 
Man. 


Related Subjects. In the following index are 
listed the athletic sports which are discussed in 
these volumes. Many closely related topics are 
given in the list under Games and Plays and 


Amusements. 

Archery 
Aquaplaning 
Baseball 
Baseball, Indoor 
Basket Ball 
Battledore and 
Shuttlecock 
Bowling 
Boxing 
Cricket 
Curling 

Discus, Throwing the 


Dumb-bells 

Fencing 

Fives 

Football 

Football, Association 
Golf 

Hammer. Throwing the 

Hand Ball 

Hockey 

Hurdling 

Lacrosse 

Lawn Tennis 


Olympian Games 

Pole Vault 

Polo 

Race 

Rowing 

Shot, Putting the 


Skates and Skating 
Ski 

Swimming 

Tennis 

Wrestling 


ATHOR, ah' thor, or HATHOR, the Egyp¬ 
tian goddess of music and the dance, of joy 
and love, corresponding to the Aphrodite of 
the Greeks. In early times the Egyptians used 
a buffalo’s skull raised on a pole in connection 
with her worship, and from this came the 
sacred Athor column of Egyptian architecture, 
which has on the top a female head with the 
ears of a cow. Athor, the third month of the 
Egyptian year, was named for her. 

ATHOS, ath' os, Mount, a mountain peak 
on the northeast coast of Greece, of special 
interest because of the monasteries on its 
slopes, which date from the Middle Ages. 
Mount Athos is on the southern point of the 
most eastern of the three peninsulas that pro¬ 
ject, like the prongs of a fork, into the Aegean 
Sea. Its summit of shining white marble, 6,350 
feet above the plain, can be seen from a great 
distance; from the sea, the view of the “holy 
mountain,” with its picturesque dwellings of a 
noted community of monks is wonderfully at¬ 
tractive. The name properly applies to the 
entire peninsula, which is joined to the main¬ 
land by a neck of land only a mile and a half 
wide. On this isthmus are yet traces of the 
canal that the Persian king Xerxes had con¬ 
structed in 480 b. c., just before he invaded 
Greece. 

The religious community, occup 3 ung both the 
peninsula and mountain, consists of twenty 
monasteries of the Order of Saint Basil, and a 
number of monastic settlements, farms and 
hermitages. Most of the monasteries are occu¬ 
pied by Greek monks, but there are a number 
of Russians, Serbs and Bulgarians. For many 
hundreds of years, it is asserted, no woman 
has been allowed to approach this great monas¬ 
tic community, because under a constitution 
granted by the emperor Constantine Mono¬ 
machos in 1045, women are barred from the 
“holy mountain,” which at the present time 
has a population of 6,000 to 7,000. About one- 
half of this number are monks, while the rest 
are lay brothers. The monks engage in farm¬ 
ing, fishing and various trades, but are not 
remarkable for intellectual culture. The monas¬ 
teries, however, contain many manuscripts of 
historic interest, besides paintings, mosaics and 
golden ornaments that are interesting examples 
of the art of the Eastern Roman Empire, 


ATLANTA 


460 


ATLANTA 



TLANTA, Ga., the capital, the 
largest city of the state and the county seat of 
Fulton County, is situated in the northwestern 
part of the state, about seven miles from the 
Chattahoochee River. Macon is about 100 
miles southeast and Augusta is 171 miles east. 
It is popularly called the Gate City of the 
South, on account of its excellent transporta¬ 
tion facilities, being served by the following 
railways: Western & Atlantic; Central of 
Georgia; Georgia; Louisville & Nashville; 
Nashville, Chattanooga & Saint Louis; South¬ 
ern; the Atlanta & West Point; Atlanta, Bir¬ 
mingham & Atlanta railways, and the Seaboard 
Air Line. Electric lines run from the city in 
all directions. The city has grown rapidly, 
from a population of 2,572 in 1850 to 154,839 in 
1910; the Census Bureau estimated that the 
number had increased to 184,873 in 1915. The 
city limits originally described nearly a circle, 
with the Union Depot as the center, but the 
boundary has been broken by the annexation 
of several suburbs. 

Atlanta has a delightful and healthful loca¬ 
tion near the Blue Ridge Mountains, 1,050 feet 
above sea level, this ridge being the divide 
between the watershed of the Gulf of Mexico 
and that of the Atlantic Ocean. The elevation 
gives the climate an invigorating effect. His¬ 
torically and commercially, the city is one of 
the most conspicuous in the South; it also 
enjoys high rank as an educational center. 

Parks and Streets. About 850 acres are 
assigned to parks and recreation grounds, the 
most prominent being Grant, Piedmont and 
Lakewood parks. Druid Hills, Brookwood and 
Ausley Park are among the most desirable 
residence districts. The streets are made at¬ 
tractive by grassy lawns and trees; among the 
finest avenues are Peachtree Street and Capitol 
Avenue. There are golf courses, country clubs 
and good country roads. The United States 
army post, Fort McPherson, is a point of 
interest in the vicinity. A monument in mem¬ 
ory of Lieutenant Brumby, who was the first 
to raise the United States flag at Manila, is 
one of the city’s ornaments. 


Educational and Public Institutions. At¬ 
lanta is the seat of the Georgia School of 
Technology, which is a branch of the State 
University at Athens; it also is the home of 
Atlanta University, Clark University, Atlanta 
Baptist College, Atlanta College of Physicians 
and Surgeons, Atlanta School of Medicine, 
Agnes Scott College and Cox College. In addi¬ 
tion to these an excellent public school system, 
a Carnegie Library and the state library, with 
over 80,000 volumes, serve the educational 
interests. There are also about forty news¬ 
papers. Six institutions are devoted to the 
education of negroes, who form about one- 
third of the population. The city has a num¬ 
ber of high class sanatoriums. The most 
notable structure is the capitol, which was 
completed in 1889 at a cost of $1,000,000. The 
$1,000,000 Federal building, the Union Station, 
erected at a cost of $900,000, the chamber of 
commerce, the city hall, the auditorium, with 
a seating capacity of nearty 8,000, and the 
Hurt building are among the noteworthy build¬ 
ings. . Atlanta is the location of one of the 
Federal Reserve banks. A Federal prison is 
also located here. 

Commerce and Enterprise. Atlanta has an 
extensive export trade in cotton, tobacco, grain, 
horses and mules. Its tobacco trade is the 
largest south of Richmond, Va., and it ranks 
second in the United States as a mule market. 
The industrial products include cotton goods, 
furniture, shoes, steel products, flour, lumber, 
cottonseed oil, patent medicines and bever¬ 
ages. There are several large cotton and fer¬ 
tilizer factories. A dam across the Chatta¬ 
hoochee River furnishes abundant power for 
the manufactories, which are rapidly increasing. 

History. The first settlement at Atlanta, in 
1837, was called Terminus. It was incorporated 
as a town in 1843, under the name of Marthas- 
ville; the present name was adopted in 1845, 
and the city charter was granted two years 
later. It was an important strategic point in 
the War of Secession as early as 1861, when it 
was the depot for Confederate military sup¬ 
plies. This made it an objective point in 






















































ATLANTIC CITY 


461 


ATLANTIC OCEAN 


General Sherman’s famous march to the sea. 
After a siege of several weeks it was taken 
in September, 1864, and a few days afterward 
Sherman ordered all civilians to leave within 
five days, when the city became an immense 
military camp. On the evacuation of the 
troops in the following November, the city was 
almost totally destroyed by fire. Sherman de¬ 
scribed the strategic position of Atlanta as in 
the wrist of a hand, the five fingers pointing 
to the five principal ports of the Gulf of 
Mexico and the Southern Atlantic coast. 

Since the close of the war the growth and 
enterprise of the city has been so marked that 
it is frequently called The Chicago of the 
South. During the reconstruction era Atlanta 
became the capital of the state (1878). The 
Cotton Exposition in 1881 and the Interna¬ 
tional Exposition in 1895 were important fac¬ 
tors in the progress of the city. h.j. 

ATLAN'TIC CITY, N. J., a seaside resort 
of note, which has one of the best beaches 
along the Atlantic coast. The city is situated 
on an island known as Absecon Beach, which 
is ten miles long and three-fourths of a mile 
wide. Absecon lighthouse, 167 feet high, is 
on the northern end of the beach. The island 
is separated from the mainland, the south New 
Jersey coast, by a narrow strait and meadows 
from four to five miles wide which are only 
partly under water at high tide. Lines of the 
Pennsylvania and Reading railroads connect 
the city with Philadelphia, fifty miles north¬ 
west, and New York, 150 miles north by east. 
Interurban electric lines run to other towns on 
the island and along the coast. The area of 
Atlantic City is nearly five square miles. In 
1910 the population was 46,150; the state census 
of 1915 reported an increase to 51,667. There 
are many visitors the year round and in sum¬ 
mer the number totals between 300,000 and 
400,000. 

The board walk along the beach is one of the 
world’s famous promenades. It consists of a 
board flooring laid upon steel and concrete 
foundation, and is eight miles long. Some of 
the newer parts are concrete. From the walk 
toward the mainland extend six large piers. 
East of the walk are the largest and best 
known of the city’s 1,200 hotels. Among these 
are Hotel Traymore, costing $4,000,000, and the 
Marlborough-Blenheim, costing $2,000,000. In 
the city are the Mercer Memorial Home for 
Invalid Women, the Children’s Seashore House, 
several seaside sanatoriums and two large hos¬ 
pitals. The Federal building, which cost $150,- 


000, and the Carnegie Library are noteworthy 
buildings, and Inlet and Chelsea parks are 
recreation grounds. Among the popular pas¬ 
times offered on the island are fishing and 
shooting. Practically the only industry is 
oyster dredging and shipping. 

In 1854 the Camden & Atlantic Railroad 
was completed to the little settlement, which 
dates from 1780. In that same year it received 
the name Atlantic City. Its rapid growth has 
been due to its unexcelled beach and its near¬ 
ness to New York and Philadelphia. In 1902 
a fire destroyed a number of hotels and a part 
of one of the best piers, causing a loss of 
$780,000. The commission form of government 
was adopted in 1912. w.b.d. 

ATLAN'TIC OCEAN, that division of the 
world-enveloping sea lying between Europe 
and Africa on the east and North and South 
America on the west. It is named from Mount 
Atlas, in the northwestern part of Africa. The 
western projection of Africa and the eastern 
projection of South America divide the At¬ 
lantic into two oceans, the North Atlantic and 
the South Atlantic. 

Size. The Atlantic is a long, narrow ocean 
with more irregular boundaries than any other 
great body of water. It has no distinct north¬ 
ern and southern boundaries, therefore various 
lengths are given it by different geographers. 
Those who consider the Arctic Circle to form 
the northern and the Antarctic the southern 
boundary fix the length as 9,000 miles. More 
recent authorities, however, divide the Ant¬ 
arctic or Southern Ocean among the Atlantic, 
Pacific and Indian oceans; this division gives 
the Atlantic a length of 13,000 miles. Its 
greatest breadth, between Florida and the 
Strait of Gibraltar, is 4,150 miles, and, if the 
Gulf of Mexico be included, 5,000 miles. Be¬ 
tween Greenland and Norway the breadth is 
930 miles, and between Cape Saint Roque, 
South America, and Sierra Leone, Africa, it 
is about 1,800 miles. Between New York and 
Liverpool it is about 3,200 miles. 

Including coast waters the area is about 
41,000,000 square miles. It covers over one- 
fifth of the earth’s surface and includes three- 
tenths of the water surface of the globe. The 
Pacific Ocean alone is larger. 

The Ocean Bed. The bed of the Atlantic is 
divided into two valleys by a ridge extending 
lengthwise, each of which is about 500 miles 
wide. This ridge is nearly parallel with the 
coast lines and is shaped somewhat like the 
letter S. The eastern valley varies in depth 


ATLANTIC OCEAN 


462 


ATLANTIC OCEAN 


from 14,000 to 15,000 feet, and the western from 
13,000 to 16,800. North of the Azores Islands 
the bottom of the ocean gradually rises and 
forms a plateau whose length extends from the 
Hebrides to Newfoundland. This is sometimes 
known as the telegraph plateau, because the 
Atlantic Cable is laid on it. Along this plateau 
and over the ridge separating the valleys the 
ocean has a depth of 9,000 to 10,000 feet. The 
greatest depth, 27,360 feet, is north of Porto 
Rico; east of Newfoundland a depth of 20,000 
feet has been found, and in the South Atlantic 
there are depths of 20,000 to 24,000 feet. These 
are not as great as some depths in the Pacific 
Ocean, where telegraph cables have been laid 
six miles below the surface (see Cable, Sub¬ 
marine). 

Shore Lines and Coast Waters. The eastern 
shore line has a length of 32,000 miles; the 
western, 55,000 miles. The coasts of Europe 
and North America are very irregular, but 
those of Africa and South America contain few 



indentations. The coast waters on the east are 
the North Sea, Baltic Sea, Bay of Biscay and 
the Mediterranean and Black seas, the latter 
over 2,500 miles inland. On the west they 
include Hudson Bay, the Gulf of Saint Law¬ 
rence, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea. The 
most important islands in the North Atlantic 
are the British Isles, the Canaries, Iceland, 
Greenland, Newfoundland, the West Indies, 
the Azores and Cape Verde Islands. The 
islands of the South Atlantic are comparatively 
unimportant. 

Temperature. The temperature at the sur¬ 
face varies from about 80° F. in the tropical 


Outline and Questions on 
the Atlantic Ocean 

I. Location and Size 

(1) Boundaries 

(2) Length, 13,000 miles, including 

Antarctic Ocean 

(3) Average width, 3,000 miles 

(4) Greatest width, 5,000 miles 

(5) Area, including coast waters, 41,- 

000,000 square miles 

II. Shore Line and Coast Waters 

(1) Coasts of northern part irregular 

(2) Length of shore 

(a) Eastern, 32,000 

(b) Western, 55,000 

(3) Coast waters 

(4) Islands 

III. Ocean Bed 

(1) Two parallel valleys 

(2) Telegraph plateau 

(3) Varying depths 

IV. Temperature and Currents 

(1) Temperature at surface 

(2) Temperature at bottom 
(3 ) Gulf Stream 

(4) Labrador Current 

(5) South Atlantic currents 

V. Life 

(1) Source of food supply 
(a) Fisheries 

(2) Smaller forms 


Questions 


If the highest mountain of North 
America were placed at the deepest 
point in the Atlantic Ocean, would its 
top show above the water? 

How does the ocean compare with 
other great bodies of water as regards 
regularity of outline? 

Does the temperature of the ocean 
vary according to depth as the tem¬ 
perature of air varies according to 
altitude? 

How large a proportion of the land 
surface of the globe could the Atlantic 
Ocean contain? 

Why is the western coast of Europe 
warmer than the eastern coast of North 
America in the same latitude? 

From what is the name of this ocean 
derived? 

What is the “telegraph plateau,” and 
why is it so named? 

About how many square miles of 
water surface are there on the globe? 

How does the Labrador Current work 
damage to navigation? 


































ATLANTIS 


463 


ATOLL 


regions to 28° F. on the borders of the Arctic 
Ocean. In the tropical regions the temperature 
falls rapidly for the first 1,500 feet of descent, 
but below that depth the change is less rapid. 
The water on the bottom of the ocean is near 
the freezing point, and changes but little. 

Currents. The North and South Atlantic 
each has a system of marine currents, or rivers 
in the ocean. In the North Atlantic the most 
noted of these is the Gulf Stream (which see), 
which carries the warm water from the tropical 
regions northward and then eastward, making 
the western coast of Europe much warmer than 
the eastern coast of North America in the same 
latitude. Flowing southward between the Gulf 
Stream and the coast is the Labrador Current, 
a cold water stream which brings many ice¬ 
bergs into the warmer regions where they melt 
and disappear, but in the meantime they are a 
great menace to navigation (see Iceberg). The 
system in the South Atlantic is similar to that 
in the North Atlantic (see Ocean Currents). 

Life. The Atlantic Ocean is one of the great¬ 
est sources of food supply in the world. Most 
of the fish supplied to the nations of Europe 
and America are taken from the Atlantic, and 
the most important of these are the herring 
and the cod. The most extensive fishing 
grounds are on and near the Grand Banks, off 
Newfoundland, and the Dodder Banks, in the 
North Sea. To the fish taken in such large 
quantities from these sources must be added 
the tons of oysters and other shell fish and 
the fish caught in the innumerable branches of 
the ocean. Sponges are obtained off the coast 
of Florida and in the Mediterranean, and the 
tropical seas are filled with millions of minute 
creatures, which, while they do not add any¬ 
thing to supply man’s needs, beautify the sea 
by the phosphorescent light which they emit. 
In the greatest depths giant fish hitherto un¬ 
known are being discovered. See Ocean; 
Tides ; Waves. w.f.r. 

ATLAN'TIS, an island which, according to 
ancient tradition, existed in the Atlantic Ocean 
near the Pillars of Hercules (Strait of Gibral¬ 
tar). Plato wrote of it, declaring that it had 
been the home of a great nation but had finally 
been swallowed up by the sea. Some investi¬ 
gators believe that at the earliest dawn of 
tradition there may have been such an island, 
but others regard the whole legend as the 
outgrowth of some pre-historic discovery of the 
New World. 

AT'LAS, in the mythology of the ancient 
Greeks, a Titan whom Zeus condemned to 


bear the heavens on his shoulders. Through 
the centuries he stood, almost fainting with 
weariness, until Perseus came by, bearing the 
head of the Gorgon, Medusa, 
which turned all who looked 
upon it into stone. At Atlas’ 
request, Perseus held up the 
head, and the giant was 
changed into the mountains 
which bear his name. When 
the earliest collection of maps 
appeared it bore on its title- 
page the picture of Atlas 
bending under the weight of 
the earth, and such books 
have therefore been called 
atlases to this day. 

ATLAS MOUNTAINS, the name given to 
the chains of mountains running parallel to the 
north coast of Africa from Cape Nun on the 
Atlantic Ocean, across Morocco, Algiers and 
Tunis to the Gulf of Gabes on the Mediter¬ 
ranean, a distance of 1,500 miles. These ranges 
are named after Atlas, who, according to an¬ 
cient mythology, supported on his shoulder the 
vault of the heavens and dwelt in the moun¬ 
tains. The interesting story is told in the 
article Atlas. The mountains are roughly 
divided into two main parallel chains, running 
west to east. The inner or Greater Atlas, lying 
toward the Sahara, is separated by high 
plateaus from the lower mountains of the 
Lesser or Maritime Atlas, along the Mediter¬ 
ranean coast. Morocco contains the highest 
peaks of the system, Jebel Ayashi being 14,600 
and Tamjurt 14,500 feet above sea level. The 
mountains contain many minerals, including 
silver, antimony, lead, copper and iron. Beau¬ 
tiful marble is found in many parts of the 
ranges. The vegetation of the northern and 
higher regions resembles that of Europe, but 
the southern slopes, exposed to the hot, dry 
winds of the Sahara, are generally bare and 
sandy. 

ATMOSPHERE, at'mosjeer. See Air. 

ATMOSPHERIC DUST. See Dust, Atmos¬ 
pheric. 

ATOLL, atoll ' or at' ol, a picturesque coral 
island common in the Pacific Ocean, consisting 
of a circular strip or ring of coral inclosing a 
shallow pool or lagoon. The reef usually has 
a thin covering of soil in which grow palm 
and breadfruit trees. In many cases the edges 
of a submerged volcanic crater supply the base 
of the structure. The circle of the atoll is 
usually broken on the side of the prevailing 



THE MYTH¬ 
ICAL ATLAS 





ATOM 


464 


ATOMIC THEORY 



AN ATOLL 

The first illustration presents the surface appearance ; the second, a cross-section showing usual 
depth and form of walls. 


winds, so the lagoon has an opening into the 
surrounding sea. See Coral. 

ATOM, at' um, in chemistry, the name given 
to the smallest particles into which elements 
are divided by chemical reactions. The small¬ 
est particle of any substance is called a molecule 
(which see). If the substance is an element 
its molecule may consist of one, two or a larger 
number of similar atoms. If it is a compound 
its molecule will consist of two or more atoms 
—one atom at least of each of the elements 
of which the compound is composed. An 
example will make this clear. The smallest 
possible particle of water is a molecule of 
water. As water, it cannot further be sub¬ 
divided, but that molecule contains two ele¬ 
ments, neither of which is water, namely, 
hydrogen and oxygen. If these two could be 
combined in the smallest possible quantities, 
two atoms of hydrogen with one of oxygen, the 
product would be one molecule of water. 

Actually, we cannot see, handle or experi¬ 
ment with single molecules or atoms, but the 
behavior of substances in larger quantities 
has led to the theory that all substances are 
really made up of minute molecules—far too 
small to be seen even with a microscope—and 
that these molecules (with the exception of 
a few, such as those of mercury, zinc and 
argon) are further subdivided into atoms in 
undergoing chemical changes such as that by 
which water is formed from hydrogen and 
oxygen. 

The molecules of hydrogen consist of two 
hydrogen atoms each; those of oxygen of two 
oxygen atoms each. Equal volumes of hydro¬ 
gen and oxygen are believed to contain equal 
numbers of molecules. When we mix two 
volumes of hydrogen with one volume of 
oxygen and explode the mixture, both gases are 
completely used up and only water is left. It 
is inferred that each of the oxygen molecules 
separates into two atoms and that each of 
these atoms combines with a molecule (or two 


atoms) of hydrogen to make a molecule of 
water. The change which we can observe (the 
disappearance of the gases and the formation 
of the water) is believed to consist of millions 
and millions of these little atomic transactions 
all going on at the same time. See Atomic 
Theory; Atomic Weights; Chemistry. 

The word atom is derived from two Greek 
words signifying not divisible. In ordinary 
chemical actions the atoms are not divided, but 
the facts discovered in connection with the 
study of radioactivity have led to the con¬ 
clusion that the chemical atoms are really 
complex systems of smaller particles or of posi¬ 
tive and negative electrical charges. j.f.s. 

ATOMIC, a tom' ik, THEORY. In the early 
part of the nineteenth centurjq John Dalton, 
the English chemist who laid the foundation 
of theoretical chemistry, proposed a theory to 
explain the laws of chemical action. This 
hypothesis, known as the atomic theory, as¬ 
sumes first that all chemical elements and com¬ 
pounds consist of tiny particles, or atoms; 
secondly, the atoms of the same element have 
the same weight; thirdly, the atoms of differ¬ 
ent elements have different weights; fourthly, 
chemical action is due to the union or separa¬ 
tion of the atoms of the elements. 

A number of laws have been discovered 
governing chemical reaction. According to one 
law, the elements forming any substance are 
always present in the same proportion by 
weight. Again, when one element, such as 
nitrogen, unites with another element, oxygen, 
in several proportions by weight, yielding dif¬ 
ferent compounds, the different proportions of 
oxygen united with one part of nitrogen are 
simple multiples of a common factor. All the 
proportions in which the elements combine 
with one another can be expressed in terms of 
a set of numbers, one for each element, and 
the multiples of those numbers. These num¬ 
bers are the atomic weights of the elements. 
See Chemistry; Atom ; Atomic Weights, j.f.s. 


























ATOMIC WEIGHTS 


465 


ATRIUM 


ATOMIC WEIGHTS. The atoms of any 
chemical element have a different weight from 
those of any other element. It is, of course, 
impossible to weigh atoms individually. A 
number of different kinds of physical experi¬ 
ments, however—some with radioactive ele¬ 
ments, some with electricity and some with the 
microscope—lead consistently to the conclusion 
that the smallest atoms, those of hydrogen, 
weigh 16.6X10— 25 grams each. In other words, 
it would take 6 million million million million 
hydrogen atoms to weigh a gram (1/454 of a 
pound). When a chemist speaks of atomic 
weights, however, he means only the relative 
weights of the atoms; that is, how many times 
heavier one kind of atom is than another. 
He infers these relative weights from his as¬ 
sumption that every chemical action conducted 
on a sufficiently large scale to enable him to 
weigh the reagents and their products is really 
made up of millions of little reactions among 
the individual atoms. 

For example, he finds that one gram of 
hydrogen combines with 7.94 grams of oxygen. 
From this he infers that an atom of oxygen 
must weigh 7.94 times as much as an atom 
of hydrogen, or twice 7.94 times as much, or 
three times 7.94 times as much, or some other 
whole number of times 7.94 times as much. 
There are various ways of deciding which of 
these possibilities is correct. (For these see 
books on chemistry.) In this instance twice 
7.94=15.88 is chosen. If, then, the weight of a 
hydrogen atom (the highest of all atoms) be 
taken as the unit, the atomic weight of oxygen 
is 15.88. A majority of modern chemists, how¬ 
ever, prefer to make oxygen the basis of the 
system of atomic weights, rather than hydro¬ 
gen. They take exactly 16 as the atomic 
weight of oxygen. This makes that of hydro¬ 
gen 1.008 instead of exactly 1. In the table 
of elements given under Chemistry, the 
atomic weights are upon this basis. Except 
hydrogen, helium is the element of lowest 
weight, 4.0. Uranium has the highest atomic 
weight, 238.5; thorium the next highest, 232.4; 
and radium the next, 226. See Atom; Atomic 
Theory. j.f.s. 

ATONEMENT, atohn'ment, the act of 
making as one , or reconciling those who have 
been separated because of acts of offense or 
strong differences of opinion. Atonement means 
reconciliation. This act may consist of an 
offering, such as a present, or an apology, or a 
plea for forgiveness. 

While this word is sometimes used in con¬ 


nection with the relations of men in every-day 
life, it is generally used in a religious sense to 
express one’s relation to God. The system of 
sacrifice established by Moses and described 
in the first sixteen chapters of Leviticus shows 
very clearly that these sacrifices were made to 
secure reconciliation of the people with God. 
The sacrifice was an atonement for sin of the 
person offering it and the great sacrifice made 
by the high priest on the day of atonement, 
once a year, was an atonement for the sins of 
the nation. 

Little is said about the atonement in the New 
Testament, but Roman Catholics and Protes¬ 
tants alike agree that Christ, through his death, 
became the atonement for the sins of the world, 
and that all men can obtain forgiveness of 
their sins by believing in Him. There is, how¬ 
ever, considerable difference of opinion among 
religious sects as to the method by which the 
forgiveness may be secured. See Scapegoat. 



ATRIUM 

Type of atrium in the homes of wealthy 
Romans. 


ATRIUM, ay' trium, in the earliest Roman 
houses, the room in which the family life was 
centered; in later times the general reception 
















































































































































































ATROPHY 


466 


ATTAR 


hall. The atrium in the primitive Roman 
home was a living room where the family 
cooked, dined, slept and received visitors. Here 
also were the hearth and the household gods 
beside it (see Lares and Penates), the relics of 
the ancestors, and the family altar. 

The atria in the homes of the wealthy Ro¬ 
mans of the time of Augustus and later were 
beautiful apartments adorned with paintings, 
statuary, vases and fountains, and having four 
columns around the central opening to support 
the roof. In the houses of Pompeii may be 
seen atria of all kinds in a good state of pres¬ 
ervation. 

ATROPHY, at'rofi, a condition of wasting 
of the human body due to interference with 
the process of nutrition. It may affect prac¬ 
tically every part of the physical organism. 
A familiar illustration is the shriveled arm or 
leg which has been deprived of exercise by 
paralysis or joint disease, and which has be¬ 
come atrophied because this lack of exercise 
has interfered with the nutritive function. Any 
organ of the body which ceases to function 
tends to become useless. This explains the 
presence of the blind fishes in the underground 
rivers of Mammoth Cave, Ky., whose organs 
of sight, through many years of disuse, have 
undergone atrophic change. The brains of 
imbeciles frequently become shriveled, and this 
condition might be the fate of a person of 
normal intelligence who was placed in solitary 
confinement for a long period without any 
occupation. Sometimes the pressure of tumors 
or other growths upon internal organs causes 
the latter to become atrophied. An affection 
of the muscular system, known as 'progressive 
musclar atrophy, is characterized by atrophy 
of certain muscles or groups of muscles. The 
disease is associated with the anterior roots 
of the nerves of the spinal cord. Paralysis of 
the affected muscles occurs in the course of 
the ailment, which usually ends fatally, w.a.e. 

ATROPINE, at'ropin. See Belladonna. 

ATTACHE, at ta shay', a term applied to a 
subordinate official attached to an embassy. 
The duties of such an office are specific. A 
military attache handles military affairs; a 
naval attache, naval business; and a commer¬ 
cial attache may be sent to an embassy for the 
purpose of studying commercial conditions. 

ATTACHMENT, attach' merit, a term in 
law applied to a court writ for seizing a person 
or the property of one sought for court action. 
A writ of attachment against persons is now 
issued only for contempt of court. The original 


purpose of the writ was to secure the appear¬ 
ance in court of one who had disregarded a 
legal summons. The grounds upon which a 
writ for attachment of property may be ob¬ 
tained vary under different laws, but usually it 
is issued to a creditor. It is a harsh and 
extraordinary measure, used only in cases where 
the debtor is a non-resident or has left the 
state with the intention of defrauding the 
creditor. An attachment is dissolved by final 
judgment. 

ATTAINDER, atayn' der. According to old 
English law a person who was sentenced 
to death or outlawed forfeited all rights to 
his property, including land and personal prop¬ 
erty, and suffered also corruption of blood, 
which prohibited him from inheriting property 
or transmitting it to his heirs. Such a loss of 
civil rights is known as attainder. By act of 
Parliament, passed in 1870, attainder in Eng¬ 
land was abolished, and it is now obsolete in 
practically all civilized countries. In the 
United States a man may be attained for the 
crime of treason, but the Constitution ex¬ 
pressly states that his punishment cannot 
extend beyond his life. His property passes on 
his death to his heirs, against whom no penal¬ 
ties can be laid. See Bill of Attainder. 

ATTAR, at' ar, a general term for perfume 
made from flowers, but used most commonly 
in connection with attar, or otto, of roses, the 
rare and costly oil obtained from the petals 
of several species of roses which are products 
of the East. Attar of roses is made chiefly in 
Syria, Persia, India, Turkey and Bulgaria. To 
obtain the oil the rose petals are distilled with 
about twice their weight of water, the mixture 
being placed in open vessels and exposed to 
the night air. In the morning the thin film 
of attar which has formed is skimmed off with 
a feather. The amount of attar obtained 
from a given number of roses weighs only 
1-3000 as much as the whole quantity of 
petals, yet so powerful is the scent of this oil 
that one drop will give fragrance to a gallon 
of cologne. 

Various perfumes, including milk of roses 
and lavender water, are scented with attar, 
and it is sometimes added to medicines and 
ointments. A hair oil commonly sold under 
the name of attar of roses consists of olive 
oil, coloring matter, and a few drops of attar. 
This costly oil is often adulterated with sandal¬ 
wood oil, geranium oil and other substances, 
and importers sometimes send spies to the 
factories where it is made, so that they may 


ATTENTION 


467 


ATTENTION 


know whether or not they are obtaining the 
pure article. In the United States retailers place 
attar of roses on the market in small slender 
bottles containing only three or four drops, and 
the price of this amount is usually one dollar. 

ATTENTION, a ten' shun, is the fixing of 
the mind upon some object or thought for a 
definite purpose. Sometimes the purpose is 
immediate, as when we give attention to an 
object for the purpose of learning what the 
object is; sometimes it is remote, as when the 
pupil in school gives his attention to a lesson, 
as in grammar, that in time he may be able 
to use the English language correctly. Atten¬ 
tion is always present in a state of conscious¬ 
ness; that is, when we are awake we always 
attend to something. We often say that a 
child is inattentive. What we really mean is 
that he is not giving attention to the subject 
in hand. His attention is where his interest 
lies. 

The best of modern authorities recognize 
three phases of attention to which they have 
given different names, such as non-voluntary, 
voluntary and acquired, or passive, active and 
secondary passive. Whatever the terms used 
in describing these phases, the meaning is the 
same. 

Passive Attention. Passive or non-voluntary 
attention is that phase of attention which re¬ 
quires no effort on the part of the individual. 
Loud sounds, bright lights, peculiar odors force 
themselves upon us, as it were, without any 
effort on our part. Again, the child’s attention 
primarily is directed by those external objects 
which make the strongest impression upon his 
mind through the special senses. He is at¬ 
tracted by a bright flower, the flitting of a 
butterfly, the song of a bird, the rippling of 
the brook or any other object which makes an 
impression through the avenues of the special 
sense; but there is no definite purpose in it all. 

Active Attention. Active or voluntary atten¬ 
tion is directed by the will for a definite pur¬ 
pose. The purpose is more or less remote, but 
it is the ultimate good upon which the atten¬ 
tion is fixed, and between the present status 
of the individual and that goal there may be 
many long steps, each requiring special atten¬ 
tion before the succeeding step can be taken. 
In such a case each step becomes a goal leading 
to the ultimate end. To illustrate: A boy is 
promised that he may go to a circus that is 
to exhibit in the neighborhood in two weeks, 
provided he will finish certain tasks. He gives 
his attention to his work not merely for the 


sake of completing the tasks, but because of 
what to him seems the greater, but more 
remote, good, the privilege of going to the 
circus. The ultimate end makes a strong ap¬ 
peal, and he works with a will to secure it. 
Were school tasks made equally attractive 
pupils would work at their lessons with equal 
zeal. 

Passive attention merges into active atten¬ 
tion so easily that we often fail to recognize 
the change. Just as soon as we begin to give 
our attention to an object which was forced 
upon us for the purpose of gratifying our curi¬ 
osity about it, our attention has become active. 
Passive attention is, therefore, in children, and 
frequently in adults, the first step towards 
active attention. Passive attention is char¬ 
acteristic of the young child; active attention 
of the adult. 

Secondary Passive Attention. Secondary 
passive attention, or acquired attention, differs 
from active attention only in degree. It may 
best be illustrated by the condition in which 
a man finds himself when he begins a new occu¬ 
pation or takes a position which places him 
amid unfamiliar surroundings. At first there 
are so many strange sights and sounds that 
intrude themselves upon his consciousness that 
it is with the greatest difficulty that he can 
hold his mind upon the work before him. In 
course of time, however, the new becomes 
commonplace. Each day his task becomes 
easier, until in a few weeks he finds that it 
requires little or no effort to keep his mind 
upon his work. In other words, he has formed 
the habit of attending to his work. But he 
has formed it by effort. 

Place of Attention in Education. Attention 
is the first step in gaining knowledge. Joseph 
Cook said, “Interest is the mother of atten¬ 
tion, and attention is the mother of knowledge. 
If you would win the daughter, be sure of the 
mother and grandmother.” Sir Isaac Newton 
said that he was able to accomplish what others 
failed to do because he could hold his attention 
upon a problem for a longer time than they 
could. Training in attention is essential to a 
well-disciplined mind. 

Attention grows with the development of 
the mind. It is stronger in the adult than in 
the child. It is a selective activity; whatever 
ideas are in our minds are there because at 
some time in life we chose to put them there. 
Attention can be fixed only upon those objects 
and ideas that have some meaning, that is, 
which point to something big in themselves. 


ATTENTION 


468 


ATTICA 




Outline and Questions on 
Attention 

I. Definition 

(1) The act 

(2) The purpose 

II. Phases 

(1) Passive or non-voluntary 

(a) Without effort 

(b) Without purpose 

(c) First step toward active at¬ 

tention 

(d) Characteristic of the child 

(2) Active or voluntary 

(a) Directed by will 

(b) Definite purpose 

(c) Characteristic of adult 

(3) Secondary passive or acquired 

(a) Difference from active one of 

degree 

(b) Effort required 

(c) Cultivation of habit 

III. Importance in Education 

(1) First step to knowledge 

(2) Grows with practice 

(3) Selective nature 

(4) Importance of relaxation 


Questions 


When a teacher says, “This is the 
most inattentive child in the class,” 
what does she really mean? 

If your eye is unconsciously caught 
by a brilliantly lighted sign and you 
stop to discover what the sign says, 
what process has taken place? 

Is it wise to expect a child to solve 
his arithmetic problems just before he 
goes to bed? Why? 

Can you at any time actually be at¬ 
tentive to nothing? 

Can a person who has never learned 
to hold his attention fixed on one idea 
be considered well-educated? 

Why can you not fix your attention 
for a half hour upon the fact that 
“Two times two are four”? 

What is the difference between active 
and secondary passive attention? 

What sort of attention is it that 
registers the sound of a revolver shot? 

How can a young person determine 
the sort of things which shall claim 
his attention when he grows older? 

What did Joseph Cook call the 
“grandmother of knowledge” ? 

Why is it difficult to do as much and 
as good work as usual amid new sur¬ 
roundings? 


Attention can be held only for a short time 
upon an object that does not change. In the 
acquisition of knowledge the mind is active; 
it requires that the material upon which it 
works should be active also. 

Attention causes fatigue, hence it becomes 
weakened when exercised for a long time. It 
is usually weaker toward the close of the day 
than in the morning. In the training of chil¬ 
dren periods requiring active attention should 
be followed by periods of relaxation. w.f.r. 

ATTICA, at' i ka, a district of Greece on the 
extreme southeast coast, celebrated as the home 
of the ancient Athenians, through whose genius 
Grecian art, literature and philosophy reached 
their greatest heights. Attica is a triangular 



ATTICA 

Location of the district, both in ancient and 
modern times. 


peninsula jutting into the Aegean Sea, and 
Athens is its most important city. Its surface 
is mountainous, the soil is light and thin, and 
the coast indented by numerous bays and har¬ 
bors. The early inhabitants had to use the 
greatest care in the practice of agriculture, 
which fostered habits of industry, while the 
coast, with its line of natural harbors, made 
them a seafaring race and encouraged trade and 
commerce. The clear air of this region, and 
the brilliant blue of its skies, praised by poets 
from ancient times, are said to have been a 
wonderful inspiration to the Athenians. Mil¬ 
ton’s lines in this connection are well known: 

Where, on the Aegean shore, a city stands, 
Built nobly, pure the air, and light the soil— 
Athens, the eye of Greece. 

Modern Attica is a department of Greece, 
having a population of about 341,000. See 
Athens; Greece, subhead History. 

























ATTILA 


469 


AUBURN 


ATTILA, at'tila, a famous king of the 
Huns whose merciless treatment of conquered 
peoples gave him among the Christians of the 
fifth century the name ‘‘Scourge of God.” In 
434 he became joint ruler with his brother, 
Bleda, over countless hordes of fierce barbarians 
in Northern Asia and Europe; ten years later 
he caused his brother to be put to death. In 
447 Attila laid waste all the countries between 
the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, easily 
defeated the weak Theodosius II, ruler over 
the Eastern Roman Empire, and after overrun¬ 
ning Thrace, Macedon and Greece, forced the 
emperor to grant him territory south of the 
Danube and to pay him tribute. 

Gaul was invaded in 451, but in the famous 
Battle of Chalons the Huns were completely 
defeated by the Roman army of the West, 
commanded by Aetius and Theodoric, king of 
the Visigoths. The following year Attila re¬ 
sumed his terrifying work of conquest, and 
Rome itself was saved only by the personal 
plea of the saintly Pope Leo I. In 453, on the 
night of his marriage with the beautiful Hilda 
(or Ildico), Attila died very suddenly, in the 
midst of preparations for another invasion of 
Italy. Whether he died at the hands of a 
friend of Rome or was killed by the bursting 
of a blood vessel or murdered by his reluctant 
bride has never been determined. The descrip¬ 
tion of Attila which has come down to us 
states that he had a large head, a flat nose, 
broad shoulders and a short and ill-formed 
body, but that his eyes were brilliant, his walk 
stately and that he possessed a voice strong 
and well-toned. 

ATTLEBORO, Mass., a town composed of 
several small villages in Bristol County, in 
the southeastern part of the state. Boston is 
thirty miles northeast and Providence, R. I., 
is twelve miles southwest. Transportation is 
provided by the New York, New Haven & 
Hartford Railway and by electric lines to 
neighboring cities. Attleboro has large bleach- 
eries and dye-houses and gold and silver re¬ 
fineries and smelters. The leading manufac¬ 
tures are jewelry and silverware, but buttons, 
cotton goods, yarn and leather are also made 
here. The town has a public library, a state 
armory, an almshouse and the Attleboro Home 
Sanitarium. Attleboro was settled in 1669 and 
was named for the English city of Attle¬ 
borough. Originally it was a part of Rehoboth, 
but was incorporated as a separate town in 
1694. In 1910 the population was 16,215; in 
1915 it was 18,480. 


ATTORNEY-GENERAL, atur'ni jeneral, 
the chief law officer of the United States or 
of a state. The Attorney-General of the 
United States is a member of the President’s 
Cabinet, and the head of the Department of 
Justice. He is the fourth member of the 
Cabinet in the order of succession to the 
Presidency. It is his duty to conduct all suits 
in the Supreme Court in which the United 
States is concerned, and to advise the Presi¬ 
dent and the members of the Cabinet upon 
points of law bearing upon matters in their 
respective departments when he is requested 
to do so (see Justice, Department of). His 
salary is $12,000 per year. 

The attorney-general of a state occupies a 
position in the state government similar to 
that of the Attorney-General of the United 
States in the national government, except that 
he is not a member of a Cabinet; he is an 
independent officer of the state. He conducts 
cases in the state Supreme Court to which the 
state is a party, and is the legal adviser of the 
governor and the heads of departments of the 
•state government. 

In Canada both Dominion and provincial 
attorneys general are Cabinet members. 

ATTRACTION, a Irak' shun, in physics, is 
the force through which particles of matter 
belonging to the same system are drawn toward 
one another. Gravitation, whereby the planets 
are held in their relative positions in the solar 
system and falling bodies are drawn to the 
earth, is an example of attractive force which 
operates universally. Other illustrations of at¬ 
traction are cohesion, the force that holds to¬ 
gether like molecules; adhesion, the force that 
holds together unlike molecules; magnetic at¬ 
traction, represented by the pulling up of iron 
filings when a horseshoe magnet is held near 
them; and electrical attraction, illustrated by 
the drawing near of a pith ball to an electrified 
body. See Gravitation ; Adhesion ; Cohesion ; 
Magnetism ; Electricity. 

In chemistry, attraction is represented by the 
force by which the elements in a compound 
substance are retained in combination. This 
force, which is known as chemical affinity, is 
illustrated by the union of hydrogen (two 
parts) and oxygen (one part) to form a mole¬ 
cule of water, whose symbol thus becomes HoO. 

AUBURN, aw' bern, Me., one of the most 
picturesquely situated cities in the state, is 
noted for its extensive shoe-manufacturing in¬ 
dustry. It was founded in 1789, and incorpor¬ 
ated in 1869; the population, largely American, 


AUBURN 


470 


AUCTION 


with a mixture of French Canadian, Irish, 
English, Hebrews, and Germans, numbered 
15,064 in 1910 and increased to 15,965 in 1914. 
The area is about forty-nine square miles. 

Auburn is situated in the southwestern part 
of the state, on the west bank of the Androscog¬ 
gin River in Androscoggin County, of which it 
is the county seat. Lewiston, on the opposite 
bank of the river, is connected with it by four 
bridges. Augusta is thirty-one miles north¬ 
east, and Portland is thirty-five miles south. 
The Maine Central and Grand Trunk rail¬ 
roads serve the city, and electric lines connect 
with towns north, east and west. It holds high 
rank in the shoe-manufacturing industry and 
its activity is notable in other lines. There are 
machine shops, canning works, packing houses 
and manufactures of lumber, marble and cotton 
products. Abundant water power is supplied 
by the Androscoggin and Little Androscoggin 
rivers. 

Buildings of interest are the post office, 
erected in 1908 at a cost of about $65,000, a 
$40,000 Home for Aged Women, and a high 
school which cost $100,000. There are five 
banks, nine churches and three private hos¬ 
pitals. 

Points of interest in the vicinity are Lewiston 
Falls and Poland Springs. Taylor Pond and 
Lake Auburn are considered among the most 
beautiful lakes in Maine, and the landscape 
surrounding Auburn presents one of the most 
striking views in the state. r.w.s. 

AUBURN, N. Y., a manufacturing city, the 
county seat of Cayuga County. It is also a 
popular summer resort because of its location 
in the hill and lake country of the western 
part of the state. It extends along both sides 
of the outlet of Owasco Lake, which is two 
and a half miles south and east of the city. 
Syracuse is twenty-six miles northeast, and 
Rochester is seventy-seven miles northwest. 
It is on the New York Central, the Lehigh 
Valley and the New York, Auburn & Lansing 
railroads and two interurban lines. In 1910 
there were 34,668 inhabitants; in 1914 the 
number had increased to 36,509. The area of 
the city is nine square miles. 

Auburn Theological Seminary, a Presbyte¬ 
rian school incorporated in 1820, and a branch 
of the Woman’s Educational and Industrial 
Union are situated in Auburn. The city also 
contains the state armory and the state prison, 
in connection with which there is a women’s 
prison. Prominent buildings are the Federal 
building, city hall, Case Memorial building, 


which contains the Seymour Library, an audi¬ 
torium and the county courthouse. The city 
has a number of parks, athletic fields and free 
playgrounds. 

An abundance of water for domestic and 
manufacturing purposes is supplied by Owasco 
Lake. Auburn is the home of about 200 diver¬ 
sified industries, employing nearly 7,000 work¬ 
ers whose pay amounts to $3,000,000 annually. 
The most important industrial enterprises are 
manufactories of cordage and twine, agricul¬ 
tural implements, boots and shoes, carpets and 
rugs, pianos, engines, rubber goods, flour and 
machinery. The city owns and operates a 
number of grey and blue limestone quarries 
in the vicinity. 

Auburn, laid out in 1793 by Captain John 
L. Hardenbergh, a veteran of the War of 
Independence, was called Hardenbergh’s Cor¬ 
ner until 1805, when it was made the county 
seat under its present name. It was incor¬ 
porated as a village in 1815 and as a city in 
1848. After 1823 Auburn was the home of 
William H. Seward, Secretary of State in Lin¬ 
coln’s Cabinet. He was buried in Fort Hill 
Cemetery. In the city is a fine bronze statue 
of this distinguished citizen. a.g.a. 

AUCKLAND, awk' land, the capital of the 
New Zealand province of the same name, sit¬ 
uated on Waitemata Harbor, one of the finest 
anchorages in the southern hemisphere. Until 
1865, Auckland was the capital of New Zea¬ 
land, but in that year the more central situ¬ 
ation of Wellington was recognized and that 
city became the seat of government. The 
domestic and foreign trade of Auckland is ex¬ 
tensive. The chief industries are shipbuilding, 
sugar refining, rope making and glass blowing. 
Imports consist chiefly of textiles, agricultural 
implements, machinery, tea and coffee. 

Auckland is 5,440 miles from San Francisco, 
1,350 miles from Sydney, and about 11,500 
miles from Liverpool by the Panama Canal. 
It is an important port of call for all vessels 
trading with Australasia. The city is well 
planned, illuminated throughout by electricity, 
and has many fine buildings. Population, 
1911, 40,536; with suburbs, 102,676. 

AUCTION, awk' shun, a form of sale where 
goods must be offered publicly and must be 
sold to the person offering the highest price, 
by public bidding. The owner of the property 
offered for sale may personally or through an 
authorized agent make bids on the articles to 
be sold in order to prevent their being sold 
for too low & price, but if he should employ 
\ 


AUDITOR 


471 


AUGEAN STABLES 


different agents to bid against each other in 
order to force the price upward, his action 
would be illegal. Put differently, mock bid¬ 
ding to raise the price by apparent competi¬ 
tion is contrary to law. The auctioneer, or 
person in charge of an auction, may refuse to 
sell an article if only one bid is received, but 
upon receiving a second bid the sale must 
continue. When the final bid on an article 
has been made, a binding contract for pur¬ 
chase and sale has been made (see Contract). 

AUDITOR, aw' (Liter, an officer whose duty 
it is to examine accounts. Auditors for the 
various departments of any government exam¬ 
ine the accounts of the officials in their re¬ 
spective departments who receive and pay out 
money. The auditor for a state or province 
examines the accounts of the state or provin¬ 
cial treasurer, and in most cases approves all 
bills before 1;hey can be paid. It is also his 
duty to see that the expenditures for any pur¬ 
pose do not exceed the specified appropria¬ 
tion. 

Cities, corporations and smaller firms usu¬ 
ally have auditors or they employ such men 
periodically, who make painstaking examina¬ 
tion of all books of record and base thereon 
a report. An auditor must be an expert book¬ 
keeper and also have a good knowledge of 
finance. One who has passed state examina¬ 
tions entitling him to rank as a certified pub¬ 
lic accountant can command a salary of $15 
to $30 per day. See Accountant. 

AUDUBON, aw'doobon, SOCIETY, The, 
an organization formed for the protection of 
birds. Beautiful birds have been hunted for 
their plumage, others for sport, until there 
has been danger of many species becoming 
extinct. This association, named for the great 
bird-lover, John James Audubon, has done 
much to prevent such wanton destruction and 
to create a sentiment against the wearing of 
birds and feathers on millinery. In almost 
every part of North America societies exist, 
with a membership totalling scores of thou¬ 
sands, and in addition thousands of women, 
not enrolled members, have pledged them¬ 
selves to refrain from wearing any ornaments 
which require the killing or maiming of birds. 
Many of the states and provinces have adopted 
laws which forbid the killing at any time of 
non-game birds, and it is chiefly due to the 
Audubon societies that the large tracts of 
ground have been set apart as bird reserva¬ 
tions (which see). 

The official organ of the National Associa¬ 


tion of Audubon Societies is Bird-Lore, a mag¬ 
azine which, because of its popular, non-tech- 
nical character, commends itself to bird-lovers 
who, strictly speaking, are not bird students. 
Information as to methods of organizing a 
society or as to the specific aims of the asso¬ 
ciation may be obtained from National Audu¬ 
bon Societies’ headquarters, New York City. 

John James Audubon (1780-1851), an Ameri¬ 
can naturalist and bird-lover, who did perhaps 
more than any other man to interest Ameri¬ 
cans in their native birds. He was born at 
Mandeville, La., of French parents, studied in 
France, and was taught drawing by the great 
artist David. In 1798 he settled near Phila¬ 
delphia, where he lived for ten years, devot¬ 
ing himself to the study of birds; later he 
spent much time in the West, where it was 
his great pleasure to wander about the woods 
and watch his feathered friends. In 1826 Au¬ 
dubon went to England, exhibited his draw¬ 
ings of birds, and finally published them in a 
great work containing 435 colored plates of 
birds the size of life, entitled The Birds of 
America. A copy of this complete work to-day 
is worth about $2,000. Later there appeared 
an accompanying text entitled Ornithological 
Biography, partly written by William McGil- 
livray. 

On his return to America Audubon labored 
with Dr. Bachman on a finely illustrated work 
entitled The Quadrupeds of America. His 
great merit is the accuracy and extent of his 
original observations. Audubon never insti¬ 
tuted any movement for the preservation of 
birds, for in his day much of the country was 
wild and it looked as though there were no 
danger of the birds ever becoming extinct; but 
his genuine love for them justifies the naming 
of the Audubon Society for him. 

AUGEAN, aw je'an, STABLES, in Greek 
and Roman mythology the stables of King 
Augeas, which, after thirty years of neg¬ 
lect, were cleansed in a single day. Augeas 
kept in these stables his famous 3,000 head 
of oxen. Hercules, commanded to perform 
twelve great labors as a punishment for hav¬ 
ing slain his children, was given as his sixth 
task the cleansing of the stables in one day. 
This gigantic feat he accomplished by turning 
into the stalls the Alpheus and Peneus rivers, 
whose waters entirely washed away the filth 
that had been collecting for thirty years. At 
the present time the expression, “cleansing 
the Augean Stables” is often used in a figura¬ 
tive sense, and is applied to a reformer who 


AUGER 


472 


AUGUST 


tries by personal labor or by publicity to rem¬ 
edy shameful political conditions. See Her¬ 
cules; Mythology. 

AUGER, aw' ger, a tool used for boring wood 
and earth. For either purpose the implement 
has a screw at the point, which draws it into 
the substance; a spiral pod with a cutting lip 
at each side of the end next to the screw 



AUGER 


throws out the borings. A steel shank above 
the pod carries the handle. An auger should 
be distinguished from a bit. The form of the 
boring part is the same, but a bit is fitted 
into a brace or bit stock. See Boring Ma¬ 
chine. 

AUGSBURG, owgs' boorK, in Bavaria, a 
famous free city of the Middle Ages, known 
as a center of trade between Germany and 
Italy and for its connection with the Augsburg 
Confession, the subject of the next article. It 
is still an important commercial point, with 
a population of over 100,000. 

Augsburg means the City of Augustus. It 
stands on the site of a colony founded by the 
emperor, about 12 b. c. The town became a 
free city in 1276. It played an important part 
in the development of German art, and among 
its treasures numbers the celebrated Golden 
Hall, a room in the town hall, considered one 
of the most beautiful in Germany. 

AUGSBURG CONFESSION, the most im¬ 
portant statement of their religious beliefs 
that the Protestants drew up during the 
Reformation, and at the present time the 
basis of the Lutheran faith. The Emperor 
Charles V, hoping to smooth out the difficul¬ 
ties between the Catholic and Protestant par¬ 
ties in Germany, called a meeting, or diet, at 
Augsburg in 1530 and requested the Protes¬ 


tants at that time to present a statement of 
their beliefs. Luther was unable to attend 
the diet, and the confession was therefore 
drawn up by Philip Melanchthon, one of the 
great Protestant leaders, and revised by Luther 
before being read. Charles V and the Catho¬ 
lics would not accept the document, and the 
division in the Church became permanent. 
Later, when the English religious leaders drew 
up the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of 
England, they used the Augsburg Confession 
as a basis for their work. g.w.m. 

AUGURS, aw' gers, a sacred college among 
the Romans, whose members read the hidden 
meaning of various signs and omens, and from 
them made plain the will of the gods and fore¬ 
told the future. These omens were signs in 
the sky, especially thunder and lightning; the 
flight and cries of birds; the feeding of the 
sacred chickens; the movements and sounds 
of serpents and other animals; and chance 
happenings, such as the gnawing of a mouse 
or the creaking of a chair, which occurred be¬ 
fore or during the augural ceremony. (See 
Superstition and its allied subjects.) 

The augurs were consulted when anything 
of importance was undertaken, and they could 
dismiss a meeting of the people merely by 
saying alio die (on another day). In early 
times, when the college was composed of 
nobles, the augurs sometimes used their power 
unjustly to keep the plebeians from holding a 
meeting. This college at first consisted of 
three members, but this number had increased 
to sixteen by the time of Caesar. The augurs 
were always men of distinction, and wore the 
toga with the wide purple border (see Toga). 

In modern speech augur and augury are 
used in the sense of foretelling or anticipating, 
and often with an impersonal subject, as, “It 
augurs ill for our plans that we cannot all 
agree.” 



UGUST was named for the Roman 
Emperor Augustus, one of the greatest rulers 
that ever lived; and there is indeed something 
royal about it. It is a month of gold and 
purple—its sun throws a “golden glory” on the 


yellowing fields, and everywhere there is 
golden rod and the purple aster; while purple 
grapes hang ripening on the vines. It is one 
of the warmest months of the year in the 
northern hemisphere, and usually one of the 

























AUGUST 


473 


AUGUST 



Birthdays 


1. Richard Henry Dana, 1815 

2. P. Marion Crawford, 1854 
Duncan Campbell Scott, 1862 

4. Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792 
6. Alfred Tennyson, 1809 

Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, 
1820 

8. Nelson A. Miles, 1839 

9. Izaak Walton, 1593 
Francis Scott Key, 1780 

12. Robert Southey, 1774 

13. Goldwin Smith, 1823 

14. Sir James Douglas, 1803 
Ernest Thompson Seton, 1860 

15. Napoleon Bonaparte, 1769 


Sir Walter Scott, 1771 
Thomas De Quincey, 1785 
David Crockett, 1786 
18. Virginia Dare, 1587 

Meriwether Lewis, 1774 
James Nasmyth, 1808 
Benjamin Harrison, 1833 
John B. Gough, 1817 
William Wilberforce, 1859 
Francis Bret Harte, 1839 
Sir Robert Walpole, 1676 
Sir Edward Burne-Jones, 1833. 
John Locke, 1632 
Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1809 
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, 1844 


17. 


19. 

20 . 
22 . 

24. 

25. 

26. 
28. 
29. 


31. 


History 


3. 


4. 


9. 


10 . 


11 . 


12 . 


Columbus first landed on American 
continent, 1502 
Battle of the Nile, 1798 
Colorado admitted to the Union, 1876 
Germany declared war on Russia, 1914 
Plenry Hudson first entered Hudson 
Bay, 1610 

German invasion of Belgium begun, 
1914 

Columbus sailed from Spain on his 
first voyage, 1492 

United States vessels bombarded Trip¬ 
oli, 1804 

All titles of nobility abolished in 
France, 1789 

Chinese exclusion law went into opera¬ 
tion in United States, 1882 
Cardinal Sarto elected Pope as Pius 
X, 1903 

Sir Humphrey Gilbert landed at Saint 
Johns, Newfoundland, 158 3 
First partition of Poland, 1772 
England declared war against Ger¬ 
many, 1914 

Holy Roman Empire ceased to exist, 
1806 

Battle of Thermopylae, 480 b. c. 
British entered Lhassa, Tibet, 1904 
Bonaparte sailed from England for 
Saint Helena, a prisoner, 1815. 
Webster-Ashburton Treaty signed at 
Washington, 1842 

Edward VII of England crowned, 1902 
Missouri admitted to the Union, 1821 
Russian and Japanese peace commis¬ 
sioners met at Portsmouth, N. H., 
1905 

Fulton’s Clermont made a trial trip, 
1807 

Settlement of boundary between On¬ 
tario and Manitoba, 1884 
First American railway joined Sche¬ 
nectady and Albany, N. Y., 1830 
United States and Spain signed peace 
proposals, 1898 


13. 


14. 

15. 

16. 
18. 

19 . 

20 . 

21 . 

22 . 

23. 

24. 

25. 


28. 


29. 

30 

31 


France and England declared war on 
Austria, 1914 

Mexico City captured by Spaniards, 
1520 

Manila surrendered to United States, 
1898 

Norway voted for separation from 
Sweden, 1905 

Foreign armies entered Peking to re¬ 
lieve legations, 1900 
Fort Dearborn massacre, 1812 
Lafayette returned to visit America, 
1824 

Battle of Bennington, 1777 
General Brock captured Detroit, 1812 
Kearney took Santa Fe, New Mexico, 
1846 

Cuerriere surrendered to the Constitu¬ 
tion, 1812 

Parliament passed bill for Union of 
South Africa, 1909 
Battle of Lorraine began, 1914 
Pilgrims sailed from England on May¬ 
flower, 1620 

Lincoln-Douglas debates began, 1858 
Battle of Bosworth, 1485 
Germans began attack on Mons, 
France, 1914 

Massacre of Saint Bartholomew, 1572 
British took Washington, D. C., and 
burned the Capitol, 1814 
Two hundred inhabitants of Montreal 
killed by Iroquois Indians, 1689 
English captured Fort Frontenac, Can¬ 
ada, 1758 

Battle of Long Island, 1776 
Louvain burned by Germans, 1914 
British Parliament abolished slavery 
in the colonies, 1833. 

Montenegro proclaimed an independent 
kingdom, 1910 

Melbourne, Victoria, founded, 1835 
Massacre of Fort Mims, 1813 
Second Battle of Bull Run, 1862 
Earthquake at Charleston, S. C., 1886 


For Study 


Butterfly 

Caterpillar 

Lily 

Molting 


Poppy 

Pewee 

Rice 

Seed dispersal 


Wheat 

Thistle 

Summer 

Vireo 


heavens (see Astronomy) 














AUGUST 


474 


AUGUST 


AUGUST QUOTATIONS 


1. All the long August afternoon, 

The little drowsy stream 
Whispers a melancholy tune 
As if it dreamed of June, 

And whispered in its dream. 

Howells. 

2. But pleasures are like poppies spread, 
You seize the flow’r, its bloom is dead. 

Burns. 

3. And ye shall succor men ; 

’Tis nobleness to serve: 

Help them who cannot help again. 

Emerson. 

4. Music, when soft voices die, 

Vibrates in the memory. Shelley. 

5. Be strong! 

It matters not how deep entrenched the 
wrong ; 

How hard the battle goes, the day how 
long; 

Faint not—fight on. 

To-morrow comes the song. Babcock. 

6. The sixth was August, being rich ar¬ 

rayed 

In garment all of gold down to the 
ground. Judd. 

7. Not in the clamor of the crowded 

street, 

Not in the shouts and plaudits of the 
throng, 

But in ourselves are triumph and de¬ 
feat. Longfellow. 

8. The simple faith remains that He 
Will do, whatever that may be 
The best alike for man and tree. 

Whittier. 

9. Sweet is pleasure after pain. 

Dryden. 

10. In the parching August wind, 
Cornfields bow the head, 

Sheltered in round valley depths, 

On low hills outspread. Rossetti. 

11. Nor knowest thou what argument 
Thy life to thy neighbor’s creed hath 

lent. Emerson. 

12. The dew is gleaming in the grass. 

The morning hours are seven, 

And I am fain to watch you pass, 

Ye soft white clouds of heaven. 

Lampson. 

13. The August cloud * * * suddenly 
Melts into streams of rain. Bryant. 

14. Not what we give, but what we share, 
For the gift without the giver is bare ; 
Who gives himself with his alms feeds 

three— 

Himself, his hungering neighbor, and 
me. Lowell. 

15. The word impossible is not in my dic¬ 

tionary. Napoleon. 

16. The bravest are the tenderest, 

The loving are the daring. Taylor. 


17. 

18. 
19. 


20 . 


21 . 


22 . 


23. 


24. 


25. 


26. 


27. 


28. 

29. 

30. 


What I kept, I lost. 

What I spent, I had. 

What I gave, I have. 

Persian Proverb. 

They can conquer who believe they 
can. Emerson. 

In the first drowsy heat of August 
noon— 

Comes the plumed golden rod with 
flaunting train, 

And lifts her yollow head along the 
way. Judd. 

Dream not helm and harness 
The sign of valor true ; 

Peace hath higher tests of manhood 
Than battle ever knew. Whittier. 

Whether we climb, whether we plod, 
Space for our task the scant years 
lend— 

To choose some path that leads to God 
And keep it to the end. Reese. 

The brilliant poppy flaunts her head 
Amidst the ripening grain, 

And adds her voice to swell the song 
That August’s here again. 

Winslow. 

Why, courage then! what cannot be 
avoided 

’Twere childish weakness to lament or 
fear. Shakespeare. 

In the world’s broad field of battle, 

In the bivouac of life, 

Be not like dumb, driven cattle— 

Be a hero in the strife. Longfellow. 

Through all the long midsummer day 
The meadow-sides are sweet with hay. 

Trowbridge. 

Small service is true service while it 
lasts— 

The daisy, by the shadow that it casts, 
Protects the lingering dewdrop from 
the sun. Wordsworth. 

The sun has drunk 

The dew that lay upon the morning 
gra ss ; 

There is no rustling in the lofty elm 
That canopies my dwelling, and its 
shade 

Scarce cools me. Bryant. 

They serve God well 

Who serve his creatures. Norton. 

Sin has many tools, but a lie is the 
handle which fits them all. 

Holmes. 

I dare do all that may become a man ; 
Who dares do more is none. 

Shakespeare. 

How beautiful is the rain ! 

After the dust and heat, 

In the broad and fiery street, 

In the narrow lane, 

How beautiful is the rain ! 

Longfellow. 






















AUGUSTA 


475 


AUGUSTA 


stillest, so its heat is likely to be the “swelter¬ 
ing” variety. Its special flower is the poppy, 
and its gem the sardonyx. 

History of the Month. In Rome, during tne 
days of the Republic, the year began with 
March, and August was the sixth month, as 
its name, Sextilis, declares. But after Julius 
Caesar made his reforms in the calendar it 
became the eighth month (see Calendar). 
This alone would not have led to its renaming, 
but Julius Caesar rechristened the month of 
July for himself, and his successor Augustus, 
desired a like honor. Requested to make his 
choice, he took his “lucky month”—the month 
in which he had been elected consul, had 
three times celebrated a triumph, and had com¬ 
pleted the conquest of Egypt. But here a 
difficulty arose: July had thirty-one days, and 
the newly-named month had but thirty; and 
thus Julius was yet more honored than Augus¬ 
tus. Since this was not to be thought of, a 
day was taken from February, already the 
least of the months, and given to August. 

In the United States, as in Canada, there is 
no general holiday in August, but several of 
the states have set special days apart for 
observance. Colorado celebrates the first of 
August, the date of its admission to the Union, 
and Missouri the tenth, for a similar reason; 
while Vermont observes with fitting ceremonies 
the sixteenth, the anniversaiy of the Battle of 
Bennington. 

AUGUSTA, aw' gus ta, Ga., locally known as 
the Queen City, is the largest cotton manu¬ 
facturing center of the South, and second 
largest inland cotton market in the world. It 
had a population, chiefly American, of 49,451 
in 1914, an increase of 8,411 since 1910. The 
city is located 140 feet above sea level, on the 
Savannah River, in Richmond County, of 
which it is the county seat, in the northeastern 
part of the state. Charleston, S. C., is about 
136 miles southeast; Atlanta, about 171 miles 
northwest. Transportation facilities are af¬ 
forded by the Georgia, Central of Georgia, 
Southern, Augusta Southern, Charleston & 
Western Carolina, Atlantic Coast Line and 
Georgia & Florida railways, and by steamer, 
the river being navigable to Augusta. The area 
is about nine square miles. 

Buildings. Among the structures of note 
are the post office, erected at a cost of $350,000, 
a fine courthouse, the $450,000 Empire build¬ 
ing, and a granite bank building constructed in 
1913. The most prominent of its educational 
institutions are the Richmond Academy, one of 


the oldest academies in the south, Mount Saint 
Joseph Academy and the Medical College of 
Georgia, founded in 1832. Paine Institute (col¬ 
ored), three business schools, two high schools 
and two public libraries also serve the educa¬ 
tional needs. The most notable of its many 
churches is Saint Paul’s, wh^ch was the only 
church for fifty years in Augusta. 

Commerce and Enterprise. Augusta is lo¬ 
cated in the heart of the cotton district, and 
its industries largely center in the manufactures 
of this product. It supplies a larger quantity 
of unbleached cotton goods than any other 
city of the United States and the number of 
its cotton factories has given it the name of 
the Lowell oj the South. It is also the second 
largest cottonseed oil market in the world. 
The Augusta Canal, nine miles long, con¬ 
structed at a cost of $1,500,000, furnishes abun¬ 
dant power for manufacturing purposes. It 
was near Augusta that the first cotton-gin was 
invented and operated by Eli Whitney, and 
here the first steam-propelled boat was floated 
by James Longstreet in 1806, a year before the 
Fulton exploits were known. It is also claimed 
that a sewing machine was constructed here 
in 1830, several years previous to the Howe 
invention. Here also was invented the first 
burr-cleaning machine and from the noted 
State Medical College came Dr. Crawford 
Long, the discoverer of anaesthesia. 

History. Augusta was founded in 1736 by 
General James Oglethorpe, founder of the col¬ 
ony of Georgia, who named it Augusta in 
hopor of the daughter of George II; in 1798 
it was incorporated as a city. Before and 
during the Revolutionary War it was an im¬ 
portant military post and the surrounding 
country was the scene of heroic fighting. Fort 
Cornwallis and Fort Grierson were located 
here; General Henry Lee, known in history as 
“Light Horse Harry,” was one of the leaders 
in the capture of these two forts, which feat 
drove the English from Augusta. From 1790 
to 1796 it was the capital of Georgia. The 
government maintains an arsenal here for the 
storage of arms and ammunition. It is the 
burial place of three of the signers of the 
Declaration of Independence, Hall, Walton and 
Guinnett. In March, 1916, the city sustained a 
loss by fire, amounting to several millions of 
dollars. m.&m.a. 

AUGUSTA, Me., the capital of the state, 
the county seat of Kennebec County, and a 
trade center of importance in its territory. It 
is situated in the southwestern section of the 


AUGUSTAN AGE 


476 


AUGUSTUS 


state, at the head of navigation on the Ken¬ 
nebec River, forty miles from the sea. Port¬ 
land is sixty-one miles southwest by rail. Rail¬ 
way transportation is by the Maine Central 
Railway, and the Augusta, Winthrop & Gar¬ 
diner electric line communicates with adjacent 
cities and towns.- Steamers connect with Port¬ 
land, Boston and other important coast cities. 
The permanent settlement of Augusta dates 
from 1754. The place was known as Cushnoc, 
until 1771, when it was incorporated as Hal¬ 
lowed; a part of this settlement was organized 
as Harrington in 1797, the name being later 
changed to Augusta. In 1831 it became the 
capital of the state and in 1849 it was incor¬ 
porated as a city. The population increased 
from 13,211 in 1910 to 13,860 in 1914, French 
comprising one-fifth of this number. Fifty-five 
and one-half square miles are included within 
the city’s limits. 

Augusta is built on both banks of the river— 
mainly on the west bank—a large portion 
occupying an elevation considerably higher. 
Here are the residence districts and the massive 
granite State Capitol with its library of 60,000 
volumes. The Federal building, United States 
arsenal, Maine insane asylum, city hospital 
and Lithgow Library (public) are other build¬ 
ings worthy of note. Across the river, one-half 
mile above Augusta, extends an immense dam 
nearly 1,000 feet in length, which furnishes 
great water power for manufacture. The city 
has big cotton and shoe factories, lumber-pulp 
and paper mills, and publishing houses. It is 
a trading point for a large territory on account 
of its shipping facilities. 

AUGUSTAN AGE, the most brilliant period 
in the history of Roman literature, taking its 
name from the Emperor Augustus, who gener¬ 
ously aided and encouraged the writers that 
lived in his reign. It was the time of Horace, 
Ovid, and Vergil, the age which saw the highest 
development of the Latin language and in 
which literary men received the highest hon¬ 
ors. In England the term was later applied 
to a corresponding period of great literary 
activity, the age of Steele, Addison and Swift, 
and in France to the reign of Louis XIV. 

AUGUSTINE, aw gus' tine, or AUSTIN, 
Saint, the Apostle of the English, and the first 
archbishop of Canterbury. While a monk in 
the monastery of Saint Andrew, Rome, he was 
summoned by Pope Gregory I to lead a band 
of missionaries to England. In 597 they landed 
on the island of Thanet, southeast of England, 
and were there kindly welcomed by Ethelbert, 


king of Kent. Through the preaching of Saint 
Augustine and his followers thousands of the 
English, including the king, were converted, 
and in 601 the Pope made Augustine Arch¬ 
bishop of Canterbury. The historian Green 
says of the mission of Saint Augustine: 

The march of the monks as they chanted their 
solemn litany was in one sense a return of the 
Roman legions who withdrew at the trumpet 
call of Alaric. The civilization, art, letters, 
which had fled before the sword of the English 
conquerors, returned with the Christian faith. 

AUGUSTINE, Saint (Aurelius Augus¬ 
tinus) (354-430), a renowned Catholic theo¬ 
logian, ranking first among the great early 
fathers of the Church in intellectual power, 
spirituality and influence. He was born at 
Tagaste, in Numidia, North Africa, and as a 
youth showed such promise that his father 
gave him the best education possible at that 
time. After finishing his schooling at Carthage, 
he became a teacher of rhetoric and grammar. 
Though his mother was a Christian and a 
woman of sincere and tender piety, Augustine 
did not accept Christianity until thirty-two 
years of age. From the time he was nineteen 
he sought eagerly for the truth, taking up 
one system of philosophy after another, and 
finding in none the power that could free 
him from the vicious habits which he had 
acquired in his boyhood. About 384 he went 
to Milan to accept a position as teacher of 
rhetoric, and there, coming under the influence 
of the great Saint Ambrose, bishop of Milan, 
was converted to Christianity in 386. 

Augustine’s conversion is an important event 
in the history of the Catholic Church, for, hav¬ 
ing consecrated his mighty intellect to the 
service of the Church, he produced a great 
body of writings on theology that have had 
profound influence from his age to the present 
time. He became bishop of Hippo (in North 
Africa) in 395, and labored there until his 
death, which occurred during the famous siege 
by the Vandals in the year 430. Two of 
Augustine’s works, The City of God and his 
Confessions, are to be classed among the best- 
known religious writings of all time. The 
former is a defense of Christianity and the 
Christian Church; the latter, a narrative of his 
early life and conversion, reveals the heights 
of his literary power. 

AUGUSTUS, a title meaning consecrated, 
bestowed by the Roman Senate upon Gaius 
Julius Caesar Octavianus (63 b. c.-a.d. 14), one 
of the most famous rulers who ever lived. He 



AUGUSTUS 


477 


AUK 


was a grand-nephew of Julius Caesar, by whom 
he was adopted, and was studying in Ulyricum 
at the time of Caesar’s assassination. Proceed¬ 
ing to Rome to claim his uncle’s property and 
avenge his death, he came into conflict with 
Antony, but the latter was overcome and 
Octavianus succeeded in getting himself chosen 
consul. Soon afterward, having become recon¬ 
ciled with Antony, he formed, with him and 
Lepidus, the second triumvirate (see Trium¬ 
virate). This alliance resulted in a proscrip¬ 
tion, in which 300 Senators and 2,000 knights 
were put to death. 

Rise to Power. Next year Octavianus and 
Antony defeated the republican army under 
Brutus and Cassius at Philippi, and the victors 
now divided the Roman world between them, 
Octavianus taking the West, Antony the East, 



and Lepidus 
Africa. Sextus 
Pompeius, who 
had made him¬ 
self formidable at 
sea, was put 
down; and soon 
after, Lepidus, 
who had never 
had more than an 
appearance of 
power, was de- 
prived of all 
authority and re¬ 
tired into private 
life. Antony and 
Octavianus now 
shared the Em¬ 
pire between 
them; but 
while the for¬ 
mer, in the East, 
gave himself up 
to a life of luxury and alienated the Romans 
by his life at the court of Cleopatra, Octa¬ 
vianus skilfully cultivated popularity and 
soon declared war against the queen of Egypt. 
The naval victory of Actium, in which the 
fleet of Antony and Cleopatra was defeated, 
made Octavianus master of the world, 31 b, c. 


AUGUSTUS 
Prom a statue. 


He returned to Rome, celebrated a splendid 
triumph, and caused the temple of Janus to 
be closed as a sign of universal peace. Grad¬ 
ually all the highest offices of state, civil and 
religious, were united in his hands, and the new 
title of Augustus was formally conferred by 
the senate in 27 b. c. See Antony; Cleopatra. 

Achievements. Under Augustus successful 
wars were carried on in Africa and Asia, in 
Gaul and Spain, in Pannonia and in Dalmatia; 
but the defeat of Varus by the Germans under 
Arminius, with the loss of three legions, in 



EXTENT OF EMPIRE AT DEATH OF 
AUGUSTUS 


1— Italy 

2— Spain 

3— Gaul 

4— Ulyricum 

5— Macedonia 


6— Asia 

7— Syria 

8— Numidia 

9— Cyrenaica 
10—Egypt 


a. d. 9, was a great blow to him. One of his 
great works was the adorning of Rome in such 
a manner that it was said, “He found it of 
brick, and left it of marble.” The people 
erected altars to him as to a god, and by a 
decree of the senate the month Sextilis was 
called Augustus. His death, which took place 
at Nola, plunged the Empire into the greatest 
grief. Augustus was thrice married, but had 
no son, and was succeeded by his stepson, 
Tiberius. It was during the reign of Augustus 
that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. a.mc c. 

AUK, awk, a name applied to several species 
of diving and swimming birds found in Arctic 
regions and particularly common on the shores 
of Siberia and Alaska. They are closely related 
to the grebes and loons and, like them, are 
very clumsy on land but swim with great 
speed both on the surface and under the water. 
Auks are migratory and spend the winter on 
open seas, going to northern rock}^ coasts in 
the spring to breed. In colonies of tens of 
thousands they make their nesting places on 
ledges of rock, and there, with no pretense 













AULD LANG SYNE 


478 


AURELIUS 


at nest making, each female deposits one large 
egg. It is held in place by the webbed feet 
of the parent bird during the period of hatch- 



THE GREAT AUK 

ing. The legs of the auks are placed so far 
back on the body that the birds when upright 
appear to stand on their tails. Their wings 
are quite useless for flight but are extremely 
serviceable as fins in swimming. 

The Great Auk, or Garefowl, which for¬ 
merly inhabited northern regions and occa¬ 
sionally visited the British Isles, is now extinct. 
It was as large as a goose, and black and white 
in color. Eggs of this species, and some stuffed 
specimens of the bird, are carefully preserved 
in museums. 

The Razor-Billed Auk is about fifteen inches 
in length and has a sharp and heavy bill. This 
species breeds in great numbers on the coast 
of Labrador and New Brunswick and thousands 
are killed every year for their breast feathers. 
An occasional visitor to the United States is 
the Little Auk, about the size of a robin and 
black and white in color. It is occasionally 
found during winter in the regions of the Great 
Lakes. 

AULD LANG SYNE, awld lang sine. These 
Scotch words which mean old long since, or 
the days gone by, are the title of a very pop¬ 
ular old song, of which the words are generally 
ascribed to Robert Burns. It seems most prob¬ 
able, however, that Burns merely rewrote a 
song which had been sung a century and a half 
before his time, adding two stanzas and giving 
to the whole the touch of his unique genius. 
The music, which seems one with the words, 
,is an old Scottish air. Few songs are sung 


oftener or with greater feeling than Auld Lang 
Syne. The first stanza and the refrain follow: 

Should auld acquaintance be forgot, 

And never brought to min’ ? 

Should auld acquaintance be forgot, 

And days o’ auld lang syne? 

f 

For auld lang syne, my dear, 

For auld lang syne, 

We’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet, 

For auld lang syne. 

AURELIAN, aw re'li an, Lucius Domitius 
(Aurelianus) (about 212-275), a Roman em¬ 
peror whose firm and vigorous rule in an age of 
disorder and unrest gave him the title “Re¬ 
storer of the Empire.” Of humble birth, he 
rose to the highest rank in the army, and on 
the death of Claudius II in 270 was chosen 
emperor by the soldiers. He freed Italy from 
the barbarians, conquered the famous Zenobia, 
queen of Palmyra, and followed up his victories 
by introducing reforms and restoring order 
throughout the empire. He had many public 
works and buildings erected, and to him also 
is due the enlargement and restoration of the 
walls of Rome. Aurelian was assassinated 
while heading an expedition against the Per¬ 
sians. 

AURELIUS, awre'lius, Marcus (121-180), 
the last of the “five good emperors” of Rome, 
and noted also as a philosopher, was famed 
for his gentleness and sweetness of character. 
It has been said of him that he “devoted 
himself to the task of government with a 
single view to the happiness of his people.” 
He came to the throne in the year 161, suc¬ 
ceeding his foster-father, Antoninus Pius. 
Early in his reign he was forced to send an 
army against the Parthians, and his victorious 
soldiers brought home with them, in 165, a 
terrible Asiatic plague that swept off vast num¬ 
bers of his people. In the midst of this 
national distress came news of the uprising of 
the barbarians in the regions beyond the Alps, 
and Aurelius, placing himself at the head of 
his legions, hastened to the protection of the 
Roman frontiers. The greater part of his 
life thereafter was spent in the camp or on 
the battlefield, in the effort to keep back the 
various Germanic tribes, and he died from 
the effects of this campaigning in the nine¬ 
teenth year of his reign. 

Aurelius was naturally a student and a lover 
of peace, and his Meditations, much read to¬ 
day, have more of the spirit of Christ’s teach¬ 
ings than any other pagan writings. Though 
his leign was marred by bitter persecution 












AURIGA 


479 


AURORA 


of the Christians, he permitted these because 
he believed the Christians menaced the pros¬ 
perity of the empire. He ruled wisely and 
justly, and after his death the people honored 
him as a god. 

AURIGA, awry' ga, the Waggoner or Char¬ 
ioteer, in astronomy the name of a constella¬ 
tion to -the east of Perseus. The principal 
star is Capella, larger and brighter than the 
sun, but far more distant from the earth. In 
mythology the Charioteer is supposed to be 
Phaethon, son of Apollo, who borrowed Apollo’s 
chariot and horses and was overthrown when 
trying to drive them. Capella represents a 
goat, probably Amalthea, the goat which 
suckled the infant Hercules. See Mythology, 
for the story of Phaethon. 


the thousands of visitors who flock to see it 
are enabled to do so without discomfort by 
means of the great mirror which has been 
placed beneath it. In this picture Apollo rides 
on the clouds in his chariot, driving his four 
horses with his left hand. About him cluster 
the hours, and above the horses flies the winged 
torch-bearer, Lucifer. In front, looking back 
at Apollo, floats the graceful Aurora, who 
bears in her hand flowers which she is appar¬ 
ently about to drop upon the sleeping world 
below. The coloring in this masterpiece of 
Guido Reni is particularly warm and pleasing. 

AURORA, III., an industrial city, with a 
population, chiefly Americans, with a mixture 
of Hungarians and Rumanians, which in¬ 
creased from 29,807 in 1910 to 33,022 in 1914. 





ilViJii.i' 





Mr / ng 

Igk^ 





THE FAMOUS AURORA, BY GUIDO RENI 


AURORA, awro'ra, in Greek and Roman 
mythology the goddess of the dawn, the 
radiant messenger who opened the gates of the 
East, that the sun god in his chariot might 
drive up the sky. Her rosy fingers and yellow 
robe represented the glowing colors which ap¬ 
pear in the heavens before the sun rises. 
Aurora was a somewhat fickle goddess, and 
bestowed her love in turn upon Orion (which 
see), Tithonus and Cephalus. 

The Aurora in Art. The youthful goddess 
of the dawn has always been a favorite in art, 
and various are the representations of her. 
Burne-Jones pictures her as a graceful, light- 
footed maiden, walking through quaint old- 
world streets which she is wakening to life 
by her clanging cymbals. But by all means 
the most famous painting of Aurora is by 
Guido Reni (which see). It is a ceiling paint¬ 
ing in the Casino Rospigliosi at Rome, and 


It is situated in Kane County, in the north¬ 
eastern part of the state, and on the Fox 
River. Chicago is thirty-eight miles northeast, 
and many people live here whose business is 
in the greater city. Aurora is served by four 
railway lines, and electric lines connect with 
Chicago and adjacent towns in all directions. 
It is one of the greatest interurban centers in 
the state. The city, popularly called the City 
of Lights, was founded in 1834, was incorpor¬ 
ated in 1840 and was named for Aurora, the 
goddess of the dawn. The area is about six 
square miles. 

This city claims to have been the first city 
in the United States to light its streets by 
electricity, hence its popular name, above 
noted. The business section is near the river, 
and its principal buildings are the post office^ 
built in 1892 at a cost of $117,000, and a Sol¬ 
diers’ Memorial Hall, erected by popular sub- 




























AURORA 


480 


AUvSTEN 


scription. There are five banks and three hos¬ 
pitals. The Advent College, the Jennings Sem¬ 
inary, three business colleges, two musical 
colleges, two high schools and a Carnegie Li¬ 
brary serve the educational interests, and thirty- 
nine churches are distributed throughout the 
city. Phillips Park (twenty acres), Fox River 
Park (fifteen acres), Lincoln Park and Mc¬ 
Kinley Park are the recreation and beauty 
spots of the city, and Sylvandell, an immense 
dance hall, is a popular amusement resort. The 
extensive car shops of the Chicago, Burlington 
& Quincy Railroad, with 1,600 employees, 
are located here. Machine shops, flour and 
woolen mills, stove and iron works, smelting 
and refining works and cotton factories are 
among the industrial establishments. j.m.p. 

AURORA, Ont., a town in York County, 
twenty miles north of Toronto, with which it 
is connected by electric lines and by the 
Grand Trunk and the Canadian Northern rail¬ 
ways. It receives hydro-electric power from 
Niagara Falls and claims to have the cheap¬ 
est power and lighting rate of any city of its 
size in the province. It has a number of im¬ 
portant industrial establishments, including 
flour mill, tannery, planing mill and agricul¬ 
tural implement, furniture and boot and shoe 
factories. The $30,000 Dominion post office, 
completed in 1915, is a conspicuous building. 
Aurora was settled in 1857 and was incor¬ 
porated as a town in 1885. Population in 
1911,1,901; in 1916, estimated, 2,500. w.j.b. 

AURORA BOREALIS, awro'ra boreay'lis, 
or NORTHERN LIGHTS, the northern Polar 
lights, a peculiar stream of light of great 
beauty, seen a short time after sunset and 
continuing sometimes through the night. The 
Aurora Australis is the corresponding light 
seen in the southern hemisphere. The path 
of light usually forms a fiery arch across the 
northern sky, with its ends on the east and 
west horizons and its streams of light ascend¬ 
ing from a line of haze or cloud sometimes 
to a point almost directly overhead. Its rays 
are transient and constantly in motion, vary¬ 
ing in color from a greenish hue or a pale 
yellow to a deep, blood red, and its shapes 
are infinite in number. The zone wherein the 
aurora is seen most frequently in the northern 
hemisphere has its center near the southern 
part of Hudson Bay. As one travels south 
of that point, the aurora is observed less fre¬ 
quently ; near the equator it is rarely seen. 

These auroras are caused by the passage of 
electricity through the rarified upper atmos¬ 


phere, and in adjacent regions are accom¬ 
panied by loud noises which resemble electrical 
flashes and the crackling of fire crackers. A 
similar effect is produced by passing electrical 
currents through rarified air or gases. During 



AURORA BOREALIS 

Characteristic appearance in the Polar re¬ 
gions, where the display is most brilliant. 


the appearance of an aurora the magnetic 
needle is subject to disturbances, showing a 
close connection between the aurora and mag¬ 
netism. See Electricity; Magnetism. 

AIJSABLE CHASM, awsa'b'l kaz'm, a pic¬ 
turesque gorge on the x4usable River in New 
York, one of the most attractive spots in the 
state. Hundreds of tourists visit it each year, 
either on foot or in the small boats which ply 
the river. It is about two miles long, and 
in some places its vertical walls are 175 feet 
high. On both sides steep ravines, overgrown 
with dusky cedars and pines, lead into it, 
and a walk along the edge of the precipices 
and over the bridges which arch these fissures 
well repays the visitor. Geologists also find 
there formations which are of interest and 
importance. Ausable Chasm is twelve miles 
from Plattsburg and one mile from Keese- 
ville. 

AUSTEN, Jane (1775-1817), an English 
writer who has had no superior among novel¬ 
ists in ability to fashion an interesting story 
from the everyday happenings of life in a 
small village. She was born in Steventon, 
a village of Hampshire, the daughter of a 
clergyman. Her mother was a niece of Theoph- 





















































AUSTERLITZ 


481 


AUSTIN 


ilus Leigh, for fifty years master of Balliol 
College, Oxford. No startling events ever in¬ 
terrupted the 
placid current of 
her life, and her 
novels, as free 
from sensational¬ 
ism as the au¬ 
thor’s own expe¬ 
riences, hold the 
reader’s interest 
b}'- reason of her 
clear and flowing 
style, delicate hu¬ 
mor and admir¬ 
able gift in story- JANE Al STEN 

telling. Sir Walter Scott said of her: 

“That 3 r oung- lady had talent for describing 
the feelings and characters of ordinary life, 
which is to me the most wonderful I ever met 
with. The big Bow-Wow strain I can do myself, 
like any now going; but the exquisite touch, 
which renders ordinary, commonplace things and 
characters interesting from the truth of the de¬ 
scription and the sentiment, is denied me.” 

Miss Austen’s stories have played an im¬ 
portant part in the development of the Eng¬ 
lish novel, and her fame among English writ¬ 
ers of fiction is secure. Her novels, numbering 
only six, are Sense and Sensibility, Pride and 
Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger 
Abbey and Persuasion. 

AUSTERLITZ, ows' tur litz, the name of an 
Austrian town which is conspicuous in his¬ 
tory as the scene of one of the most masterly, 
most complete victories ever gained over supe¬ 
rior numbers. Here in 1805 Napoleon, with 
70,000 men, defeated the allied Austrian and 
Russian armies, with 95,000 men. The deci¬ 
sive victory of the French led to the Peace 
of Pressburg between France and Austria. 
Austerlitz is in Moravia, ten miles east of 
Brunn. In 1900 it had a population of 3,703. 

AUSTIN, aw' stin, Texas, the state capital 
and county seat of Travis County. It is 
about 200 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, east 
of the center of the state and on the Houston 
& Texas Central, the Missouri, Kansas & 
Texas, and the International & Great North¬ 
ern railroads. Fort Worth is 198 miles north 
and east, San Antonio eighty miles southwest, 
and Houston 165 miles southeast; fifty miles 
farther is Galveston. The population in 1910 
was 29,860; in 1914 it had increased to 33,219. 
The area is over twelve square miles. 

Austin is situated on hills rising from forty 
to 120 feet above the Colorado River, which 


runs to the south and east of the city. Two 
fine bridges span the river, which is navigable 
at this point for small craft. Austin Lake, 
nearly thirty miles in length, is about two 
miles from the city; it was created by a huge 
dam across the river, and supplies power for 
the city and affords fishing, bathing and canoe¬ 
ing for pleasure seekers. The old dam, which 
was one of the largest in the world, broke in 
1900 and has since been replaced at a cost 
of $1,720,000. The city is supplied with water 
from a reservoir five miles distant. 

The state capitol dominates the city from 
its position in Capitol Square, an elevated 
park of about twenty acres in the heart of 
the town. It is built of red Texas granite and 
cost $3,500,000. In 1915 it was the largest 
state capitol in the United States, and is said 
to be one of the twelve largest buildings in 
the world. Its floor space is almost eighteen 
acres in extent. It is built in the form of a 
Greek cross; the arm from east to west is 600 
feet long, and that from north to south is 287 
feet long. The dome at the intersection of 
these two arms rises 313 feet. The building 
was erected by Chicago capitalists in exchange 
for 3,000,000 acres of Texas public land. It 
contains a library and Confederate Museum, 
besides many executive halls. 

The buildings of the University of Texas, 
costing about $2,500,000, the largest state uni¬ 
versity in the South, were opened in 1883. Be¬ 
sides these the old and new Federal buildings, 
costing $300,000 each, the county courthouse 
and the state land office are prominent 
structures. Austin has a number of private 
educational institutions, among them being 
Southwestern Presbyterian Theological Sem¬ 
inary; Saint Edward’s College; Tillotson In¬ 
stitute (colored) and Samuel Houston Col¬ 
lege. The benevolent and charitable institu¬ 
tions include the Confederate Home; the 
Confederate Woman’s Home; a state asylum 
for the insane; a state institution for the 
blind and a state institution for the deaf and 
dumb. 

Austin’s naturally very pretty parks have 
the great advantage of being green the year 
round. These include Pease Park of sixty 
acres, Woolridge Park, a beautiful amphithea¬ 
ter of three acres, and East Avenue Park of 
three acres, all a part of the city’s park and 
boulevard system. 

As the largest city in the central and west¬ 
ern part of Texas, except El Paso on the ex¬ 
treme western boundary, Austin is the trading 




AUSTIN 


482 


AUSTRALIA 


and jobbing center for that great section. It 
has an extensive wholesale trade in harness, 
leather goods, groceries, dry goods and drugs. 
It is a market for live stock, cotton, grain, 
wool and hides and has large manufactories 
including canning plants, oil mills, planing 
mills, mattress factories, soap factories and 
many other industries. 

Austin, first named Waterloo, was settled in 
1838, the year of the death of Stephen Fuller 
Austin, the father of Texas, for whom the city 
was in 1839 re-named. In that year it was 
chosen capital of the Republic of Texas, then 
lately seceded from Mexico. Due to the in¬ 
fluence of General Sam Houston, one time 
governor of the Texan republic, the capital 
was later removed to Houston. In 1845 Aus¬ 
tin was again made the capital, and it retained 
that honor against three early competitors, 
Huntsville, Tehuacana Springs and Houston. 
In 1909 the city adopted the commission form 
of government. w.e.l. 

AUSTIN, Alfred (1835-1913), an English 
poet who succeeded Alfred Tennyson as poet 

laureate in 1896. 
He was born near 
Leeds. After 
graduating at the 
University of 
London, he was 
called to the bar, 
in 1857, but soon 
gave up the law 
for literature. In 
1870 he wrote a 
severe criticism 
of Tennyson, 
Browning and 
other poets of 


the time, in an essay entitled The Poetry of the 
Period . His own verse is graceful, but less 
imaginative than that of the poets he criticised. 
Among his poetical writings are Songs of Eng¬ 
land, A Tale of True Love and Other Poems 
(dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt), The Door 
of Humility and Love Poems. He w r as also the 
author of a drama, Flodden Field, which w r as 
produced in 1903 at His Majesty’s Theater; 
and of several nature essays. 

AUSTIN, Stephen Fuller (1793-1836), the 
founder of Texas, and one of the two men 
whom the state has honored by placing their 
statues in the national Statuary Hall at Wash¬ 
ington. His father, Moses Austin (1767-1821), 
obtained from Mexico the first grant of land 
for an American colony, but he died before 
the project could be carried out. The son, 
however, in 1821 established a colony of sev¬ 
eral hundred families on the Brazos River; 
the principal settlement was named Austin, in 
his honor. Austin was one of the leaders in 
demanding recognition for the Americans in 
Texas from the Mexican government, but he 
was at first opposed to the movement for in¬ 
dependence. In 1835, when it became clear 
that no concessions would be made by Mexico, 
he accepted the chief command of the Texan 
army, but resigned after a few months. He 
then went to the United States, where he 
secured money and supplies to aid the Texans. 
In the next year he was an unwilling candi¬ 
date for the presidency of the new Republic 
of Texas, but was defeated by Samuel Hous¬ 
ton, in whose Cabinet he was Secretary of 
State until his unexpected death on December 
2, 1836. See Texas, subhead History. 

AUSTRALASIA, aws tral a' she ah. See 
Oceania. 



ALFRED AUSTIN 

Poet laureate of England, 
who was succeeded by Rob¬ 
ert Bridges. 



AUSTRALIA 


USTRALIA, aws tray' lia, the 
smallest of the five continents, the only one 
entirely within the southern hemisphere, and 
the only one which is an island. In name as 
well as in location it is the southland, for 
the word is taken directly from the Latin and 


means southern. It is the most detached of 
the grand divisions, lying between the Indian 
and the Pacific oceans, far to the southeast 
of Asia, and as a result has few similarities to 
any of the other continents in its physical 
formations or its animal or plant life. Its 






























AUSTRALIA 


483 


AUSTRALIA 


area of 2,948,366 square miles is about 600,000 
less than that of Europe, and almost equal to 
that of the United States without Alaska or 
its island possessions. It is thus second in 
size only to Canada among the colonial pos¬ 
sessions of Great Britain. For Australia, with 



LOCATION MAP 

Showing location of Australia with respect to 
the continent of Asia and the great islands to 
the north. 

the island of Tasmania to the south, consti¬ 
tutes a dependency of Great Britain, and has 
been known since 1901 as the Commonwealth 
of Australia. The article that follows treats 
of the continental portion of that federation, 
while Tasmania is considered under its own 
title. Each of the five states of the Common¬ 
wealth on the mainland, namely, New South 
Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia 
and Western Australia, with the Northern Ter¬ 
ritory, is given separate treatment in these 
volumes. 

The People. The Native Races. In a con¬ 
sideration of Australia the term people includes 
two classes as distinct as are the white inhab¬ 
itants and the Indians of North America. For 
Australia also has its native races, or aborig¬ 
ines, as they are called, the word meaning lit¬ 
erally from the beginning. These natives 
have some characteristics of the negroes, some 
of the Caucasian peoples, and scholars are 
inclined to treat them as a race distinct from 


all others. They are dark in color, have either 
wavy or straight, but never woolly, hair, thick 
lips and flat nose. Of medium height, they 
possess an inferior muscular development, nor 
do they seem any more highly developed 
mentally or morally. Indeed, by some stu¬ 
dents of racial characteristics they are placed 
at the very bottom of the scale of humanity. 
They have no fixed dwellings, living in the 
summer in the open air and with the coming 
on of winter sheltering themselves in the 
rudest of bark dwellings. Most of them wear 
no clothes, though the southernmost tribes 
make skin rugs for use in the winter. 

As to food, they are far from particular. 
Any animals which they can kill—mammals, 
birds, lizards, snakes, grubs and even insects— 
are eaten, often half raw. Fire is no mys¬ 
tery to them, but is produced by a friction 
method similar to that shown in the illustra¬ 
tion under the article Fire. They do not 
cultivate the soil, domesticate animals nor 
make pottery, but they have fashioned for 
themselves a number of weapons, in the use 
of which they are most skilful. Among these* 
are spears, clubs, stone hatchets and, most 
noted of all, the boomerang (which see). The 
women, obtained for the establishment of 
families by purchase or abduction, are looked 
upon as mere slaves and are frightfully mis¬ 
treated. All the hard work, all the heavy 
carrying is done by them, the men reserving 
their strength for hunting and intertribal wars. 

It must be understood that these primitive 
conditions, which prevailed everywhere at the 
coming of the white men, now exist only in 
the wild and unsettled parts of the conti¬ 
nent. In the settled districts a few aborigines 
remain, for the most part on reservations, and 
these are sometimes employed by the settlers 
in light work. They are lazy by nature, how¬ 
ever, and soon give up any continuous em¬ 
ployment, but they possess, like the North 
American Indians, an almost incredible ability 
to follow trails through the woods and the 
brush, and are for this reason sometimes of 
use to the police. It is estimated that there 
were in Australia about 150,000 of these 
aborigines at the time the influx of white 
settlers began, but they have decreased rap¬ 
idly, and to-day various estimates place their 
number anywhere from 40,000 to 80,000. 

White Inhabitants. These aborigines are not 
reckoned in with the total population of the 
Commonwealth, which was 4,872,059 at the last 
official census (1913). This includes Tasmania, 











AUSTRALIA 


484 


AUSTRALIA 


which at the same date had 201,675 inhabitants. 
The settlers in Australia have come largely 
from Great Britain, records showing that about 
ninety-seven per cent of the population were 
born either in Australia of British descent or 
somewhere in the United Kingdom. Among 
all the civilized countries of the world, none 
is more sparsely settled than Australia, which 
averages but 1.67 person to each square mile. 
This population is very unevenly distributed, 
Victoria having fifteen to the square mile and 
the Northern Territory but one person to each 
175 square miles of area. Strangely enough, 
in an agricultural country, the tendency is 
strong for the people to congregate in the big 
cities. Thus it is estimated that 38.05 per 
cent of the inhabitants are distributed among 
the six capital cities and their suburbs. These 
capitals are Melbourne, Victoria; Sydney, New 
South Wales; Brisbane, Queensland; Adelaide, 
South Australia; Perth, West Australia; Ho¬ 
bart, Tasmania. Northern Territory is still 
so new that its capital, Darwin, has not grown 
beyond the size of a village. 

The Australian states have always done much 
to encourage immigration, not only by making 
the acquisition of land easy, but even by pay¬ 
ing a part or all of the expenses of desirable 
settlers. The heaviest immigration for any 
decade occurred between 1881 and 1890, when 
there were 244,284 more arrivals than depart¬ 
ures. Later, when the charm of newness died 



¥ 


COMPARATIVE AREA 
Australia and the United States 

out, immigration decreased, and between 1896 
and 1905 there were more emigrants than 
immigrants; but the tide again turned and in 
recent years the number of arrivals has been 
very large. 

Coast Line and Islands. Like the great con¬ 
tinent of Africa to the west, Australia has a 


comparatively regular coast line. On the south 
the shore curves gently inward, forming the 
Great Australian Bight; on the north a sharper 
incurving makes the Gulf of Carpentaria, in¬ 
closed within the peninsulas of York and Arn¬ 
hem Land; and there are a few lesser inden¬ 
tations. But nowhere is there such a condition 
of fiords and outstanding capes as prevail in 
certain parts of North America, Europe and 
South America. Its coast line of 11,310 miles 
is little more than two-thirds that of Norway, 
if all the indentations of the latter are taken 
into account. 

Of the islands close to the Australian coast 
only two, Tasmania and New Guinea, are of 
considerable importance. Some of the others 
are but jutting rocks or coral reefs, and many 
of them are uninhabited. To the north and 
east lies the great group of the East Indies, 
containing the largest islands in the world, and 
scientists have found what they regard as con¬ 
vincing evidence that in ages past these islands 
joined Australia with Asia, which at its nearest 
point is now 1,800 miles away. The transition 
nature of the plant and animal life in the 
East Indies would not alone suffice as evi¬ 
dence, but the shallowness of most of the 
intervening waters seems to indicate that the 
islands are merely the highest points of a long- 
submerged continental land mass. Perhaps 
even New Zealand, to the southeast, was once 
connected with Australia geographically. 

A most interesting feature of the coast of 
Australia is the Great Barrier Reef, a coral 
formation which extends for almost 1.000 miles 
along the northeast coast, at places as close 
as ten miles to the shore, elsewhere as much 
as 100 miles away. When storms are raging 
this great reef may be very dangerous, and 
many ships have been wrecked upon it, but 
for the most part it is helpful rather than 
harmful, as it constitutes a natural break¬ 
water shielding ships inside it from the storms 
of the open ocean. 

Surface Features. This smallest of the con¬ 
tinents or largest of the islands, as it is some¬ 
times called, is much simpler in its relief forms 
than any of the other great land masses. A 
glance at the accompanying colored map of 
Australia will help to fix in the mind the conti¬ 
nent’s physical features. The chief mountain 
system, which does not approach in height 
those of the other continents, is known as a 
whole as the Eastern Mountains, though it is 
given various local names in different sections 
of the country, as the Australian Alps, in Vic- 



AUSTRALIA 


485 


AUSTRALIA 


toria, the New England Range and the Liver¬ 
pool Range. Beginning near the western boun¬ 
dary of Victoria, this chain of highlands ex¬ 
tends nearly parallel with the coast as far as 
Cape York. On the average it is about 150 
miles in width, and is distant from the coast 
from fifty to 300 miles. It performs the regular 
“great divide” function, separating the rivers 
flowing into the Pacific from those flowing into 
the interior or into the Indian Ocean. On the 
whole this mountain system is little higher 
than the White Mountains, though its loftiest 
peak, Mount Kosciusko, in Victoria, is 7,350 
feet in height. These are not steep, craggy 
mountains like the great divides of the other 
continents, but for the most part rounded 
summits. Some of them, however, are lofty 
enough to be snow-clad for a large part of the 
3 r ear, and certain sheltered ravines can boast 
eternal snow. 

To the west of this mountain country is the 
great Australian lowland, lowest in the south¬ 
east, and rising gradually to the north and 
west. The eastern part of this lowland region 
is the basin of the Murray River system; the 
western, the region of interior drainage, an 
arid stretch which has no outlet for its rivers. 
For a length of 1,000 miles along the southern 
coast not even a little stream empties into the 
sea, and the most of the river beds are dried 
and cracked mud. This lowland region, though 
called the Great Australian Plain, is not a level 
expanse like the North American prairies, but 
is broken by low ranges of hills. 

The westernmost section is a great plateau, 
which constitutes over half of the continent 
and has an average elevation of about 1,000 
feet. Along its seaward edge runs a ridge of 
high land parallel with the coast. The highest 
peak in this western plateau region is 5,200 
feet in height. 

Rivers and Lakes. The river system of Aus¬ 
tralia is not large, and rivers of any importance 
are verj r few. The Murray, with its tributaries, 
the Darling, the Lachlan and the Murrum- 
bidgee, constitutes by far the largest system, 
and drains about one-seventh of the continent. 
Its source streams rise on the western slopes 
of the Eastern Mountains, and even in the dry 
seasons are fed by the snows of the mountain 
tops. East of the great divide there are a 
number of short rivers which, considering their 
length, cariy down to the sea a surprisingly 
large volume of water. In the season of melt¬ 
ing snows sudden overflows are very common. 
Flowing into the Gulf of Carpentaria and 


draining the tropical lowland of the north are 
the Leichhardt, Flinders, Gilbert and Mitchell 
rivers, while on the west the Murchison, Gas¬ 
coyne, Ashburton and Fortescue empty into the 
Indian Ocean. 

Most interesting, though not most important, 
are the streams of the interior drainage region, 
of which Cooper Creek is the largest. These 
can scarcely be said to “empty” into anything, 
for they seldom carry water, but at such times 
as streams do flow over their dry courses they 
discharge into Lake Eyre, the largest lake in 
Australia. The water of this lake, which has 
no outlet and lies below sea level, is salty. 
Eighty miles long and forty miles wide during 
the rainy season, Lake Eyre undergoes a con¬ 
siderable shrinkage during the dry months 
when the region all about it becomes practi¬ 
cally a desert. Other lakes without outlet in 
this same section are Torrens, Gairdner, 
Blanche and Frome, named for early explorers. 

Climatic Conditions. A large, compact land 
mass tends always to a more extreme climate 
than one which is in all parts not far from the 
tempering influence of the sea, and Australia 
typifies this condition. The northern section 
of the country is tropical, the central part 
semi-tropical and the south temperate, but 
latitude is not as great a factor in controlling 
temperature as are altitude and distance from 
the sea. In summer, which corresponds to the 
winter of the northern hemisphere, the heat 
is very great throughout much of the conti¬ 
nent, for the sun is at that time not only most 
nearly vertical above it, but is also at its 
closest approach to the earth. The interior 
section thus has an average summer tempera¬ 
ture of about 95°. This portion cools down 
rapidly with the approach of winter, and vio¬ 
lent cold winds, commonly known as “southerly 
bursters,” blow from it to the more temperate 
eastern coast section. The coast regions, in¬ 
deed, whether eastern or western, have a cli¬ 
mate which is in the main delightful and most 
healthful, for even during the hot season the 
air is invigorating. 

Rainfall is very unevenly distributed. On 
one side of the Great Divide every growing 
plant may be parched and dying, while on the 
other side torrents may be falling and crops 
suffering from the overflow of rivers. The 
tropical region to the north is very well 
watered, the east has sufficient and sometimes 
more than sufficient rainfall, and the west 
coast in places is not arid, but the vast interior 
regions, stretching south to the Great Aus- 


/ 


AUSTRALIA 


486 


AUSTRALIA 


tralian Bight, has an average of not more than 
five inches of rainfall in the year. 

Plant Life. The isolated position of Aus¬ 
tralia has resulted in very decided peculiarities 
in its plant life. Some forms of East Indian 
vegetation have taken root there, but the most 
characteristic plants are unlike those of the 
other continents and come somewhat lower in 
the scale of development. In past geologic ages 
such plant forms as now exist in Australia 
covered the earth, but to-day they have prac¬ 
tically disappeared elsewhere. Fully 7,000 out 
of the 12,000 species of plants found in the 
continent are not to be found in any other. 
The sharp difference in climate and in condi¬ 
tions of moisture, too, have had their influence, 
and the vegetation shows well-marked zones. 
Many of the peculiar species show an unmis¬ 
takable relation to the general dryness, having 
either scanty foliage, narrow leaves that pre¬ 
sent little surface for evaporation or thick, 
leathery leaves well fitted to retain moisture. 

Since not all Australia is arid, however, not 
all of its plants are of this semi-desert tj^pe. 
In the north and east a luxuriant tropical 
vegetation prevails, and it is here, where Aus¬ 
tralia approaches most closely the East Indies, 
that certain forms common in the Malay 
Archipelago appear. Ferns, palms, bamboos, 
the extraordinary bottle tree, acacias and the 
eucalyptus flourish, the latter attaining its 
greatest height on the plains of Victoria. This 
huge tree, which rivals the “big trees” of 
California in size, is one of the most charac¬ 
teristic Australian types. Of its 150 species, 
all but three or four are native to this smallest 
of the continents. Other gum trees also 
abound, and the acacia, or wattle, is one of the 
most valuable plants economically, as it yields 
an excellent bark for tanning. Throughout 
the forests gorgeous orchids, brilliantly flowered 
mistletoes and other parasitic plants combine 
with the crimson or golden flowers of certain 
species of the acacias to present a most striking 
appearance. 

In the interior section and along the southern 
and parts of the western coast, however, vege¬ 
tation is not so luxuriant. Large stretches in 
the arid region are covered with the charac¬ 
teristic spinifex, or porcupine grass, a hard, 
coarse and exceedingly spiny plant, which ren¬ 
ders traveling difficult, wounds the feet of 
horses and cannot be eaten by any animal. 
The . scrub, or “bush,” as it is more commonly 
called, is made up of various stunted growths 
of the eucalyptus and myrtle families, crowded 


so thickly in certain localities as to be actually 
impenetrable. The gums and volatile oils 
which these trees contain give to the bush a 
fragrance as delightful as that of a North 
American forest where balsam firs abound. 
It is the bush for which Australia stands in 
the minds of many people, for almost every 
man • brings from his boyhood memories of 
The Bushrangers, a fascinating story which 
made that part of the continent very real to 
him. 

Of native fruit trees Australia has practically 
none, nor are its food-yielding plants of other 
kinds much more important. Many European 
plants have been introduced, however, and the 
vine, the olive, the mulberry and the various 
cereals thrive well, while large tracts, especially 
in Queensland, are devoted to sugar cane and 
pineapples. 

Animal Life. As peculiar as the plant life, 
and even more interesting, are the animals of 
Australia. Geologists hold that this continent 
is one of the very oldest parts of the world, 
and the animal life bears them out in their 
theory that it must have been separated from 
the other lands of the eastern hemisphere 
untold ages ago. Of the many mammals which 
all the other continents possess—the cats, 
horses, cattle, lions, bears, elephants—Australia 
has none. A wild dog known as the dingo, 
several kinds of bats and a few rodents are the 
only representatives of the higher animals, all 
the other mammals belonging to a more primi¬ 
tive class known as marsupials. These animals 
are distinguished by the fact that the young 
are very immature when born, and are carried 
by the mother in a pouch until they are able 
to shift for themselves. Outside Australia, such 
pouch animals are found nowhere else except 
in the opossums of North America. The kan¬ 
garoo, the larger forms of which comprise the 
biggest animals of Australia, is the best known 
of these marsupials, but the wombats, the 
opossums and the bandicoots are equally inter¬ 
esting and curious. Like the mammals of the 
other continents, some of these pouch animals 
are flesh-eaters, some root-eaters, some fruit- 
eaters, and mamr of them resemble more or less 
closely the common animals of other parts of 
the world. 

The marsupials, however, are not the lowest 
order of mammals that Australia possesses, the 
echidna and the duck-billed platypus ranking 
farther down in the scale of life. These are, 
so far as is known, the only mammals in the 
world that lay eggs. 


in i" ' . .. - . . ~ • -T Z3DC 


AUSTRALIA 


487 


AUSTRALIA 


□ 


]□[ 


] □ I —1 □ 



Duck-billed platypus 


Black swan and her young 


Rabbits became a plagi 
throughout Australia 


M 


The awkward but powerful kangaroo 


deadly python 





y -> m 






M - W/ 

1- 


SOME AUSTRALIAN ANIMALS 


The splendid lyre bird 


Emu, the "Australian Ostrich” 













































































AUSTRALIA 


488 


AUSTRALIA 


Of birds Australia has a large variety, no 
fewer than 800 distinct species; but these are 
not so peculiar to the continent as are the 
mammals. The emu, or Australian ostrich, 
and the cassowary are the largest of the bird 
tribe, as the parrots are the most numerous. 
These latter, with their brilliant green, yellow 
and scarlet plumage, everywhere add to the 
color of the landscape. Song birds vie with 
those of North America in the sweetness of 
their notes, and eagles and hawks prey upon 
smaller and weaker forms of life. Peculiar to 
Australia are the black swan, the honey-sucker, 
the lyre bird with its curious plumage, and the 
bower bird, distinct from all other birds by 
reason of the fantastic structures which it rears 
for its own delight. 

Reptiles and fish are also numerous and 
varied, and while some of these are most char¬ 
acteristic, the greater number of them bear 
resemblances to those of other countries. Each 
animal named here is described and illustrated 
in its place in these volumes. 

Mineral Resources. Interesting as are its. 
life forms, fertile as are some of its plains, 
these advantages alone would never have 
drawn to this isolated island-continent, with its 
waste of waters on three sides, the hundreds of 
thousands of colonists who have made it the 
progressive section of the world that it is 
to-day. It is gold that has made Australia 
important commercially; gold that drew, after 
its discovery in 1851, streams of adventurers 
half across the world. And from that date to 
this, gold-mining has been one of the chief 
industries. Scores of thousands are employed 
in it, and the yearly output of the precious 
metal averages over $50,000,000. Victoria has 
produced the largest total amount, but of 
recent years the mines of Western Australia 
have far surpassed those of any other state. 
Altogether, the continent has produced since 
1852 over $3,000,000,000 worth of gold. 

But gold is not the only important mineral. 
Silver, which was first mined in 1841, is pro¬ 
duced by all the states, New South Wales hav¬ 
ing by far the largest output. In all, the silver 
yield, including the value of the lead found 
with it, is $20,000,000 a year, while copper 
falls but $5,000,000 short of that amount and 
coal production has steadily increased to over 
$22,000,000. Queensland ranks first among cop¬ 
per-producing states, and New South Wales is 
by far the largest producer of coal, its yield 
being more than ten times that of any other 
state. Zinc, iron, lead and various precious 


stones in small quantities are also found, and 
it may thus be seen that Australia is one of 
the world’s richest mining regions. 

Agriculture. Not all the people of Aus¬ 
tralia are miners or seekers after gold, for agri¬ 
culture in its various forms has attained great 
importance. In the vast interior arid region 
and along much of the western coast little 
can be grown, for while the soil and climate 
are excellently adapted to any of the warm- 
temperate or semi-tropical crops, the moisture 
is too scanty for production. No great rivers 
suggest the possibility of extensive irrigation 
schemes, but, as in certain of the desert regions 
of the Western United States, there frequently 
exists below the surface a considerable supply 
of water which is made available by means of 
artesian wells. Hundreds of these dot the 
country and are helping to increase the pro¬ 
portion of cultivated land. Even so, however, 
the area devoted to crops is comparatively 
small—only about 15,000,000 acres in the whole 
Commonwealth. Practically all of this is in 
the well-watered eastern section, on both sides 
of the Great Divide. Wheat -is by all means 
the most important crop, but corn, oats, barley, 
potatoes, sugar cane and hay are produced in 
sufficient quantities to supply home demand. 

Irrigation development was started in the 
state of Victoria under the supervision of 
Americans, and having proven successful was 
extended. In New South Wales there is now 
under construction the Burrinjuck dam, on the 
Murrumbidgee River, which when completed 
will impound 33,381 million cubic feet of water, 
enough to irrigate over 250,000 acres of land. 

To the present time Australia has been pre¬ 
eminently a stock-raising country, but it is 
predicted that the transformation of Australia 
from a grazing to an agricultural country will 
parallel that of the Western United States. 
Wherever there is sufficient moisture for grass 
—and grass will grow where no crops can be 
produced—the conditions have been found ex¬ 
cellent for sheep, and everywhere there have 
been great flocks. More valuable even than gold 
have been these sheep, of which Australia has 
greater numbers than any other country in the 
world. Naturally, then, it is the chief of all 
wool-producing countries, the yield in some 
years exceeding 700,000,000 pounds, often being 
twice that of Argentina or the United States. 
Of recent years, too, mutton has been exported, 
though formerly all the sheep were grown for 
their wool. 

Cattle also thrive on the excellent Australian 


AUSTRALIA 


AREA AND POPULATION* 


Political Divisions 

Dimensions 

N. to S. E. to W. 

Area 

Coast 

Line 

Population 

* 

Seat 

of 

Government 

Popu¬ 

lation* 

Est. 

States 

Miles 

Miles 

Sq. Miles 

Miles 

Males 

Females 

Total 

New South Wales. 

. 500 

600 

309 460 

700 

962 053 

869 653 

1 831 716 


725 400 

Queensland. 

.1,250 

950 

670 500 

3 000 

356 613 

303 545 

660 158 


151 500 

South Australia. 

. '880 

754 

380 070 

1540 

221 605 

218 442 

440047 

Arleln irlp 

196 500 

Tasmania. 

. 200.. 

. 245... 

26,215. . 

. 900. 

. 104,476. 

.. 97,199. 

. . 201.675. 

. . Hobart.... 

40,000 

Victoria. 

. 480.. 

. 250... 

87,884.. 

. 680. 

. . 706.948. 

.. 705,171. 

. .1,412,119. 

. Melbourne § 

651,000 

West Australia. 

.1,400. . 

800... 

975,920. . 

. 4,350. 

, . 180,747. 

.. 139,937. 

.. 320,684. 

. .Perth. 

121,700 

Territories 










Federal Territory. 



912. . 


1,093. 

895. 

1,988. 

. . Canberra. . 


Northern Territory. 

.1,091.. 

. 600.. . 

523,620.. 

. 1.040. 

2,995. 

677. 

.. 3,672. 

. . Darwin . . . 

. 2 000 

Commonwealth* . 

.1,971. . 

.2,400. . . 

2, 974,581. . 

.11,310. 

. .2,536,530. 

. .2,335,529. 

. .4,872,059. 

. .Melbourne. 

..651,000 


* Official estimate, exclusive of aborigines. 

t Metropolitan District. 

* The Australian Dependency of Papua or New Guinea has an area of 
population (1911), 1,186. § Present capital of Commonwealth. 


90,540 sq. miles and a native population of 250,393: White 


FOREST RESERVES AND FOREST AREAS, 1913 


LEADING INDUSTRIES 


Division 


Reserved for 
Timber 
Acres 


Total Forest 
Area 
Acres 


Industry 


Value of Products 


1912 


1913 


New South Wales. 

Queensland. 

South Australia. . . 

Tasmania. 

Victoria. . . 

West Australia. . . 
Commonwealth. 


. 6,853,828. 
. 4,108,470. 

154,232. 
. 1,017,949. 
. 4,160,342. 
. 12,371,152. 
.28,665,973. 


. 15,000,000 
, 40,000,000 
, 3,800,000 

11,000,000 
11,800,000 
20,400,000 
102,000,000 


Agriculture. 

Dairying, etc. 

Forests and Fisheries. . 

Manufactures. .. 

Mining. 

Pastoral. 

Total... 


5 222,364,440. 
98,560,800. 
31,259,520. 
277,126,920. 
124,556,940. 
250,848.900. 
1,004,717,520. 


& 224,823,600 
98,857,260 
30,802,680 
299,307,960 
125,126,880 
281,228,760 
1,060,147,140 


GOVERNMENT AND PRIVATE RAILWAYS. MILEAGE OPEN 


Year 

N. S. 
Wales 

Queens¬ 

land 

S. 

Australia 

Tas¬ 

mania 

Vic¬ 

toria 

W. 

Australia 

N. 

Territory 

Fed. 

Territory 

Common¬ 

wealth 

1855 . 

14 


6 X - • • 


.... 2 y *. 




23'4 

1861. 

73 . 


... 56.... 


... . 114. . . 




243 

1871 

358 

218 . 

133.... 

. . . 45 

. . . 276 ... 

12 .. 



1,042 

1881 

. 1,040. . 

. . 800.. 

... 845_ 

...168 ... 

. . . 1,247_ 

... 92 . . 



4,192 

1890-1 

2,263 

.2,205 

1,666. . 

...425 ... 

.2,763_ 

. . . 656 . . 

.... 145... 


10,123 

1900-1 

.2^926 

.2,904.. 

.1,736_ 

...618 ... 

. . .3,238_ 

...1,984 .. 

_ 145... 


. 13 551 

1910-11 

4 027 

4 390 

1,993 . 

. .675 

. ..3,574_ 

...3,208 .. 

_ 145... 


. 18,012 

1912-13 

4,197... 

.4,936.. 

..2,202. . . 

...729 ... 

...3,698_ 

. . .3, 827K- • 

....145... 


. 19,734^ 

1914-15 

4 246 

.5,213. . 

. .2,357_ 

. . . 766 X - ■ ■ 

...3,886_ 

...3,910 .. 

_146... 

.5. 

20.529)-^ 











v = 



PRINCIPAL RIVERS 




River 

Length 

Miles 

Outlet 

Length 

River Miles Outlet 

River 

Length 

Miles 

Outlet 


Ashburton... 220. 

Barcoo. 310. 

Bogan. 370. 

Brisbane. 200. 

Burdekin .... 440. 
Castlereagh . . 340. 

Clarence. 190. 

Cloncurry ... 280. 
Condamine . . 320. 
Cooper...... 300. 

Culgoa. 200. 

Daly. 225. 

Darling.2,310. 


. Indian Ocean 
. Coopers Creek 
. Darling River 
.Moreton Bay 
. Upstart Bay 
. Macquarie River 
. Shoal Bay 
. Flinders River 
. Balonne River 
. Lake Eyre 
. Darling River 
. Anson Bay 
. Murray River 


Dawson.312. 

De Gray.427. 

Diamantina . . . 468. 
Fit’roy (W. A.) 325. 

Flinders.520. 

Fortescue.340. 

Gascoyne.475. 

Gilbert.312. 

Gleaelg ....... 280. 

Hawkesbury. . . 335. 

Hunter.340. 

Lachlan.850. 

Leichardt.300. 


.Fitzroy River(QTd) 
. Indian Ocean 
. Lake Eyre 
. King Sound , 7 
. Gulf of Carpentaria 
. Indian Ocean 
. Shark Bay , , , ; . 

. Gulf of Carpentaria 
. Discovery Bay 
. Broken Bay . 

. Pacific Ocean 
. Murrumbidgee R _ 

. Gulf of Carpentaria 


Macquarie.590. .Macquarie Marsh 

Mitchell (QTd)..350. .Gulf of Carpentaria 

Murchison.440. .Indian Ocean 

Murray ...... 1,520. .Lake Alexandrina 

Murrumbidgee. 1,050..Murray R. 

Namoi.430.. Darling R. 

Norman.260. .Gulf of Carpentaria 

Ord.300. .Timor Sea 

Roper.260. .Gulf of Carpentaria 

Shoalhaven.260. .Pacific Ocean 

Snowy.270. .Pacific Ocean 

Swan...240. .Indian Ocean 

Victoria.350. .Queen’s Channel 


PRINCIPAL MOUNTAINS 


Name 


Bogong. 

Buffalo (the Horn) . . 

Buffer.... 

Cobberas. 

Cope. 

Fainter. 

Feathertop. 

Higginbothamlleights 


Location 


Victoria. 
Victoria. 
Victoria. 
Victoria. 
Victoria. 
Victoria. . 
Victoria. 
Victoria. 


* Close to Victoria boundary 


Alti¬ 

tude 


.6,509 

.5,645 

.5,935 

.6.030 

.6,027 

.6,160 

.6,306 

.5,800 


Name 


Hotham. 

Kosciusko *.. 

Loch. 

McKay. 

Marm’s Point. 

Nelson. 

Pilot.. 

Ram’s Head.. 


Location 


. . Victoria . . . 

. .N. S. Wales 
. . Victoria 
. .Victoria. . . . 
. . Victoria. . . . 
. . Victoria. . . . 
. ,N. S. Wales. 
. . N. S. Wales 


Alti¬ 

tude 


. 6,100 
. 7 ,328 
5,900 
.6,030 
.5,860 
6,170 
6,020 
.6.600 


Name 


Reynard. 

Spion Kop.... 

The Peaks. 

The Twins 
Townsend * . . . 

Twvnan. 

Wellington Trig 
Wills. 


Location 


. Victoria. 

.Victoria. 

.Victoria. 

. Victoria. 

.N. S. Wales. 
.N. S. Wales. 

.Victoria. 

. Victoria. 


Alti¬ 

tude 


.5,700 

,5,95o 

.5,300 

.5,502 

.7,238 

.7,200 

.5,355 

.5,758 





























































































































































































































































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Cl 


Shjst, 


Avon ,, 


MorrlaJfj^j, 

m 

Sir Thomai-S 


Mt.HarmmrsIsy]. 


o Pod, 


rictorta Desert 

/ . ■■■Xl'A-' 


Dfj/ji 

s 


oS 


* .Zt’AfS L. IfTioron^J 

T II A‘ 


ur> 




doldi*WaK K '^;V o0 l 

. rftur ( rouldiU whto-P"*™ - * • ^ 


:K '- R EEif 

* E **lte e F o beuon* a 

:tMo« AfiE i B£Ep ««f S “ 

ivhanipton "'"eck »Ee F /w Sl »o ,j tep 'sIeeJ' 1 * 

^eppef / 

.-o. 


‘V®anot 


1 V 

t Clinton 


*Veio 


Vahtdonia 


Is O U T 


S! 

; Mall, 


IstJv. / 


}5* 


■"pf 

V«rs. 


.ly 




'iwi ■;; i2 i ' p * , "i Vl y 

". 

I__ EierardW(Sykii;*^iA’J> T 


^fyEdl 


’Cowan L. _— | y» 


Eyre 


\ rre“ a T^ w - — j,, 

N Buj 
do^grap. 

C >at*K rt, Tw l i n 

c -Aza> m 

(•Enl«J2. r 


MlldllS 


Ram 


_1- 


^ o°’ 

' a °A'"Kj - 


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_ _a, ^.■■EASTERN 

r GHOlIP 

GffouP ARCHlP^i-AGO j 
OF THE recherchS 


OB EAT A V 8 

BIO 


AA /J 
cV 


T R A L I^A N 


Aucklaridpy^ 

1 a 1 a m r\ W*YjS YUturemiUiwa 

ISLAND Mp mj t 1 

Waitalo fi-T\ 

Buatiw 


II T 


J&jrt 


1040 


lL *+$ r 




(7. Farewell sj 
Collin 

Mo|u 

' Katamea Bighty 
VVmi|>o(L vj" 

C./ ou! wind fA 

lUtH k« ‘ 


fX, 


r ^ y 0 


} cape 1 


Cr oO^- 


*Ooo 


AUSTRALIA 


ENGLISH STATUTE MILES 


60 100 


L’00 300 

Kll OMETER8 


400 


100 200 30J lea 600 600 700 800 

Principal water rontea.-\—■ ; - 


0 45 

KING f. \ fllNOERS l<\fUHNEAUX 
\ C*^ 'SJCROUP-* 

INTER *M o ,/ Vr 4 *<^ UA " fltN <• 

C . (Jnm rA^\-.'' r ^\ u Brnnkt S/rai 

Mt.B.Al 0 

c^uario Uad 


UU 

feeston 

'Ki. U^rys 

Lomond 


W- 


J n MARIA I. 

k 2 tinman 

4 

TAsSlA>ftS S 

Same ecnle a» Australia 




“■WfSttjNr 


"Tr'| 


SECRETARY 
RESOLUTM 

C. . , 

Pruviifencl 

Id<«> 

SOLAN OCR I. 
STEWART 




lldhristchurch 

afc 

dmiigv 

Tluiaru / ^ 

' ‘ImalwU 

aUaU-R - 


• nu» ata Fp 
Ilawliahury 
/Port Clial mod 

i-A Dunedin 

rsinaeul 

lltpo 

aitnngata 
waul; 


tM 


> 


— - South c2- ^ v 

TO HOBART > teUTH TRAP 


ISTEW ZEALAND 

Same scale as Australia 

Jk- 


U0 


116 


15 


120 


125 


II 


E 


135 


115 


10 


15 


20 


25 


30 


35 


150 


155 


K 


160 

































































































































































NEW ZEALAND 


AREA AND POPULATION 


Units of the 
Dominion 
Main Islands 


North. 

South. 

Stewart. 

Lesser Islands 

Antipodes. 

Auckland (Group) . 
Bounty (Group).... 

Campbell. 

Chatham (Group) . . 
Cook (Group) *. . . . 

Kermadec. 

Snares. 

Other islands *. 

The Dominion... 


Coast 

Line 

Miles 


. 2 , 200 . 
. 2,000 
. 130. 


.4,330. 


Area 
Sq.Miles 


44,130 

58,120 

662 


375 

150 

15 


130 
. 1103,581 


Population 
Census, t 

1911 


563,729 

444,152 

325 


453 

6,935 


5,663 
tl,058,312 


Provincial 

Districts 


Auckland. 

Canterbury. 

Chatham Islands 
Hawke’s Bay. . . 
Kermadec Islands 
Marlborough.... 

Nelson. 

Otago. . . ... 

Otago portion 
Southland portion 

Taranaki. 

Wellington. 

Westland. 

The Dominion t 


Area 
Sq. Miles 


.26,746. 
. 14,040. 

375. 

. 4,410. 

15. 
. 4.753. 
10,269. 


.25,487. 

. 3,308. 
.11,003. 

. 4,641. 


Totals, 

1913 


287,789. 

184,472. 

267. 

52,756. 

4. 

17,235. 

51,229. 


139,887. 

63,276. 

56,500. 

214,193. 

16,754. 

1,084,662. 


Population § 


Males, 

1914 


152,346. 

94,896. 

171. 

27,584. 

2 . 

9,405. 

28,678. 


. 71,060. 
. 34,365. 
29.970. 
110,638. 

9,219. 

.568,161. 


Femalesi 

1914 


.138,077. 
. 93,009. 
96. 

. 25,408. 

2 . 

. 8,115. 

. 23,690. 


. 70,942. 
. 30,261. 
. 26,877. 
.103.644. 
. 7,810. 

.527,833. 


* Annexed in 1901. f Exclusive of Islands annexed in 1901. 

members of Maori tribes. § Estimates. 


t Including 49,844 Maoris, 2.630 Chinese, and 2.879 half-castes, 


Totals, 

1914 


290,423 

187,905 

267 

52,992 

4 

17,520 

52,368 


142,002 

64,626 

56,847 

214,282 

17,029 

1,095,994 


POPULATION OF CITIES 


POPULATION OF TOWNS 


Cities 


Auckland. 

With suburbs. 
Christchurch. . . 
With suburbs. 

Dunedin. 

With suburbs. 
Wellington *.... 
With suburbs. 


1911 


1915 


Towns 


40,536. 

102,676. 

53,116. 

80,193. 

41,529. 

64,237. 

64,372. 

70,729. 


65,005 

117,793 

58,169 

87,756 

49.446 
69,158 

67.446 
74,811 


* Seat of Dominion Government. 


Gisborne. 

With suburbs. . . 

Invercargill. 

With suburbs... 

Napier. 

With suburbs. . . 
Palmerston North. 

Timaru. 

Wanganui. 

With suburbs 


1911 


,12,782. 
15,858. 

. 10.537. 
11,736. 

.10,991. 
.11,280. 
. 10,929. 
.14,702. 


1915 


9,859 
11,802 
14,592 
18,067 
11,125 
12,701 
12.206 
.13,123 
13,955 
16,235 


LEADING INDUSTRIES 


COMMERCE 


Industry 


Agriculture. 

Pastoral. 

Mining. 

Manufactures. 

Miscellaneous *. 

Totals. 

w Including fisheries and 


1907-8 


$ 20,102,245. 
98,938,550. 
18,879,175. 
36,204,565. 

8 833,610. 
182,959,145. 


orestry. 


1910-11 


Year 


B 20,753,945 
127,084,150 
18,874,490 
38,204,565 
10,399,330 
215,316,480 


Total 

Imports 


1911. . 

. . .$ 97,729,395. . . 


1912. . 

... 104,882,870... 


1913. . 

. . . 111,441,510. . . 


1914. . 

. . . 109.280,480. . . 


1915.. 

... 108,644,170... 






Exports of 
Domestic Produce 


.$ 93,909,490. 
106,362,025. 
112,889,450. 
129,923,585. 
155,190,660. 


Total 

Exports 


$ 95,142,450 
108,852,905 
114,933,610 
131,307,235 
158,744,560 


STATE RAILWAYS* 


Year 

Length 

Miles 

Passengers 
■ Number 
Carried 

Freight 

Tons 

Train 

Mileage 

Sections 

Length 

Miles 

Sections 

Length 

Miles 

1896. . . 

. .2,014. . 

. . . 4,162,426. . . 

. .2,175,943 . . 

. .3,307,226 . . 


... 1,101 


1 ^7 

1901. . . 

. .2,212. . 

. . . 6,243,593. . . 

. .3,461,331 . . 

. .4,620,971 . 


74 


' if . 

1906. . . 

. .2,407. . 

. . . 8,826,382. . . 

. .4,415,166 . . 

. .6,413,573 . . 

. . . Kaihu. 

20 . 


f . i 

1911.. . 

. .2,753. . 

. . .11,200,613. . . 

. .5,863,674. . . 

. .8,141.075 . . 

. . . Gisborne. 

44 


40 

1915. . . 

. .2,945. . 

. . . 13,565,772. . . 

. .6,453,472 . . 

. .9,383,420 . . 


1 404 


...2,945 







’ 1 


* There are, in addition to the State Railways, only 29 miles of private railway 


PRINCIPAL RIVERS 


Name 


• watere, S. I.. . . 

Buller, S. I. 

Clarence, S. I.. . 
Clutha, S. I. . . . 

Grey, S. I. 

Hurunui, S. I.. . 
Manawatu, N. I. 
Mataura, S. I.. . 
Mohaka, N. I... 


Length 

Miles 


. . 70 
..105. 
..125. 
. . 210 . 
.. 75. 
.. 90. 
.. 100 . 
.. 120 . 
.. 80. 


Outlet 


Cook Strait. 
Tasman Sea. 
Pacific Ocean 
Pacific Ocean 
Tasman Sea. 
Pacific Ocean 
Cook Strait.. 
Foveaux Str. 
Pacific Ocean 


Name 


Motueka, S. I. . 
Ngaururoro, N. I.. 

Oreti, S. I. 

Rakaia, S. I. . . . 
Rangitaiki, N. I. 
Rangitata, S. I. . 
Rangitikei, N. I.. 

Taieri, S. I. 

Thames, N. I. . . 


Length 

Miles 


75. 

. 85. 
105. 
95. 

, 95. 

. 75. 
115. 
.125. 
. 90. 


Outlet 


Cook Strait.. 
Pacific Ocean 
Foveaux Str. 
Pacific Ocean 
Pacific Ocean 
Pacific Ocean 
Cook Strait.. 
Pacific Ocean 
Pacific Ocean 


Name 


Waiau, S. I. 

Waiau, S. I. 

Waikato, N. I.. .. 
Waimakariri, S. I. 

Wairau, S. I. 

Wairoa, N. I. 

Waitaki, S. I. 

Wangaehu, N. I.. 
Wanganui, N. I.. 


Length 

Miles 


.110. 
.115. 
. 220 . 
. 93. 
.105. 
. 95. 
.135. 
. 85. 
.140. 


Outlet 


Pacific Ocean 
Foveaux Str. 
Tasman Sea 
Pacific Ocean 
Cook Strait 
Tasman Sea 
Pacific Ocean 
Cook Strait 
Cook Strait 


PRINCIPAL MOUNTAINS 


Name 


Altitude 

Feet 


Name 


Altitude 

Feet 


Name 


Altitude 

Feet 


Name 


Altitude 

Feet 


Aspiring, S. I.. . . 

Cook, S. I. 

Eamshaw, S. I.. . 
*10,000 to 12,( 


000 . 


9,949 

12,349 

9,165 


Egmont, N. I. .. 

Hector, S. I. 

Ngauruhoe, N. I. 


.8,260 

! 7.515 


Peterman, S. I. 

Ruapehu, N. I . . J. .9,175 
Sefton, S. I. . . . 


Southern Alps, S. I. 
Tongariro, N. I.... 
Tyndall, S. I. 


.* 10,000 

. 6,140 
























































































































































































































































































































AUSTRALIA 


489 


AUSTRALIA 


grazing lands, the number in the Common¬ 
wealth averaging about 10,000,000, about as 
many as in Texas and Iowa together. Since 
the discovery of successful cold-storage meth¬ 
ods much beef has been exported, and butter 
is also sent to Asia and to Europe. (More 
detailed information as to agricultural products 
as well as commerce may be gained from the 
articles on the separate states.) 

Manufactures. Until the establishment of 
the Commonwealth in 1901 the manufacturing 
industries had been but slightly developed, but 
since that date the 3 ^ have grown steadily. 
Manufacturing, however, is still far from rank¬ 
ing as one of the chief industries, for mining 
and the raising of live stock have been so 
profitable that it has seemed unwise to devote 
large capital and energy to the making of 
articles which could be obtained cheaper from 
other countries. The majority of the factories 
established deal with raw materials which can¬ 
not be shipped safely or with profit, so indus¬ 
tries connected with food and drink rank high 
in the scale. Others of chief importance are 
the clothing and textile industries, metal work¬ 
ing and the manufacture of machinery. 

Transportation and Communication. Since 
the rivers of Australia are few, railways must 
run everywhere if there is to be intercommuni¬ 
cation and development, but much of the 
country beyond the coast regions is so sparsely 



settled that it can afford no proper return on 
capital invested in railroads. Government con¬ 
struction has thus been made necessary, and 
to-day private companies own fewer than 2,000 
miles out of a total mileage of 19,737. It is 
the states and not the Commonwealth which 
have built these lines, but the Federal govern¬ 


ment was engaged during 1916 on a trans¬ 
continental line joining the railways of South 
Australia with those of Western Australia, and 
there will probably be begun in the near future 
a line from the northern limit of South Aus¬ 
tralia to Pine Creek in the Northern Territory, 
the terminus of the road from Darwin. The 
accompanying map shows actual lines in exist¬ 
ence in 1916, those under construction and 
those merely proposed. Government invest¬ 
ments in railroads have been more profitable 
than it was believed they could be, yielding a 
net return annually of four and a half per cent 
on the cost of construction and equipment. 

The Commonwealth government owns and 
operates the telegraph and telephone systems, 
which furnish excellent service. Telegraph 
lines extend across the continent from north 
to south and from east to west, and connect all 
the important towns. In all, there are about 
50,000 miles of line. A continent so entirely 
cut off from the rest of the world has great 
need of cable communication, and two main 
lines connect it with all the countries of the 
world. There are also cable connections with 
Tasmania and New Zealand. 

As the world’s greatest producer of raw 
material in proportion to population, Australia 
has established a very large foreign commerce, 
the per capita value of its trade each year 
being over $150. Millions of tons of merchan¬ 
dise enter and leave its ports each year, by 
far the larger proportion coming from or going 
to British possessions. The chief exports are 
wool, hides, wheat, butter, meat and gold, while 
the imports, sometimes exceeding them in 
value, include manufactured goods of all kinds. 

Education. As in the United States, there 
is no national system of education, but each 
state has its own carefully worked-out system. 
Attendance is free and compulsory for children 
between the ages of six and fourteen, and of 
recent years the compulsory law has been very 
strictly enforced. Even in the rural districts 
where but a few children can be brought 
together schools are provided. High schools, 
colleges and universities complete the scheme, 
the states differing little save in the working 
out of details. At each state capital a univer¬ 
sity is located, the one at Perth having been 
opened in 1913. 

A distinctive feature of the Australian schools 
is the religious instruction that is provided by 
them. It is given outside of school hours, 
however, and by ministers instead of the reg¬ 
ular teachers. 













AUSTRALIA 


490 


AUSTRALIA 


Government. The * Commonwealth of Aus¬ 
tralia is a federation of states which was formed 
in January, 1901. Nominally it is a dependency 
of Great Britain, but actually it is independent 
in all questions which concern the federated 
states. Its constitution resembles closely that 
of the United States in that it expressly de¬ 
clares that all powers not specifically allowed 
to the central government belong to the states. 
In many ways, however, it differs from any 
constitution previously prepared, and some stu¬ 
dents of politics regard it as a step in advance 
of any other. Thus the Federal government 
takes charge of banking and insurance, mar¬ 
riage, divorce, parental rights and guardianship, 
immigration and emigration, telegraphs, tele¬ 
phones, and in times of danger, of the railways. 
All these functions are in addition to those 
commonly delegated to a national government. 
Women have full suffrage on equal terms with 
men. 

Some o'f the other important governmental 
policies of Australia have been expressed in 
laws providing for old age and invalid pen¬ 
sions ; a maternity bonus whereby a mother can 
receive a sum equal to $24 on the birth of each 
child; eight-hour work day; governmental 
loans to farmers for improving land; the build¬ 
ing of working men’s cottages, which are then 
rented or sold on very easy terms; and govern¬ 
mental ownership or control of all public 
utilities. 

Executive Department. The head of this 
department is a Governor-General, appointed 
by the Crown. He is commander-in-chief of 
the army and navy, and has power to appoint 
judges and members of his executive council. 
These ministers, including a Prime Minister and 
the heads, respectively, of departments of Ex¬ 
ternal Affairs, Home Affairs, Finance, Trade 
and Customs, Defense, besides an Attorney- 
General and a Postmaster-General, are members 
of the Parliament, or must secure election to it 
within three months after their appointment. 

Legislative Department. This consists of 
two houses, a Senate and a House of Repre¬ 
sentatives, but the British sovereign is also a 
nominal member. Senators are elected for six 
years and Representatives for three, each state 
having six Senators and a number of Repre¬ 
sentatives proportionate to its population. The 
number of Representatives is as nearly as pos¬ 
sible twice the number of the Senators. All 
revenue bills must originate in the lower house, 
and the course of procedure is similar to that 
in the Congress of the United States. The 


Senate may reject an appropriation bill, but 
may not amend it. 

Judiciary. At the head of this department 
is the High Court of Australia, which has orig¬ 
inal jurisdiction in cases involving relations 
with other nations and in cases in which the 
Commonwealth or any state is a party. Its 
appellate jurisdiction gives to it the power 
to hear appeals from lesser Federal courts and 
from the supreme courts of the states. If the 
High Court declares its opinion that a question 
involving the limits of the constitutional pow¬ 
ers of the Commonwealth or of the separate 
states should be passed upon by the British 
Privy Council, an appeal to that body may be 
made, but not otherwise. See Privy Council. 

On January 1, 1911, the national government 
took over from New South Wales a stretch of 
land 900 square miles in extent as a Federal 
Territory, under the name of the Yass-Can- 
berra District; and two years later work upon 
a new Federal capital was begun. An architect 
from the United States, winning in a world¬ 
wide competition, was engaged to lay out the 
city, which in time will probably rank with the 
world’s finest capitals. Meanwhile, until the 
new city of Canberra is ready, Melbourne is 
the seat of the Federal government. 

Defense. It has never been the policy of 
the Australian federation to maintain a large 
standing army, but since 1910 all male citizens 
between the ages of twelve and twenty-six 
have been compelled by law to undergo* mili¬ 
tary training, either in a cadet corps or as 
regular citizen soldiers. Thus while the regular 
army on a peace footing numbers less than 
3,000, a force of about 170,000 is available when 
needed. The Australian troops are well drilled, 
and particularly effective in their mounted 
infantry service. 

In 1903 it was decided that Australia was to 
have no ships of its own, but was to be 
defended by a small squadron from the British 
navy. Six years later, however, this plan was 
changed, and arrangements were made for the 
construction of Australian dreadnaught cruisers 
and submarines. At the close of 1913 there 
were in the Australian navy ten war vessels 
of all sorts, with a fighting force of nearly 
8,000 men. 

In time of peace the Commonwealth has 
full control of the navy, but when the British 
Empire is on a war footing the latter assumes 
full control. When the War of the Nations 
began in 1914 Australia showed the most active 
and enthusiastic patriotism. Even before the 











AUSTRALIA 


491 


AUSTRALIA 


declaration of war by Great Britain the Com¬ 
monwealth newspapers declared that the navy 
was at the instant service of the mother coun¬ 
try, and immediately after the declaration 
Australian volunteers were numerous. After 
a brief period of training, 20,000 of them were 
sent out, and these .were followed shortly by 
10,000 more. A landing force from an Aus¬ 
tralian warship took possession of the German 
island of New Guinea, and another war vessel 
of the Commonwealth sank the commerce- 
destroying German cruiser Emden. Both of 
these events occurred during the first six 
months of the war. 

History. The history of Australia divides 
itself into two distinct periods—the colonial 
period and the period of federation; and 
though the latter is far shorter, it has been of 
greater moment to the country. 

Exploration and Colonization. Vague hints 
of a land mass in the far-off southeastern seas 
were common before any definite knowledge 
was possessed, and it is not known just when 
the continent was discovered. At some time 
previous to 1542 the Portuguese published an 
account of the existence of a land beyond the 
East Indies, and it is probable that mariners 
of that nation were really the first to see the 
continent. But the first certain knowledge of 
it was obtained from a Dutch navigator who 
sailed from Java in 1606 and explored a portion 
of the eastern shore of the Gulf of Carpen¬ 
taria. Other Dutch navigators during the next 
quarter-century pursued the advantage thus 
gained, and in 1642 Abel Jansen Tasman dis¬ 
covered the large island which now bears his 
name, but which he called Van Diemen’s Land. 
A few years later the island-continent was 
given the name New Holland, and this it bore 
until about the middle of the nineteenth cen¬ 
tury. 

The Dutch made no attempt to establish set¬ 
tlements in the new-found land, nor for a long 
period was any attention paid to it by navi¬ 
gators of other nations, except for a few casual 
visits. In 1770, however, Captain James Cook, 
returning from New Zealand, coasted north 
along the eastern shore and took possession in 
the name of England of a great tract which 
he called New South Wales. To one little in¬ 
dentation where he went ashore he gave the 
name of Botany Bay, because of the innumer¬ 
able strange plant forms which were then 
found. Some years later, in 1788, the British 
sent out to this spot a company of convicts, 
and a penal settlement was established where 


Sydney now stands (see Botany Bay). Other 
convicts were later transported, and as their 
terms expired they acquired land, began to 
till the soil, and built up a real colony. Ad¬ 
venturing men from England and many serious- 
minded people from other quarters in search 
of new opportunities also came, and gradually 
the new community became more law-abiding 
and more attractive to the better class of 
settlers. 

Exploration continued, but not until 1813 
did anyone succeed in crossing the mountains 
and making his way into the interior. The 
circumnavigation of the island-continent was 
completed in 1822, and the few rivers were 
explored practically to their sources. Tales of 
daring but slightly less thrilling than those 
told of the great African explorers of the nine¬ 
teenth century are related of those who at 
intervals tried to make their way across the 
continent from north to south or from east to 
west; more than one determined explorer dis¬ 
appeared into the great interior desert region 
and was never heard of again. As late as 
1896 the journey by direct route from north to 
south was looked upon as a feat of great hardi¬ 
hood. 

Discoverij of Gold. Meanwhile other settle¬ 
ments had grown up along the eastern and 
southern coasts, and the grassy plains to the 
west of the mountains had been appropriated 
by the sheep-raisers. And then, in 1851 came 
the news that gold had been found at Summer- 
hill Creek, in New South Wales. Later it was 
found in Victoria, and the great Ballarat gold 
field was opened up. Excitement was intense. 
Settlers who had been making excellent profits 
from their stock-raising; adventurers who 
longed for easy wealth; speculators from lands 
beyond the sea, rushed by thousands to the 
points where gold had been found. Ordinal 
pursuits were entirely neglected, the little cities 
were almost overwhelmed by the crowds that 
poured into them—2,000 people came to Mel¬ 
bourne each week during 1852—and law and 
order were practically overthrown. Within a 
decade the excitement wore off, however, while 
the states profited by the increase in population 
and in trade which had come to them. 

Efforts Toward Federation. The present 
political divisions were in these early years all 
distinct colonies, and commerce among them 
did not thrive, since some had adopted free 
trade and others protective tariff principles. 
It soon became apparent that a union of some 
kind would be beneficial to all, and as early 






AUSTRALIA 


492 


AUSTRALIA 


(3) 


Outline 


i. 


Position 

(1) Latitude, 10° 50' to 39° 10' south 

(2) Longitude, 112° 52' to 153° 34' east 

(3) Surrounding seas 

II. Size 

(1) Length, 2,400 miles 

(2) Breadth, 1,900 miles 

(3) Area, 2,946,700 square miles 

(4) Rank, the smallest of the continents 

(5) Comparative size 

III. Sliape and Coast Line 

(1) Oblong, compact mass 

(2) Regular coast line; length, 8,800 

miles 

(3) Few indentations 

(a) Great Australian Bight on the 

south 

(b) Gulf of Carpentaria on the north 

(4) Islands 

(a) Tasmania 

(b) East Indies 

(5) The Great Barrier Reef 

IV. Surface Features 

(1) Lacks variety 

(2) Low, rounded mountains 

(3) Arid lowlands 

(4) The Great Plateau 


V. Drainage 

Small river systems 
Most important rivers 

(a) Rivers of the north 

(b) Rivers of the west 

(c) Interior rivers 
Lakes 


VI. Climate 

(1) Extremes of temperature 

(2) Coast regions mild and pleasant 

(3) Uneven rainfall 

VII. Vegetation 

(1) Peculiarities of plant life 

(2) Semi-desert and tropical types 

(3) Introduction of European plants 


VIII. Animal Life 

(1) Interesting and peculiar species 

(a) Few higher types 

(b) Marsupials; mammals of primi¬ 

tive class only 

(2) Peculiar and varied species of birds 

(3) Reptiles and fish 

IX. Industries 

(1) Rich mineral resources 
( 2) Farming 

(3) Stock-raising 

(4) Manufactures 

X. Inhabitants 

(1) Aborigines 

(2) Whites 

(3) Uneven distribution of population 
(a) Cities 

(4) Immigration 

(5) Education 

XI. Improvements and Commerce 

(1) Railroads 

(2) Telegraph and telephone systems 

(3) Cable communication 

(4) Trade 

XII. Government 

(1) Federation of states 

(2) Nominal British control 

(3) Universal suffrage 

(4) Departments of government 

(a) Executive 

(b) Legislative 

(c) Judicial 

XIII. Defense 

(1) Compulsory training 

(2) Australian navy 

(3) Part in the War of the Nations 

XIV. History 

(1) Colonial Period 

(a) Exploration and colonization 

(b) Discovery of gold 

(c) Steps toward federation 

(2) The Period of Federation 

(a) Tariff question 

(b) Exclusion of Asiatics 

(c) Progress and development 



Questions 

What was Australia called one hundred years ago? 

Where does Australia rank as to size among the possessions of Great Britain? 






















































AUSTRALIA 


493 


AUSTRALIA 



Outline and Questions on Australia—Continued 

If you were sailing from San Francisco to Sydney, what waters would you pass 
through? In going from Liverpool to Sydney? 

Who are the Anzacs? 


ern coast of Australia in south latitude? 

Does the equator cross Australia? Does either of the Tropics? 

What characteristic have the Australian natives that shows they are not negroes? 


Who were the first settlers of Australia? 

What is the attitude toward immigration? 

How does Australia prove the falsity of the statement “All mammals bear their 
young alive”? 


United States? 

What is the “bush”? What is wattle? 

In what stage of civilization are the native peoples? 

How large a proportion of the population is made up of them? 

How does the date of the great gold rush compare with that in California? 

What effect did it have on the history of the country? 

What tiny forms of animal life had much to do with making navigation dangerous 
along the northeast coast of Australia? 

How does the density of population in Australia compare with that in Canada? 

How has the plant life adapted itself to the arid conditions? 

What effect, if any, has the climate had on the distribution of population? 

If the entire population of Australia were removed to Queensland would the 
average density be greater or less than that of the United States? 

How does the altitude of the highest peak compare with that of the highest point 
in Africa? In North America? 

How do Australians give support to the British navy? 

What progressive system coming into favor in Canada and the United States 
originated in Australia? 

What fruit trees are native to the continent? 

How does the head of the government obtain his office? 

How is religious instruction given in the schools? 

In what direction does the great interior region drain? 

How close a supervision has the government over the railroads? 

What radical pension system has been adopted? 

What is the final court of appeal? Under what circumstances may it be called 
upon to act? 

How does the constitution resemble that of the United States and differ from 
that of Canada? 

Why has Australia special need of good railway communication? 

Are people of all races welcomed in Australia? 






















AUSTRALIA 


494 


AUSTRALIA 


as 1849 tentative steps were taken in that 
direction. Not until 1885, however, when a 
Federal Council was established, was anything 
definite accomplished, and not all of the colo¬ 
nies joined in this. This body was merely 
advisory, and could not control matters in any 
colony. 

A national convention held at Sydney in 
1891 proposed a union and mapped out the 
main lines on which it should be organized, 
but it was six years later before a constitutional 
convention was actually assembled. The con¬ 
stitution was submitted to the people of the 
various colonies in 1898, and two years later, 
after having been approved by the people, was 
submitted to the Parliament of Great Britain. 
Approved by that body and signed by Queen 
Victoria, it went into effect January 1, 1901. 
The Northern Territory was at that time a part 
of South Australia, from which it was separated 
ten years later. The first Commonwealth Par¬ 
liament met at Melbourne in May, 1901, and 
at once entered upon a struggle over the tariff 
question. Finally, after months of conflict, a 
protective tariff bill was passed, and the pro¬ 
tectionist party has been in the ascendancy 
during most of the succeeding period. One 
feature of legislation has been a determined 
effort to keep out Asiatics, that a “white Aus¬ 
tralia” may be maintained. Merchants, stu¬ 
dents and tourists of other races may enter 
the country and remain for a time, but none 
but whites may make their permanent homes 
there. 

The Commonwealth is a country of oppor¬ 
tunities and of promise. Such questions as 
the conflicts between capital and labor, the 
up-keep of roads, the assisting of agriculture 
by reduction of freight rates and by the trans¬ 
portation of cattle in times of drought have 
received careful attention. Farmers who wish 
to introduce new crops or establish new indus¬ 
tries, such as the manufacture of dairy prod¬ 
ucts, may receive assistance from the govern¬ 
ment, as may those who find their crops 
threatened by disease or insect pests. After 
all the years during which it was first a land 
of myth and later a land of wild adventure, 
where gold-seekers and bush-rangers lived their 
perilous lives, Australia has become a settled, 
self-governing country, ready to take its place 
among the intelligent, progressive nations of 
the world. g.g. 

Other Items of Interest. The Torrens sys¬ 
tem of land registration, which is gradually 
supplanting others in Canada and the United 


States, came from Australia. It is explained in 
another volume of this set. 

During the War of the Nations the name 
Anzacs was given to the men of the Australia- 
New Zealand Army Corps, the w.ord being 
derived from the initials of the longer name. 
A town in the peninsula of Gallipoli was called 
Anzac during the Dardanelles campaign. 

Darwin visited Australia on the journey de¬ 
scribed in The Voyage of a Naturalist on 
H. M. S. Beagle , and obtained some of the 
knowledge which led to his great work on the 
Origin of Species. 

The territory of Papua, or British New 
Guinea, is controlled by Australia. In 1914 the 
adjoining district, German New Guinea, was 
seized by Australian troops, as were also the 
Bismarck Archipelago to the northeast and 
Germany’s share of the adjacent Solomon 
Islands. 

The proportion of divorced persons to mar¬ 
ried persons is less than a third of what it is in 
the United States, but perhaps twenty times 
as great as in Canada. 

Though the island-continent contains fewer 
people than Canada, it has tw r o cities larger 
than any in Canada. Sydney, with its sub¬ 
urbs, is believed to have nearly three-quarters 
of a million inhabitants, and Melbourne over 
650,000. Adelaide’s population is about 
200,000; Brisbane’s 150,000; Perth’s, 100,000. 

Only 3.4 per cent of the white population 
five years of age and over are illiterate. In 
Canada the percentage is 10.5, and in the 
United States 7.7 per cent of those ten years 
and over cannot read or write. 

Since 1909 the Commonwealth has had a 
system of old age pensions. Previously such 
pensions had been paid in New South Wales, 
Queensland and Victoria. Only three govern¬ 
ments, Germany, Denmark and New Zealand, 
introduced the measure earlier. 

The British system of pounds, shillings and 
pence is in use. 

Five counties in the Northern Territory have 
been named for British statesmen—Disraeli, 
Gladstone, Malmesbury, Palmerston and Rose¬ 
bery. 

Australia’s copper output is less than one- 
tenth that of the United States; it is exceeded 
by Japan, Mexico and Spain. 

Many Australians are great athletes. Their 
teams have more than once held the Davis 
Cup, emblematic of the world’s championship 
in tennis, and their crews have won the Grand 
Challenge Cup of the Henley Regatta, in Eng- 




AUSTRALIAN BALLOT 


495 


AUSTRALIAN BALLOT 


land. The crawl, the fastest stroke in swim¬ 
ming, was introduced from Australia, and one 
variety of it is still known as the Australian 
crawl. 

Before the War of the.Nations Australia sent 
the United States only eight to eighteen per 
cent of the latter’s imported first-class wool, 
less than either Argentina or Great Britain. 
In 1915, however, Australia led all with 66,- 
000,000 pounds', thirty per cent of the total. 


Consult Fraser’s The Making of a Nation; 
Lloyd’s Newest England (Australia and New 
Zealand); Rowland’s The New Nation. 

Related Subjects. The reader who wishes to 
acquaint himself more fully with conditions in 
Australia will find the following articles helpful: 

CITIES AND TOWNS 

Melbourne 
Newcastle 
Perth 
Sydney 

COAST -WATERS 

Botany Bay Indian Ocean 

Coral Sea Pacific Ocean 

Great Australian Bight 


Adelaide 

Ballarat 

Brisbane 

Hobart 


New Guinea 


Cooper’s Creek 
Lachlan 


ISLANDS 

Norfolk Island 

Tasmania 

# 

RIVERS 

Murray 

Murrumbidgee 


New South Wales 
Northern Territory 
Queensland 
South Australia 


STATES 

Tasmania 

Victoria 

Western Australia 


PECULIAR ANIMALS 


Bandicoot 
Bower Bird 
Cassowary 
Dingo 

Duck-billed Platypus 

Echidna 

Emu 


Kangaroo 
Lyre Bird 
Opossum 
Parrot 
Swan 

Tasmanian Wolf 
Wombat 


Acacia 
Bamboo 
Bottle Tree 


Cattle 

Copper 

Gold 

Olive 


PLANT LIFE 

Eucalyptus 

Myrtle 

Palm 

LEADING PRODUCTS 

Sheep 
Silver 
Sugar Cane 
Wheat 


AUSTRALIAN, aws tray' lian, BALLOT, a 
system of voting whose essential features are 
absolute secrecy in the expression of the 
voter’s choice, and the use of official printed 
ballots supplied by the state, provincial or 


local authorities. It was first used in Aus¬ 
tralia in 1856 and has since spread to prac¬ 
tically all the civilized nations of the world. 
Before the introduction of the Australian sys- 

O REPUBLICAN Q DEMOCRATIC 


For Governor. 


□ For Governor, 

EDWARD F. DUNNE 

a «Yi q. /-v: 


□ Charles' s, deneen 

* 1 _ w. Olsl PliM, Chicwo. — 4500 &»«» St., Chicago. 

□ TnTT1 f 0 A e , u .*?, n ,, a nor ’ r*—I For Lieutenant-Governor. 

JOHN G. OGLESBY □ BARRATT O'HARA 

Fin—* 111 —*~ J 122ft Monw Avc.. Cbkcgo. 

□ For Secretary of State. 

HARRY WOODS 

*000 \V%fTcft Ave.. Chicago, 

- - I-1 For Auditor of Public Account* 

james s. McCullough M james j. brady 

Urbana, JHinoia. U—J 2852 Shakcipe&rt Ave.. Chicago. 

□ For State Treasurer. 

WILLLAM RYAN, JR. 

Danville, Illiooi*. 

□ For Attorney General, 

PATRICK J. LUCEY 

Strtitor, HHoota. 

For Representative* In Conors**, 

(State at Large-* to be elected.) 


Elkhart. Illinois 

□ For Secretary of State, 

CORNELIUS J. DOYLE 

Greenfield, Illinois. 

For Auditor of Public Accounts, 




□ For State Treasurer, 

ANDREW RUSSEL 

Jacksonville, Illinois. 

□ For Attorney Genera!, 

WILLIAM H. STEAD 

Ottawa. Illinois. 

For Representatives In Congress, 

□ (State at Large—2 to be elected.) 

WILLIAM E. MASON 

3314 Washington Boul , Chicago. 


| (State at Large—I to be elected.) 

I] LAWRENCE B. STRINGER 

□ Sll< Washington boul , Chicago. 1 * Lincoln. Illinois. 

BURNETT M. CHIPERFIELD fl WM. ELZA WILLIAMS 

Canton, Illinois. * 1 Pittsfield. Illinois. 


For Representative In Congress, 

Troth District, 


Pittsfield, Illiooia. 

For Representative In Conarese, 
T*»th DUtrtct, 


□ Troth District, » ■ ■ ■! Te»th District, 

GEORGE EDMUND FOSS || FRANK L. FOWLER 

711 Cordon Trr . Chicago. I—J Wilmette, Illinois 

For Member State Board of Equalization, For Member State Board of Equal 

□ Tenth District, r— . Tenth IMstrtct, 

J. GEORGE SEEBACHER CHARLES H. WEBER 

2557 N. Marshfield Ave.. Chicago. ' ' 1 2037 Grace 8t.. Chicago. 


For Representatives in General Assembly, 

□ Tblrtr-flrst District, 

FRANKLIN S. CATLIN 

451 Dcldcn Ave., Chicago. uan>w> <%u.. 

I HARRY L. SHAVER FI FRANK J. SEIF. JR. 

* 6347 Winthrop Ave., Chicago *■■ ■■ * 1533 Orchard St., Chicago, 


For Representatives In General Assembly, 

□ Thirty-first District- 

william mckinley 

4033 Sheridan Rd.. Chicago. 


□ For State's Attorney. 

LEWIS RINAKER 

1313 Norwood Ave.. Chicago^ 

□ For Recorder of Deed* 

JOHN C. CANNON 

1611 Larchmont Ave , Chicago. 

For Clerk Circuit Court, 


□ For State’s Attorney. 

M ACL AY HOYNE 

6136 Washington Ave.. ChicagtX 

□ For Recorder ot Deeds, 

JOSEPH F. CONNERY 

2028 Washington Boul. Cbicaga 

For Clerk Circuit Court, 


□ rui VlC'H VllUlll VlfUlli MM- » VI VIOI A V'lVU'l vuuq 

JOSEPH E. BIDWILL, JR. rn JOHN W. RAINEY 

1058 Columbia Ave , Chicago. LmJ 3622 Union Ave . Chicago-. 

□ For Clerk Superior Court, . , For Clerk Superior Court, 

CHARLES W. VAIL fl RICHARD J. McGRATH 

7159 Normol Ave., Chicago. fc—J 648 N. Carpenter St., Chica^Cfe 

□ For Coroner, , For Coroner, 

PETER M. HOFFMAN fl DENNIS J. EGAN 

Dcaplpihca JUinoia. 654 W. 18th 6 l. Chicago, 

AUSTRALIAN BALLOT IN THE UNITED 

STATES 

Part of Republican and Democratic columns ; 
other columns for minor political parties, if any, 
would appear at right. 


tem it was customary for each candidate to 
have his own ballots printed, and to distrib¬ 
ute them to the voters before they entered 
the polling place. Under this system bribery 
and fraud were common. Dishonest politi¬ 
cians were often bold enough to bribe voters 
and follow them to the ballot box to see that 
the vote paid for was actually cast. 

Under the Australian system the ballots are 
furnished by the government. They are de¬ 
livered in sealed packages to the judges of 
election shortly before the opening of the polls. 
When the polls are closed every ballot must 
be accounted for, whether used for voting, 
or spoiled, or still clean and unmarked. 

Marking the Ballot. In the system as pro¬ 
vided in the United States the names of the 
candidates for office are arranged in columns 
under the heading of their respective parties. 
It is customary to place all the candidates of 
each party in the order of the importance of 
their office. Thus, in a state election, first 


AUSTRALIAN BALLOT 


496 


AUSTRIA 


comes the governor, then the lieutenant- 
governor, then the other state officials, and 
finally the local officers to be chosen. At the 
left of the party’s name at the head of the 
column is a circle, and if the voter wishes to 
vote for all of the candidates of that party 
he may put a cross (X) in the circle. This 
is called ‘Voting a straight ticket.” If, on the 
contraiy, he wishes to vote for some candi¬ 
dates of one party and some of another, he 
must put a cross in the square at the left of 
the name of each man for whom he wishes to 
vote. This is called “scratching” or splitting 
the vote or ticket. In a newer form of ballot 
all party designations are absent and the can¬ 
didates’ names are arranged in alphabetical 



WM. R. BROWN 


STUB 


of the City of Ottawa, Barrister. 


qFRANK HAMON 

^ of the City of Ottawa, Artist 


JOSEPH O’NEIL 


of the City of Ottawa, Gentleman. 


JOHN R. SMITH 


STUB 


of the City of Ottawa, Merchant 


THE AUSTRALIAN BALLOT IN CANADA 

Ballot papers are kept in a book in each poll¬ 
ing division, and contain a stub (white perpen¬ 
dicular space shown above) and a counterfoil 
(black perpendicular space shown above). Both 
the stub and counterfoil are numbered on the 
back, and are separated from the ballot paper by 
a line of perforations between the counterfoil 
and the stub, and between the counterfoil and 
the ballot paper. The stub is separated when the 
voter receives the paper, and its number is com¬ 
pared with that on the counterfoil when the vote 
is given. 

order. In Canada the system is slightly dif¬ 
ferent in detail, and is explained in the de¬ 
scription under the illustration of Canada’s 
sample ballot. 

Counting the Ballots. When the voter re¬ 
ceives a blank ballot from one of the judges 
of election a mark is placed after his name on 
the list of registered voters. He then enters 
a curtained booth, where he may mark his 
ballot without interference. The laws of most 
countries and smaller political divisions, how¬ 
ever, allow one of the election officials to 


assist an illiterate voter if the latter requests 
it. When the voter has marked his ballot he 
must fold it in such a wav that none of his 

I 

marks can be seen, but the identification marks 
previously placed upon it by the judge must 
be visible. The judge then drops it into the 
ballot box and the voter’s name is entered on 
the poll books by the clerks. When the polls 
are closed the ballots are removed from the 
box and are counted by the judges of election. 
Any ballots which were not initialed or other¬ 
wise marked by an official must be thrown 
out, because they could have been put into 
the box only by some unauthorized person. 
Ballots improperly marked are also not 
counted. 

Greater Honesty in Elections. Under the 

Australian ballot system most of the elements 
of fraud are removed. A voter can secure a 
ballot only after he enters the polling place, 
and he marks his ballot free from observa¬ 
tion. There is no mark on any ballot to show 
who cast it. Bribery and fraud, however, are 
still possible with the consent of the election 
officials, but honest, fearless judges and clerks 
of election have it in their power to prevent 
nearly all fraud in the casting or counting of 
ballots. 

Spread of the Australian Ballot. This form 
of ballot was first used in South Australia in 
1856, and later in the same year was intro¬ 
duced into several other of the Australian 
colonies. For more than a decade little atten¬ 
tion was given to the new plan by other gov¬ 
ernments, but finally in 1869 it was given a 
trial at Manchester, England, and in 1872 was 
definitely established by act of Parliament. 
Shortly afterward it was introduced into Can¬ 
ada, but for a decade no serious attempts were 
made to establish it in the United States. A 
Wisconsin law of 1887 had some features of 
the Australian system, but the first complete 
law was that of Massachusetts in 1888. The 
Presidential election of 1888 was marked by 
an unprecedented amount of fraud, one result 
of which was the adoption of the Australian 
ballot by nine states in 1889. The system is 
now used in all states of the Union and in all 
the provinces of Canada. See Voting Ma¬ 
chine. w.f.z. 

AUSTRIA, aws' tria. This name, which is 
taken from a German word meaning Eastern 
Empire , has at different times in the past 
thousand years been used to denote various 
territories; but all of these have had a com¬ 
mon center. To-day when the name is used 










AUSTRIA 


497 


AUSTRIA 


it is generally understood to mean the Austrian 
Empire, one of the two monarchies which go 
to make up Austria-Hungary. More narrowly, 
the term includes but Upper Austria and Lower 
Austria, two crownlands which comprise in 



AUSTRIA 

The form of Austria is more irregular than 
that of any other country in the world. It is 
shown in- solid black in the illustration. 

area but a tenth part of the Austrian Empire. 
The latter includes, in addition to these crown- 
lands, Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, 
Trieste, Istria, Tyrol, Vorarlberg, Bohemia, 
Moravia, Silesia, Galicia, Bukowina and Dal¬ 
matia, and has a total area of 115,831 square 
miles, about forty-four per cent of the entire 
area of Austria-Hungary. Its population of 
28,571,934 is over half that of the entire mon¬ 
archy. 

The physical features of Austria, its resources 
and its industrial life are discussed in the 
article Austria-Hungary, as is also the almost 
nominal joint government of the two divisions 
of the monarchy. Each of the two has, how¬ 
ever, its own independent government. 

Government. Austria is in title an empire, 
but in form a limited monarchy, much like 
the other governments of Europe. Its hered¬ 
itary ruler bears the title of emperor, and this 
monarch is also king of Hungary, the com¬ 
mon sovereign forming almost the only bond 
between the two otherwise largely unrelated 
states. In his executive functions, which in¬ 
clude the making of treaties, the conferring 
of degrees of nobility and the pardoning of 
criminals, there is associated with him a coun¬ 
cil of ministers, by one of whom each of his 
official acbs must be signed. These ministers 
are responsible to a Parliament, known as the 
Reichsrath (council of the Empire), which con¬ 
sists of two houses, the House of Lords and 
the House of Representatives. Since 1907 the 


516 members of the lower house have been 
elected by the direct and equal vote of all 
male citizens over twenty-four years of age who 
have lived for one year in the place of voting. 
The emperor is obliged to summon the 
Reichsrath each year. 

Local Government. All of the crownlands 
of which Austria is composed were at some 
time in the past independent states; some 
were kingdoms, some duchies, some principal¬ 
ities of either rank; and the emperor of Aus¬ 
tria is by title ruler of each of these. Thus 
he is king of Dalmatia, archduke of Austria, 
count of Tyrol, and so on. Each of these 
provinces has a legislature, or diet, of one 
house, and an executive committee composed 
of a number of members chosen by the diet 
and a president appointed by the emperor. 
Every province is also a department, admin¬ 
istered by a governor appointed by the em¬ 
peror. 

History. The history of Austria was 
throughout the Middle Ages and early modern 
period confused with that of Germany, and 
for a large part of that time was identical 
with that of the Holy Roman Empire (which 
see). 

In 796 Charlemagne drove the Avars from 
the territory between the Enns and the Raab, 
two tributaries of the Danube, and united it 
to his empire as a margravate, or border prov¬ 
ince; and it was this little province which was 



FROM 1810 TO 1814 

the nucleus of the present Austrian Empire. 
After the invading Hungarians had been driven 
out (see Hungary, subhead History) it was 
































































AUSTRIA 


498 


AUSTRIA 


more firmly established as a part of the old 
German empire, and acquired the name of 
Oesterreich, or Eastern Realm. In 1156 the 
margravate was enlarged and created a duchy, 
and from that time on there were frequent 
accessions of territory, with corresponding in¬ 
crease in the power of the dukes. In 1284 
Ottokar, one of the strongest in the line of 
dukes, ventured to resist the authority of the 
emperor, Rudolph of Hapsburg. Ottokar was 
killed during the struggle, and in 1282 Rudolph 


was ruler of the greatest domain in Europe. 
His brother Ferdinand, who inherited Austria, 
spent most of his life fighting the Turks, who 
in 1530 penetrated as far as Vienna, and ex¬ 
acted an annual tribute for Austrian rule over 
Hungary. The late sixteenth and early sev¬ 
enteenth centuries were much disturbed bj' 
struggles for liberty, religious and political, on 
the part of Hungary and Bohemia, and the 
resentment of the latter country at having to 
accept as king the Catholic Ferdinand brought. 



GERMANY 


POLAND 


POLAND 


FRANCE 


'WITZER 


TURKISH 

-^EMPIRE 


LAND: 


TURKISH EMPIRE 


ii Austrian Line 
11 Spanish Line 
— Boundary of Holy Roman Empire 


'MEDITERRANEAN, 
tyjjj SEA mnm 


1 Territory of 
the Hapsburgs 


GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE 


At left: Austria and the Holy Roman Empire under Charles V, who was also king of Spain. 
At right: Austria and the dominions of the Hapsburgs in 1740, at the accession of Maria Theresa. 


assigned the territory to his own sons, Albert 
receiving Austria and Rudolph Styria. From 
that time until the present the Hapsburgs have 
ruled Austria. 

During the two centuries that followed, the 
duchy was constantly disturbed by wars, either 
with rebellious subjects or with neighboring 
provinces, but it grew steadily and increased 
its influence. Albert V, son-in-law of Emperor 
Sigismund, became king of Bohemia and Hun¬ 
gary, and in 1438 was chosen emperor as 
Albert II. But Hungary became independent 
in the next generation, and under its patriot 
king, Matthias Corvinus, took Vienna in 1485, 
and temporarily drove the Hapsburgs from 
Styria and Carinthia. So great, however, had 
become the power of the Austrian house in 
Germany that from this time on the Haps¬ 
burgs were almost always able to have them¬ 
selves chosen Holy Roman Emperors. 

In 1453 Austria was made an archduchy, and 
gradually, by marriage or inheritance, Spain 
and the Netherlands came for a time under 
the same rule, so that Charles V (which see) 


on the Thirty Years’ War (which see). Dur¬ 
ing the reign of Leopold I, grandson of Fer¬ 
dinand, there was war with Sweden. Later 
the Turks, invited by Hungarians, again 
reached Vienna, but were driven back by 
King John Sobieski of Poland, and perma¬ 
nently forced beyond the Danube by other 
allies of Austria. It was during this king’s 
time, too, that the question of the succession 
to the Spanish throne culminated in the great 
War of the Spanish Succession. (See Succes¬ 
sion Wars, subhead War oj the Spanish Suc¬ 
cession .) Joseph I succeeded to the imperial 
throne during this war and, dying before its 
close, was followed by Charles VI. The treaty 
at the close of the war was largely favorable 
to Austria, which came into possession of the 
Spanish Netherlands, Milan, Naples and Sar¬ 
dinia; but in 1720 Sardinia was exchanged for 
Sicily, and fifteen years later, after the War 
of the Polish Succession, both Naples and 
Sicily were lost, and more territory in North¬ 
ern Italy gained. 

Charles VI tried by the Pragmatic Sanction 












AUSTRIA 


499 


AUSTRIA 


(which see) to secure the throne for his 
daughter, Maria Theresa, but she was obliged 
to fight for her possessions with Frederick the 
Great (which see). She lost Silesia and part 
of Italy, and in the Seven Years’ War unsuc¬ 
cessfully attempted to recover the former. 
In 1772 Maria Theresa shared in the first par¬ 
tition of Poland. Her husband, Francis I, was 
succeeded as emperor by his son Joseph II, 
who ruled in Austria jointly with his mother, 
and who attempted to push through many 
reforms for which the people were not ready 
(see Maria Theresa). Joseph was on the 
throne when the French Revolution broke out, 
followed by revolt in Belgium. Leopold II, a 
statesmanlike ruler, succeeded. As head of 
the Holy Roman Empire he planned to crush 
radical republicanism in France, but died be¬ 
fore his plans could be fully matured. His 
son Francis, who came to the throne in 1792, 
attempted to carry out his father’s projects. 
He also shared in the third partition of Po¬ 
land. . 

In the first war with the French revolution¬ 
ists, Austria, defeated by the young General 
Bonaparte, lost Belgium and the region about 
Milan, Italy, but was permitted to seize Venice, 
hitherto independent. When Bonaparte was 
absent in Egypt, Francis again attacked; 
Bonaparte returned, defeated the Austrians, 
and obliged them to give up Tuscany. In 
1804, when Napoleon took the title of Emperor 
of the French, Francis replied by calling him¬ 
self Hereditary Emperor of Austria. Two 
years later, after having been crushed at Aus- 
terlitz with the loss of Venice, Dalmatia and 
Istria, and having witnessed Napoleon’s 
founding of the Confederation of the Rhine, 
he renounced the title of Holy Roman Em¬ 
peror. In 1809 Francis again took up iirms 
against Napoleon, and as a result lost Trieste 
and other Adriatic territory, the Tyrol and 
West Galicia. In the following year, through 
the marriage of Napoleon with Maria Louisa, 
daughter of Francis, Austria entered into nom¬ 
inal alliance with Napoleon, but deserted him 
in 1813 to join in the campaigns which caused 
his downfall. 

From this time till 1848 the dominating 
figure in Austrian affairs, and to a large ex¬ 
tent in those of all Europe, was Prince Met- 
ternich. In the Congress of Vienna Austria 
refused to take back Luxemburg and Belgium, 
but in compensation received Venice and its 
Adriatic territory and practical domination 
over all Italy north of Rome. Metternich’s 


policies, which included the suppression of all 
liberal tendencies, did not help to solve the 
three great problems of nineteenth century 
Austria—Italy, the Slavs and Hungarians, and 
influence in Germany. 

In Italy there was trouble from the start. 
Before Napoleon the Italians had been con¬ 
tent under the rather benevolent Austrian 
dominion, but the new generation included 
such patriots as Mazzini, whom the Bonaparte 
revival of Roman rule had set dreaming of 
a new and united Italy. Metternich’s reply 
to their aspirations was the attempt to Ger¬ 
manize Italy. Many Italian leaders were ar¬ 
rested and confined in fortresses like the Spiel¬ 
berg, whose unspeakable horrors are told in 
My Prisons, the personal reminiscences of a 
famous Italian author, Silvio Pellico. In 1820 
the people of Naples forced their Bourbon 
king to grant them a constitution, whereupon 
Metternich sent an army and occupied the 
country. Another army helped crush the rev¬ 
olutionists in the kingdom of Piedmont. 

While the flame of national sentiment in 
Italy was thus being fanned, the same spirit 
was growing in Austria itself, in a much more 
complex way. In 1828 Hungary revived its 
old constitution and reintroduced the Magyar 
language; Bohemia followed with attempts to 
reinstate the Czech tongue; the Slavs, in the 
South, began a similar effort. In 1846 the 
Galicians, who are Poles, rebelled. Two years 
later came revolutions in Hungary, in Bohe¬ 
mia, in Vienna itself. Metternich resigned and 
fled. When the news was brought to Italy the 
people of Milan and Venice drove out the 
Austrian garrisons, and the king of Piedmont, 
in the name of all Italy, declared war, thus 
beginning the movement which made modern 
Italy and later involved Italy in the War of 
the Nations. In Hungary the revolt was 
crushed by the soldiers of the Russian czar, 
in Bohemia by the Austrians themselves; in 
Vienna it resulted in the abolition of feudal 
service for Austrian peasants and the abdica¬ 
tion of the Emperor Ferdinand in favor of 
his nephew, Francis Joseph, who ruled to 
November 21, 1916. The Italians were de¬ 
feated, but in 1859 they won Lombardy. 

From the time of Napoleon’s fall, Austria 
had struggled with Prussia for domination in 
the German confederation. Though the latter 
power had gained influence by its presence 
in the Customs Union, from which Austria 
was excluded because the other members did 
not want Hungary and Italy in their ranks, 








AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 


500 


AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 


Austria maintained its traditional leadership 
until, through the Schleswig-Holstein question 
and the intrigues of Bismarck, it was drawn 
into the Seven Weeks’ War of 1866. Italy at¬ 
tacked at the same time as Prussia, and the 
result of the conflict to Austria was the loss 
of Venice and exclusion from the political 
affairs of Germany. The question of Austro- 
German relations has, however, been revived 
by the War of the Nations, as told in the 
story of Austria-Hungary. 

Austrian defeat left Hungary in a position 
to dictate regarding the internal affairs of the 
country. In 1861 the Hungarian Parliament 


had been abolished, but now came the Aus- 
glcich, or Compromise, of 1867, which gave 
Hungary legal equality. The affairs of Austria 
since that date are told in the article Austria- 
Hungary. Since 1848 Austria had encouraged 
the rivalry of the Magyar (Hungarian) and 
Slav races within the monarchy, in order to 
maintain supremacy of the German element. 
In the Ausgleich, however, the Slavs, actually 
a majority in the whole country, were divided 
between the kingdoms of Austria and Hun¬ 
gary, to form a minority in each. a.mc c. 

For outline, questions and index of related 
topics, see Austria-Hungary. 



JL L Jk USTRIA-HUNGARY, or AUSTRO- 
HUNGARIAN MONARCHY, called also the 
Dual Monarchy, a monarchy of Europe 
which is known thus under one name but is 
in reality a collection of states of various 
sizes, inhabited by peoples of different nation¬ 
alities, the whole bound together only by the 
fact that one sovereign is supreme ruler of 
them all. It is not a nation, in the same sense 
as France, for instance, and its inhabitants 
are not a distinct people known as Austrians, 
as the people of France are Frenchmen. 

Austria-Hungary, the largest country of 
Europe with the exception of Russia, is in the 
south central part of the continent, where it 
lies between Saxony, Prussia and Russia on 
the north, Russia and Rumania on the east, 
Rumania, Serbia and Montenegro on the 
south, the Adriatic Sea and Italy on the south¬ 
west, and Switzerland and Bavaria on the 
west. It is 52,416 square miles larger than 
Germany, and 54,113 square miles larger than 
France. Its total area, 261,241 square miles, 
is slightly less than that of Texas and slightly 
more than that of the province of Alberta. 
As against Alberta’s population of about 400,- 
000, and nearly 4,000,000 in Texas, however, 
Austria-Hungary had in 1910 a population of 
51,390,223, or an average of about 195 to the 
square mile. When it is - considered that the 
United States has an average density of about 


lll l l | I immmmM 

thirty-one to the square mile, and Canada 
of less than two, it may be seen that there 
is not much land in Austria-Hungary which 
can be allowed to stand idle. Indeed, there 
is one province, Lower Austria, which averages 
more than 400 to the square mile, while the 
most sparsely settled section of all, the Tyrol, 
has over eighty. 

States Which Compose the Monarchy. The 

United States and Canada are made up of 
states or provinces, but those countries can 
give no adequate idea of the composition of 
Austria-Hungary, for each one of the Austro- 
Hungarian provinces was once a sovereign 
state, and they have been brought together 
merely by force of circumstances and not by 
any real bond of unity. The first great divi¬ 
sion is into the Austrian Empire and the 
Hungarian Kingdom, the former with 115,831, 
and the latter with 125,641 square miles. 
Hungary is fairly compact, but Austria, with 
its various provinces, is spread in a sort of 
crescent shape about Hungary. Bosnia and 
Herzegovina, since 1908 an integral part of the 
monarchy, have a combined area of 19,767 
square miles. 

The Land and Its Rivers. This second larg¬ 
est of European states has the shortest coast 
line of any of the large states of the Conti¬ 
nent, and is the only one of the great Euro¬ 
pean states which is entirely without colonial 























AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 


501 


AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 


possessions. The striking peculiarity of its 
surface is the prevalence of high land, for 
Austria-Hungary is more mountainous than 



any other part of Europe except Switzerland. 
The western provinces are practically covered 
by spurs of the Alps, and though the moun¬ 
tains nowhere attain the height of the great¬ 
est Swiss peaks, still several summits rise to 
almost 13,000 feet, and the Tyrol, the most 
westerly province, is scarcely second to Switz¬ 
erland in the beauty of its scenery. 

The other chief mountain range is the Car¬ 
pathian, which sweeps in a great curve 800 
miles in length about the northern and eastern 
boundaries of Hungary, and rises at times to 
a height of over 8,000 feet. Elsewhere, too, 
lesser mountain regions are found, the Adriatic 
being bordered by a highland which makes 
of the coast a region of marvelous scenic 
beauty. Several of the smaller provinces 
have basin-like hollows within their mountain 
boundaries, but only in Hungary does there 
occur a level region of any extent. There, 
within the curve of the Carpathians, lies a 
great plain of over 30,000 square miles, as 
flat as the Mississippi Valley prairie region, 
and as fertile. 

About three-fourths of all Austria-Hungary 
is drained by the Danube River system—the 
greatest in Europe save the Volga; and it is 
difficult to estimate what has been the effect 
of this river system on the history of the 
country (see subhead Transportation, below). 
The Theiss, Drave and Save are all tributa¬ 
ries of the Danube, while the Elbe and the 
Vistula flow northward, and the Adige flows 
through Italy into the Adriatic. Of lakes 
Austria has few of any importance, but the 
little crystal-clear lakes of the Alps, thousands 


of feet above sea level, help to make that 
region one of the most picturesque in all 
Europe. Hungary has the Platten See, the 
largest lake of Southern Europe. 

Climate and Agriculture. Though one of 
the most southerly countries of continental 
Europe, Austria-Hungary ranges in latitude 
from about that of Chicago to a point a little 
north of Winnipeg, or from 42° to 51° N. 
The climate, however, is for the most part 
mild, but the considerable differences in alti¬ 
tude give a wide range of temperatures, the 
yearly average va^ing from 48° in the extreme 
northern part to 62° in the southern. In 
southern Dalmatia, on the Adriatic coast, trop¬ 
ical plants, which in America’s greatest cities 
could be raised only in greenhouses, may be 
grown out-of-doors. 

The rainfall, like the temperature, varies 
greatly in different parts of the country. In 
some of the western mountainous regions it 
is more than 100 inches a year, while in Lower 
Austria, Moravia and Silesia it is not more 
than one-fourth as much. Everywhere, how¬ 
ever, there is sufficient moisture for agricul¬ 
ture. 

Agriculture is the most important indus¬ 
try of the country. The variations in surface 
and in rainfall permit the successful produc¬ 
tion of a large number of crops, including some 
which are subtrqpical, as the orange and the 
olive. Austria-fiungary is often spoken of as 
the granary of Europe. The great plains of 
Hungary produce more corn (maize) than is 
grown in any other European country. The 
dual monarchy’s wheat crops are exceeded only 
by Russia and France, its oats by Germany 
and France, its barley by Russia and Germany, 
and its rye by Germany alone. Until 1915 
the wheat yield w T as always greater than that 
of Canada; more than two-thirds of it comes 
from Hungary, but Austria leads its partner in 
oats and rye. Next to Russia, Hungary is 
also the best tobacco country of Europe, and 
Austria is exceeded by no nation in the world 
except Germany and Russia in the production 
of sugar beets. In fact, Austria-Hungary’s 
exports of sugar in normal times are equalled 
by none of the cane-sugar countries except 
Cuba and the Dutch East Indies. Its pro¬ 
duction of potatoes is nearly twice that of the 
United States. Vine culture, too, is extensive, 
the mountain slopes furnishing excellent sites, 
and Austria-Hungary is one of the important 
wine-producing countries of Europe. 

In the plains of Hungary and among the 









AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 


502 


AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 


highlands of the Alps are extensive grassy 
stretches which afford fine grazing land; but 
though stock-breeding has been brought to a 
high state of perfection the monarchy has no 
more than enough cattle to satisfy its own 
demands. Austrian horses are far-famed, and 
are surpassed by those of few other localities; 
this is in part accounted for by the fact that 
the government has taken great interest in 
the breeding of horses that it might have 
perfect mounts for its cavalry. 

Other Natural Resources. Forestry. Much 
of the mountain country which does not lend 
itself to agriculture is yet extremely valuable 
because of its forests. Government bureaus 
exercise strict supervision of all forests on 
public lands, to prevent wasteful cutting. 
About 25,000,000 acres are forested in Austria, 
and a nearly equal amount in Hungary. 

Mining. The monarchy is one of the rich¬ 
est of European countries in minerals, and 
possesses mines which were worked in the days 
of the Romans and still yield good returns. 
Coal, including lignite, is the most important 
mineral product; only the United States, Great 
Britain and Germany excel in this commodity, 
over 50,000,000 tons of coal and several times 
as much lignite being mined each year. With¬ 
out this coal supply it would have been diffi¬ 
cult for Austria-Hungary to have become the 
important manufacturing country which it is 
to-dajr. Iron, lead and zinc, silver, quicksilver, 
copper, graphite, and gold are also obtained in 
large quantities, and the salt mines of the Car¬ 
pathians have been noted for centuries. So 
profitable are these rock salt beds that the 
government holds them as one of its most 
profitable monopolies. Precious stones of vari¬ 
ous kinds, as garnet, opal, ruby, amethyst, 
topaz and sapphire, add to the richness of the 
output. 

Manufactures and Commerce. Austria-Hun¬ 
gary as a whole is an important manufacturing 
country, but the industries are by no means 
distributed evenly among the provinces, Aus¬ 
tria possessing far more than does Hungary. 
This has been a bond of union between the 
two monarchies, for Austria needs Hungary’s 
wheat, and Hungary needs Austria’s manu¬ 
factured products. The iron and steel and the 
textile industries are the most important of 
all, and are not only conducted on a large 
scale but with the most modern methods. As 
the monarchy raises no cotton, large imports 
from India and the United States are neces¬ 
sary, but the raw materials for the making of 


silk, woolen and linen goods are produced at 
home. Hungary manufactures much flour, 
while Austria produces most of the great ex¬ 
ports of beet sugar mentioned above. For 
centuries the Bohemians have been famed 
for their skill in glass-making, and their art- 
ware is to be found in any American store 
which deals in such products. Porcelain of 
the very finest kind is also produced in Bo¬ 
hemia. 

Ringed in by mountains and possessing less 
than 1,000 miles of coast line, Austria-Hungary 
had decided obstacles to overcome in devel¬ 
oping a foreign commerce. That these are 
being more and more perfectly surmounted 
is shown by the steady growth in the values 
of imports and exports, until stopped by the 
War of the Nations in 1914. They nearly 
doubled in the ten years ending in 1913, each 
being then over half a billion dollars a year. 
Until the beginning of the twentieth century 
trade between Austria-Hungarj^ and the United 
States was inconsiderable, but since 1900, ex¬ 
cluding the period during the great war named, 
exports from the United States to Austria- 
Hungary increased threefold and trade in the 
opposite direction doubled. Austria needs 
chiefly cotton and machinery, while it sends 
to the United States beet sugar, glass, pottery 
and jewelry. Before the declaration of war 
made such commerce illegal, Canada’s exports 
to Austria-Hungary were rapidly mounting, 
having increased sixfold from 1910 to 1914, 
while imports had remained practically station¬ 
ary. 

Transportation. By Water. Austria-Hun¬ 
gary is remarkably fortunate in its rivers, 
which afford waterways penetrating to many 
parts of the monarchy. For upwards of 800 
miles the Danube is navigable for large ves¬ 
sels, and its tributaries, with the other inde¬ 
pendent river systems, furnish many hundreds 
of miles in addition. As water rates for ship¬ 
ping are considerably lower than rail rates, 
these rivers have played a very important 
part in the economic life of the country. 
Trieste, Austria’s seaport, and Fiume, Hun¬ 
gary’s, rank in tonnage with such others as 
Boston, Baltimore, Montreal, Victoria (B. C.), 
Bordeaux and Copenhagen. 

By Bail. But Austria-Hungary is by no 
means dependent on its rivers for inland trans¬ 
portation, for there are over 29,000 miles of 
railway in the monarchy. All the principal 
cities and towns are easy of access by rail. 
It has been the policy of the government to 



juwy 


ecuu 

mTVUTLjmI 


Hungarian Parliament at Budapest 


ln:niiTfrr?1 rftMtl'C 


A Village Scene 


A Wayside Cross 


The Arena Cit 


Costume 


A Local 


SillllililKaftl 


Austrian Parliament at Vienna 


mfflm u 



11 


? ?f 1*1 C J 7 ’ 

HI 


t.jVUM %&?/*• 


□ C 


D □ 






























































































































































AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 


504 


AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 



German 

Magyar 

Rumanian 


Bohemian 

Croato-Serbian 

Slovenian 


BfiMS Rojthenian 
{'■ '.'..'.I T\ Italian 
■■ID Polish 


RACIAL MAP OF AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 
In few other civilized countries is there greater confusion of tongues. 


buy up the railroad lines, and it now owns 
over half of the mileage of Austria and seven- 
eighths of that of Hungary. 

Peoples and Languages. The strangest thing 
about this monarchy which is one country in 
name only is the number of peoples differing 
in race, language and traditions who comprise 
it. The United States and Canada have re¬ 
ceived by immigration representatives of 
many nations, some of them in large numbers, 
but the cases are not at all similar. The 
much-used phrase of the “melting-pot” ex¬ 
presses very truly the fact that no matter how 
different these American new-comers may be, 
they all tend within a few years or at most a 
generation to become citizens of their adopted 
country. But in Austria-Hungary this is not 
true. Each race is supreme in its own portion 
of the country. It has resisted for years the 
influences of the differing peoples roundabout, 
and clings closely to its own language and 
customs. 

Most numerous of all the peoples are the 
Slavs, who make up forty-seven per cent of 
the whole population; but they are divided 
into so many branches differing from each 
other in language, in manners and in customs 
that only a student of races would recognize 
that they are one people (see Slav). Bohemia, 
Moravia, Carniola, Galicia, Dalmatia, Croatia, 


Slavonia and Northern Hungary are largely 
Slavic, while the Germans, who comprise 
twenty-three per cent of the total inhabitants, 
make up almost the entire population of Upper 
and Lower Austria, and are present in smaller 
numbers in almost every part of the country. 
Because Upper and Lower Austria are German, 
the official language of the Austrian Empire 
is German. 

In Hungary, how r ever, the Magyars comprise 
over half of the population of the kingdom, 
and Magyar is therefore the official tongue 
(see Magyars). A young man in any of the 
outlying provinces of Hungary, whether it be 
the northern Slavic portion or the Rumanian 
section of Transylvania, must make himself 
as familiar with the Magyar language as with 
his own if he wishes to enter political or dip¬ 
lomatic circles. Of Jews there are over 2,500,- 
000—more than a sixth of all the Jews in the 
world; of gypsies about 95,000, and a consid¬ 
erable number of Armenians. (For distribu¬ 
tion of races see accompanying map.) 

Religion and Education. There is no state 
Church, in the strict sense of the term, and 
any sect which does not preach doctrines con¬ 
trary to the laws of the country is allowed 
freedom of worship. The Roman Catholic 
Church has by far the largest number of mem¬ 
bers. The Greek Church comes next, and of 








































































































AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 


505 


AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 


the Protestant churches the Lutheran is 
strongest in the German section, and various 
Calvinistic denominations flourish in Hungary. 

The existence of so many different races 
with different standards of culture makes the 
establishment of a uniform system of educa¬ 
tion practically impossible, so throughout most 
of the country each province manages its own 
schools. This is more true in Austria than in 
Hungary, for in the latter monarchy the Mag¬ 
yars are more dominant than is any one race 
in Austria, and are therefore able to force 
their ideas to some extent on the other peo,- 
ples. There is, however, in Austria as well as 
in Hungary a state department of instruction 
which exercises a supervision over provincial 
affairs. The German provinces of Austria 
have the highest educational standards, their 
schools being noted particularly for their fine 
technical training. Above the primary schools 
are the gymnasia, which prepare for the uni¬ 
versities, and the realschulen, from which 
students go to institutes of technology. The 
University of Vienna, the greatest in the whole 
monarch}? - , is generally recognized as one of 
the foremost universities in the world; gradu¬ 
ate students from America, especially physi¬ 
cians, attend it in large numbers. Hungary 
also has two classes of schools between the 
elementary and the university, and its educa¬ 
tional system culminates in five great univer¬ 
sities. 

Illiteracy tests show that the percentage for 
Austria of those who cannot read and write 
is twenty-three and for Hungary twenty-eight; 
but such general statements are unfair to the 
more advanced portions of the country. 

Emigration. The emigration from Austria 
has averaged in recent years, before 1914, 
from 250,000 to 275,000, and of these by far 
the larger proportions have made their homes 
in the United States, so the latter country 
had in 1910 a population of more than 2,700,- 
000 who were born in Austria-Hungary or of 
Austro-Hungarian parentage. About three per 
cent of Canada’s immigrants before the great 
war were from the dual monarchy. As with 
so many of the European nations, the com¬ 
pulsory military service has been held to ac¬ 
count for much of the emigration. See Army, 
subhead Austria-Hungary. 

Government and Cities. Under the subhead 
Government in the articles Austria and Hun¬ 
gary are treated the separate governments of 
the two monarchies, but there are certain 
functions which they have in common. Thus 


questions of national finance, war, and foreign 
relations must be dealt with by two Delegations, 
one chosen by 
the Austrian Par¬ 
liament, one by 
the Hungarian, 
and each consist¬ 
ing of sixty mem¬ 
bers. These meet 
one year at Vi¬ 
enna and the 
next at Budapest, 
and hold their 
sessions separate¬ 
ly. The results 
of the delibera¬ 
tions are sent 
from one to the 
other in writing, 
and if after three such interchanges they fail to 
agree, they meet for voting, but not for dis¬ 
cussion. 

The chief cities in Austria are Vienna, the 
capital; Trieste, Prague, Lemberg, Cracow and 
Gratz; in Hungary, Budapest and Szegedin. 
All the more important cities are described at 
length in their alphabetical order in these 
volumes. 

History. The history of the two monarchies 
up to 1867 is treated separately in the articles 
Austria and Hungary. That was the year of 
the Ausgleich, or agreement, by which the two 
sovereign states were made one monarchy 
with a single ruler and a single flag. The 
position of the two countries at that time 
explains the peculiar arrangement: Hungary, 
ever eager for independence, was almost but 
not quite strong enough to demand it; Aus¬ 
tria, its weakness made plain by the rapidity 
of Prussia’s victory in 1866, felt obliged to 
make concessions; and with one demanding 
all that it dared, the other conceding only 
what it must, a carefully-balanced plan was 
worked out to give neither the upper hand. 
At the same time the interests of the other 
races, an actual majority in the empire, were 
ignored. Naturally, since such feelings lay 
back of it, the arrangement has never been 
satisfactory to either side. The high-spirited 
Magyars, the Czechs of Bohemia, and the 
Slavs of both North and South have displayed 
increasing desire for independence. The par¬ 
liaments of both Austria and Hungary are 
probably the most turbulent in the world, 
and the struggles of the members are not al¬ 
ways confined to words. 



KARL FRANZ JOSEPH 

Succeeded Francis Joseph 
(who reigned sixty-eight 
years) on November 21, 1916. 






AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 


506 


AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 



AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE 

From the Congress of Vienna (1815) to the Cession of Lombardy (1859) and of Venetia (1866). 
In few other civilized countries is there greater confusion of tongues. 

1. Kingdom of Wurtemburg 6. Austria 11. Hungary 

2. Kingdom of Bavaria 7. Lombardy 12. Galicia, or Austrian Poland 

3. Kingdom of Saxony 8. Venetia 13. Transylvania 

4. Bohemia 9. Croatia 

5. Prussia 10. Slavonia 


Foreign Affairs. Exclusion from Germany 
turned Austria’s attention in another direc¬ 
tion, and since 1866 the Balkan question has 
been Austria’s chief problem. At this time 
Turkey still bordered Austria on the Adriatic, 
and Serbia, Bulgaria and Rumania were vas¬ 
sals of the Sultan. Austria wished to assume 
the role of protector of the Balkan Slav peo¬ 
ples against Turkish oppression, but Russia, 
a nation of Slavs, had the same desire. Aus¬ 
tria’s dream was to extend its empire south¬ 
ward to the Mediterranean, since the estab¬ 
lishment of the kingdom of Italy had made 
its ports on the north of the Adriatic of little 
value in war time. Russia’s aim had long been 
the same. This rivalry, after nearly setting 
Europe on fire several times, became one of 
the chief causes of the War of the Nations. 

When Russia freed the Balkan nations and 
added to its own territory in its war of 1877, 
the other powers granted Austria the admin¬ 
istration of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which 
were still, however, considered Turkish prov¬ 
inces. In 1908, after the Turkish revolution, 
Austria annexed them. This angered Serbia 
and Montenegro, who threatened war. At the 


close of the Balkan War of 1912-13 Austria led 
the other powers in preventing Serbia from 
obtaining Saloniki or a port on the Adriatic, 
and in setting up the independent state of 
Albania out of territory conquered by Monte¬ 
negro, Serbia and Greece. See Albania. 

On June 28, 1914, the Archduke Francis 
Ferdinand, the emperor’s nephew and heir to 
his throne, was assassinated at Serajevo, the 
capital of Bosnia, by a Serbian student. Aus¬ 
tria declared the plot a part of the agitation 
to unite all the Slavs under Serbian rule, as¬ 
serted that it was backed by the Serbian gov¬ 
ernment, and demanded that Serbia officially 
condemn the Pan-Slav agitation, suppress anti-' 
Austrian books, newspapers and societies, and 
permit Austria to handle the investigation of 
the outrage and determine what Serbian offi¬ 
cers and officials should be discharged. Serbia 
accepted most of these conditions short of 
actual Austrian interference in its affairs, but 
Austria was not satisfied. Russia’s determina¬ 
tion to prevent the loss of Serbia’s independ¬ 
ence involved the rest of Europe, and Austria- 
Hungary’s declaration of war against Serbia 
on July 28 was but the first of the long list 



































































































































































































































AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 


507 


AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 


which made the War of the Nations. The 
main course of events after this date will be 
found in the article elsewhere on the war. 

The War. The first declaration of war was 
succeeded by the following: 


1914 

Austria-Hungary on Russia, 
Montenegro on Austria-Hungary, 
France on Austria-Hungary, 

Great Britain on Austria-Hungary, 
Austria-Hungary on Japan, 
Austria-Hungary on Belgium, 

1915 

Italy on Austria-Hungary, 

1916 

Austria-Hungary on Portugal, 
Rumania on Austria-Hungary, 


August 6 
August 7 
August 10 
August 12 
August 27 
August 28 

May 23 

March 15 
August 27 


During the war all of Austria’s old prob¬ 
lems—of its relations with Germany, of its 
rivalry with Italy, of its control of its own 
people—were revived or intensified. To un¬ 
derstand these questions the reader should 
know the earlier history, told in the article 
Austria. 

The reopening of the German question came 
through Prussian successes and Austro-Hun¬ 
garian failures in the early part of the war. 
Prussian-trained generals and officers were obvi¬ 
ously superior, and were given commands in 
the Austro-Hungarian army. Austria was the 
weaker and soon became the subordinate 
member of the alliance. The struggle against 
the surrounding nations seemed to foster a 
German determination to become independ¬ 
ent of the rest of the world, and one of the 
schemes proposed for after the war was a 
Customs Union which should include Austria- 
Hungary. Austrians opposed this because the 
better organization of German industries would 
give the latter an advantage; Hungarians op¬ 
posed it for a similar reason and because, as 
an agricultural people, they were already dis¬ 
contented with the tariff union with Austria. 
There was fear, too, that Germany hoped for 
political domination in the new union. 

The Italian people had never been satisfied 
with the territory acquired from Austria by 
the Seven Weeks’ War. They looked upon 
the large numbers of Italian-speaking people 
in the Tyrol, east of Venice and in Dalmatia 
as their brothers, and they called these lands 
Italia irredenta, unredeemed Italy. For stra¬ 
tegic reasons, too, Italy wished the eastern 
shore of the Adriatic. Nevertheless, at the 
outbreak of the war Italy was Austria-Hun¬ 
gary’s ally. In 1879 Austria-Hungary and 
Germany had formed a protective alliance 


against Russia and France; Italy had joined 
them in 1882, after the French occupation of 
Tunis, thus forming the famous Triple Alli¬ 
ance. One of the provisions of the treaty was 
that if either Austria-Hungary or Italy should 
occupy territory in the Balkans, the other 
should be compensated. On the basis of this 
Italy, while still neutral, demanded teratuf^- 
in return for Austria-Hungary’s occupation of 
Serbia, and insisted that the territory ceded 
should be a part of Italia irredenta, the Trent 
and Trieste. Germany pressed Austria to con¬ 
cede, but the Italian demand that the terri¬ 
tory should be immediately delivered was 
refused, and Italy declared war. 

Most of the subjects of Austria-Hungary 
fought loyally in the war. From time to time 
there were rumors of the shooting of Czech 
and Slav soldiers for mutiny, and of riots 
among the people when food became scarce 
in the cities, but the country was so cut off 
from the rest of the world that the truth 
could not be known. Complaints were made 
in the Hungarian Parliament, based on the 
casualty lists, that the Hungarian soldiers were 
being sacrificed and the Austrian soldiers 
saved. 

/ 

During the war differences arose between the 
United States and Austria-Hungary regarding 
the former’s shipment of munitions to other 
powers and the latter’s attacks on the Ancona 
and the Petrolite. The United States also re¬ 
quested and secured the withdrawal of Am¬ 
bassador Dumba for complicity in plots to in¬ 
terfere with munition making. 

Rumania’s reasons for declaring war will be 
found in the story of that country. 

Other Items of Interest. The only useful 
mineral which Austria does not have is plat¬ 
inum. 

Saint Ulrich, in the Tyrol, has been for two 
centuries known for its wood-carving. One of 
its specialties has been the little Noah’s Ark 
animals, and the industry has become so finely 
subdivided that frequently one family makes 
only cows, another only lions, and so on. 

High up in the Carpathian Mountains are 
numerous little lakes which the peasants call 
“the eyes of the sea.” 

Four-fifths of the surface of Austria is more 
than six hundred feet above sea level. 

The dual monarchy ranks high among the 
nations of Europe in respect to the number 
of great musicians it has produced. On its 
roll appear the names of Czerny, Dvorak, 
Hadyn, Liszt, Kubelik and Joachim. 




AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 


508 


AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 


OUTLINE AND QUESTIONS ON 
A U STRIA-HUNG AR Y 


Outline 


i. 

(1) Latitude, 42° 

(2) Longitude, 9‘ 
(3 ) Boundaries 


Position 

to 51° north 
30' to 26° 30' 


east 


( 1 ) 

( 2 ) 


(3) 


(4) 


( 1 ) 


( 2 ) 


( 1 ) 


( 2 ) 

(3) 

(4) 

(5) 

( 1 ) 

( 2 ) 

(3) 

( 1 ) 


( 2 ) 

(3) 

(4) 

(5) 


II. Size and Component Parts 

Area, 261,241 square miles 
Austria 

(a) Area, 115,831 square miles 

(b) Sixteen crownlands 

(c) Population 
Plungary 

(a) Area, 125,039 square miles 

(b) Population 

Bosnia and Herzegovina 

III. Surface 

Prevalence of highlands 

(a) Tyrolian Alps 

(b) Carpathian Mountains 

(c) Adriatic highland 

The Great Hungarian plain 

IV. Drainage 

The Danube system 

(a) Theiss 

(b) Drave 

(c) Save 
Elbe 
Vistula 
Adige 
Lakes 

V. Climate 

Prevailingly mild 

Range due chiefly to differences in 
altitude 

Sufficient rainfall for agriculture 

VI. Industries 

Agriculture 

(a) Grains 

(b) Sugar beets 

(c) Tobacco 

(d) The vine 
Stock-breeding 
Forestry 
Mining 

(a) Almost all minerals 
Manufactures 


< 2 ) 

(3) 

(4) 

(5) 


( 1 ) 


( 2 ) 


(3) 


( 1 ) 


( 2 ) 


VII. Transportation and Commerce 

(1) River navigation 

(2) Railways 

(3) Foreign trade 

VIII. Inhabitants 

(1) Different races 
(a) Slavs 


(3) 


(b) Germans 

(c) Magyars 

(d) Other races 
Languages 
Religion 
Education 
Emigration 

IX. Government 

Joint functions 

(a) National finance, war and for¬ 

eign relations 

(b) The Delegations 
Austria 

(a) The emperor 

(b) Reichsrath 

1. House of Lords 

2. House of Representatives 

(c) Local government 
Hungary 

(a) The king 

(b) Legislature 

1. Table of Magnates 

2. House of Representatives 

(c) Transylvania, Croatia and Slavo¬ 

nia 

X. History 

Austria 

(a) Early history 

(b) Rise of Hapsburgs 

(c) Steady growth 

(d) Great domain of Charles V 

(e) Unrest of Hungary and Bohemia 

(f) War of the Spanish Successon 

(g) Reign of Maria Theresa 

(h) Napoleonic era 

(i) Trouble with subject peoples 

(j) Long rivalry with Prussia 

(k) The Ausgleich 
Hungary 

(a) The coming of the Hungarians 

(b) Advance in civilization 

(c) Conflict with Turks 

(d) Encroaching power of Austria 

(e) Attempts at independence 

(f) The Ausgleich 
The Dual Monarchy 

(a) Formation in 1867 

1. Discontent of people 

(b) The Balkan question 

(c) Assassination of Francis Ferdi¬ 

nand 

(d) Beginning of the War of the Na¬ 

tions 

















AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 


509 


AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 



Outline and Questions on Austria-Hungary—Continued 

Questions 

The answers to some of these questions will be found in the articles on Austria 
and on Hungary. 

How may Hungary be compared to the “old moon in the new moon’s arms”? 
How many countries of Europe are more mountainous than Austria-Hungary? 
What obstacles did the monarchy have to overcome in building up a foreign 
commerce? 

What part did the Italian Mazzini play in the history of Austria? 

What has kept Hungary true to its compact with Austria for so long? 

Is freedom of worship allowed? 

What is meant by “unredeemed Italy”? 

Are the Hungarians related to the Huns? 

Can the same plants be raised in Illinois which are grown in the corresponding 
latitude in Austria-Hungary? 

What was the single act which precipitated the War of the Nations? 

What does the name Austria mean, and why was it given? 

What was the principle on which the Ausgleich, or compromise of 1867, was 
based? 

Under what circumstances did some of the inhabitants of the monarchy call to 
their aid their age-long enemies? 

For what reason is Austria-Hungary spoken of as “the granary of Europe”? 
How large a proportion of the Jews of the world live in Hungary? 

What is thfe upper house of the Hungarian Parliament called? 

With what region in North America may the Hungarian plain be compared? 

Is Austria-Hungary well or ill supplied with navigable waterways? 

Why has the country been intensely concerned in the Balkan question? 

When was the title of Holy Roman Emperor renounced? 

How long had it been in use? 

Do the farmers of Austria-Hungary have to resort to irrigation? 

How large a percentage of the population is German? 

Against how many countries did the monarchy issue a declaration of war during 
the War of the Nations? How many countries issued such decrees against Austria- 
Hungary? 

What is the Reichsratht How often does it meet? 

What was the effect of the Seven Weeks’ War on Austria? 

What countries of Europe are larger than Austria-Hungary? How much larger 
is it than Germany? Than Italy? 

What mineral resource is held as a government monopoly? 

Characterize briefly the Hungarians. 

How does the Danube rank among the rivers of Europe as to size and importance? 
What interest has the government in the railway lines? 

How does Austria compare as to density of population with Hungary? With the 
monarchy as a whole? With Rhode Island? 

What is the bond of connection between the various states of the monarchy? 
Which part of the monarchy has the best educational advantages? 

What complaint did Hungary make as to the conduct of the War of the Nations? 
How has the dissimilarity of industries served as a bond between Austria and 
Hungary? 






































AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 


510 


AUTOGRAPH 


Austria surpasses all other countries of Eu¬ 
rope in the number of its mineral springs, 
possessing in all over 1,500. About many of 
them have grown up widely-known watering- 
places. 

The tobacco of Hungary constitutes a strict 
government monopoly. 

Of the 275,000 gypsies in Hungary, less than 
10,000 are of the old roving type, the remain¬ 
der having adopted in some degree settled 
occupations. 

The northern end of the beautiful Lake 
Garda is in the Tyrol. The fertility of the 
surrounding country gave it its old name of 
Garden Lake. 

In many of the crownlands of Austria vot¬ 
ing for member of the Reichsrath is compul¬ 
sory. Every voter must appear at the polls 
or pay a fine. 

The dolomites (which see) of the Tyrol 
constitute one of the most picturesque regions 
of Europe. 

The Great Hungarian Basin is the largest 
plain in all Europe. 

Hungary has a great man}'- huge caverns, in 
many of which fossil animals have been found. 
Some of these caverns contain so much sulphur 
that it is not safe to enter them. 

Marie Antoinette, the unfortunate queen 
who played so large a part in French history, 
was the daughter of Maria Theresa of Aus¬ 
tria. E.Z. 

Consult Colquhoun’s The Whirlpool of Europe, 
Austria-Hungary and the Hapsburgs ; Rumbold’s 
Franz Joseph and His Own Time. 


Related Subjects. The reader who is inter¬ 
ested in the dual monarchy will find much de¬ 
tailed, systematic information in the following 
articles: 


Baden 

Brilnn 

Budapest 

Carlsbad 

Cracow 

Czernowitz 

Gratz 

Innsbruck 


CITIES AND TOWNS 

Klausenburg 

Lemberg 

Pilsen 

Prague 

Pressburg 

Szegedin 

Trieste 

Vienna 


Alps 


MOUNTAINS 

Carpathian 


IMPORTANT PRODUCTS 


Cattle 

Coal 

Copper 

Corn 

Glass 

Sugar Beets 
Tobacco 


Gold 

Lumber 

Pottery 

Salt 

Silver 

Wheat 

Wine 


RIVERS 


Danube 

Elbe 

Dniester 

Save 

Drave 

Vistula 


STATES 

Austria 

Dalmatia 

Bohemia 

Galicia 

Bosnia 

Hungary 

Bukowina 

Moravia 

Croatia and Slavonia 

Tyrol 


HISTORY 

Austerlitz 

Succession Wars 

Hapsburg 

Thirty Years’ War 

Holy Roman Empire 

Utrecht, Peace of 

Sadowa, Battle of 

Vienna, Congress of 

Seven Weeks’ War 

War of the Nations 


AUSTRIAN SUCCESSION, aws'trian suk 
ses'shun, War of the. See Succession Wars, 
subhead War of the Austrian Succession. 

AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE, 

the title of a book held by some to be the 
most popular and interesting work of Oliver 
Wendell Holmes. In it his wit and humor, his 
kindly philosophy and delightful style are com¬ 
bined with the ease and charm of conversation 
which always distinguished him; for the Auto¬ 
crat is simply the conversation at the breakfast 
table of a Boston boarding house. Holmes 
himself, the Autocrat, does most of the talking, 
but the Schoolmistress, the Young Man Called 
John, the Old Gentleman Opposite and sev¬ 
eral others are very clearly characterized. The 
book comprises a collection of sketches which 
first appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, in 1857 
and 1858; up to that time Holmes had only a 
local reputation save as the author of the 
poem Old Ironsides, but with the publication 
of these he at once became a man of literary 
note. 

AUTOGRAPH, aw' to graf, an original manu¬ 
script or signature, in the handwriting of the 
one who composed it. The word means, liter¬ 
ally, writing in one’s own hand, from autos, the 
Greek word for self, and graphein, meaning to 
write. In all ages the handwriting of famous 
men and women has been of interest. In the 
most ancient times of which we have record, 
manuscripts were frequently preserved, some¬ 
times because of their historical importance, 
but also because they were in the handwriting 
of noted people. One of the Ptolemies of 
Egypt is said to have exchanged wheat for the 
privilege of copying the manuscripts left by 
Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, and the 
elder Pliny speaks of seeing a collection of 


AUTOGRAPH 


511 


AUTOMATON 


autographs of famous men who lived two cen¬ 
turies before him. 

The interest and value of autographs depend 
on the fame of the writer, on the relative 
scarcity of specimens, and also on the historical 
or other interest of the particular example. A 
letter in which Christopher Columbus an¬ 
nounced the discovery of the New World would 
be priceless; all of the twenty-nine authentic 
Columbus autographs are in the hands of his 
descendants and will probably never be sold. 
A letter written by Americus Vespucius to his 
father is one of the priceless gems in the British 
Museum, which probably has the greatest auto¬ 
graph collection in the world. Six hours before 
her death, Mary Queen of Scots wrote to King 
Henry III of France, asking him to take care 
of her son “as much as he deserves it”; this 
letter is also in the British Museum. Among 
other famous people whose autographs are 
very rare are Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Sir 
Francis Drake, Sir Thomas More and John 
Milton. 

The value of an autograph depends greatly 
on the character of the example. A signature 
of George Washington is worth perhaps $20 to 
$40, whereas an entire letter in his handwriting 
has sold for as much as $500 or $600. A letter 



SOME NOTABLE AUTOGRAPHS 
Reading in order from top to bottom and from 
left to right, the names are G. Washington, R. E. 
Lee, William Shakespeare, John Milton, A. Lin¬ 
coln, John A. Macdonald, De la Salle, Christo¬ 
pher Columbus. 

to his father, in which General Grant an¬ 
nounced his enlistment in the Union army, was 
recently sold for $910, but letters of his of no 
particular interest may be bought for $10 to 
$40. In December, 1860, Abraham Lincoln 
wrote to his friend, Lyman Trumbull, about 
the possibility of compromise between the 
North and South; this letter was sold in 1914 
at public auction for $1,100. At the same time 
a letter from Lincoln to Grant, written on 
April 6, 1865, only three days before he was 
shot, was sold for $1,375. Autograph letters by 


Keats, Shelley, Charlotte Corday, La Salle, 
Marquette, Frontenac, John Eliot, Peter 
Minuit and Nathan Hale are highly prized. 

For the Young Collector. The beginner can¬ 
not hope to acquire such almost priceless 
autographs, but he can start with those which 
are within the limits of his purse. Many living 
men of prominence are glad to grant requests 
for autographs. The beginner must not be dis¬ 
couraged, however, if his is one of the hundreds 
of requests which are refused. There is the 
story of one little girl who wrote to a great 
man for his autograph: in reply he said that 
he never granted such requests, and the un¬ 
thinking girl tore up his letter! The seeker, 
for autographs should be careful to spell names 
and addresses correctly, not like one carelessi 
or ignorant collector who wrote to Robert Louis') 
Stevenson but spelled his name Stephenson. 1 
There are few celebrities who would take the 1 
trouble to answer such a request, even with 
the gentle sarcasm which Stevenson turned on 
this correspondent. The autograph collector 
should always remember that he is asking a 
favor of a man or woman who probably re¬ 
ceives a dozen similar requests a day, and the 
least the collector can do is to be as courteous 
and considerate and brief as possible, w.f.z. 

AUTO-INTOXICATION, the name applied 
to a chronic form of “self-poisoning,” due to 
absorption of toxins produced in the body by 
physical disorders. A very common cause is 
incomplete digestion in the intestinal tract, 
as a result of which there is an accumulation 
of the poisonous by-products of the digestive 
process. Among the evidences of this form 
of self-poisoning are constipation, anaemia, 
headache and so-called “bilious” attacks. 
Hygienic living and special attention to the 
diet are helpful measures for the cure of this 
condition. 

AUTOMATON, a device which represents 
the figures and actions of animals and human 
beings. Some very ingenious pieces of mechan¬ 
ism of this character have been made, such 
as singing and flying birds, and mechanical 
figures capable of playing instruments, writ¬ 
ing, etc. In 1875 there was exhibited in Eng¬ 
land a seated human figure, “Psycho,” that 
created widespread interest. It could move its 
head, select from a rack in front of it the cards 
needed in playing a hand of whist, and work 
out numerous mathematical calculations. The 
inventor of this automaton devised another 
figure which could draw the likeness of any 
person selected from a list of 200 names. 






AUTOMOBILE 


512 


AUTOMOBILE 



i 

v' , jl. '■ < y-.~* ~ 

iSISllllJtlg 

^HSI 

STORY 



UTOMOBILE, aw to mo' beel, which automobile industry; according to the census 


means literally self-movable, is the name pop¬ 
ularly given to all forms of self-propelled 
vehicles, except traction engines and railway 
locomotives, which are built for carrying pas¬ 
sengers and goods and fitted to run on streets 
and roads without a track. Though Sir Isaac 
Newton in 1680 invented a toy horseless car¬ 
riage, it w T as more than two centuries later 
before the automobile became of practical use. 
It was not until after 1890 that the experiments 
of many inventors began to bear fruit, and a 
few pioneers began to buy the new style 
of vehicle. But the automobile was still re¬ 
garded as an expensive plaything, interesting 
enough but of no practical use. England, for 
example, thought so little of the value of the 
new machine and considered it such a danger¬ 
ous agent that a law, enforced until 1896, for¬ 
bade automobiles to speed at more than four 
miles an hour and required that a man waving 
a red flag should precede every power-driven 
vehicle! Other countries placed no such bur¬ 
dens on automobiles, but gave them little 
encouragement. 

The first automobile race was held in 1894 
from Paris to Rouen, a distance of about 
eighty miles. The first race in America was 
held on November 2, 1895, at Chicago, over 
a course of ninety miles. Two cars started, 
but only one car finished, covering the ninety- 
mile course after eight hours forty-eight min¬ 
utes of clattering and puffing. During the race 
this automobile consumed five and one-half 
gallons of gasoline, stopped ten times for 
repairs, and made an average speed of nearly 
ten miles an hour. The automobile was 
stopped several times to take on supplies of 
gasoline and cakes of ice, the ice being placed 
in a receptacle attached to the motor to cool 
the engine. 

These details seem laughable in this day of 
swiftly-moving, high-powered and efficient ma¬ 
chines, but in 1895 they aroused a general pub¬ 
lic interest which laid the foundation for the 
present great industry. In 1890 there was no 


for 1900, there were in the United States alone 
fifty manufacturers who made about 4,000 cars 
valued at $5,000,000. In 1910 seven times the 
number of manufacturers were making over 
thirty times the number of automobiles, valued 
at fifty times $5,000,000. Since 1910 there has 
been an enormous increase in the number of 
automobiles made and used. From 125,000 in 
1909 the production jumped to 175,000 in 1910, 
to 378,000 in 1912, 515,000 in 1914 and nearly 
900,000 in 1915. The retail value of these 
900,000 automobiles was about $750,000,000. At 
the beginning of 1916 there were over 2,000,000 
automobiles in the United States alone, and 
the production for 1916 was estimated to bring 
the total for the United States and Canada to 
nearly 3,000,000. Great Britain and Ireland 
have about 250,000 automobiles of all kinds; 
France, 90,000; Germany 70,000; Austria-Hun¬ 
gary 50,000; and Russia not more than 12,000 
or 15,000. 

In the course of a single year the United 
States alone uses considerably more than 
1,000,000,000 gallons of gasoline for driving 
automobiles. If this quantity were placed in 
five-gallon cans, and the cans placed side by 
side, a double line of cans would encircle the 
earth at the equator. It is also estimated that 
about 30,000,000 gallons of lubricating oil and 
12,000,000 rubber tires are used each year. 

The enormous increase in the number of 
automobiles has been due to the great reduc¬ 
tion in prices. In 1899, when automobiles were 
still novelties, the average price of a runabout 
was $1,300; a touring car seldom sold for less 
than $2,500. In 1907 the average price was 
$2,100, but now the average price is a little 
less than $700, and more than one-half of all 
the automobiles sold are priced below this 
figure. Once the automobile was a luxury 
reserved for the rich; now it is a convenience 
and in many cases almost a business necessity 
for persons in moderate circumstances. At the 
same time American manufacturers have 
learned how to make the finest automobiles, to 

































AUTOMOBILE 


513 


AUTOMOBILE 


suit the most fastidious tastes. Only a few years 
ago it was the fashion, among those who 
could afford it, to buy only French, German or 
English-made automobiles. To-day the United 



THE IDEA EXISTED IN 1797 

Trevithick’s road locomotive, the first self- 
propelled vehicle ever constructed. 

States is not only making automobiles equal 
to those in any other country, but is actually 
exporting over $30,000,000 worth of automobiles 
a year. 

The Chassis and Body. An automobile con¬ 
sists of two main parts, the chassis and the 
body. Chassis is a French word, pronounced 
sha' see, and originally meant the mounting or 
stationary part of a cannon in a fortress. It is 
the foundation for all the parts which are 
movable and are used to raise or turn the gun. 
In an automobile the chassis comprises the 
frame, wheels, springs, motor, and the mechan¬ 
ism by which power is transmitted from the 
motor to the wheels—in fact everything essen¬ 
tial to the operation of the machine. Some¬ 
times the engine and transmission are not in¬ 
cluded in the term. All the rest of the struc¬ 
ture, which merely provides accommodation for 
passengers or goods, is called the body. The 
body and chassis are entirely distinct, and it is 
possible to transfer a single body from one 
chassis to another, and also to use several bodies 


at different times on the same chassis. The 
process might be compared to a man changing 
his clothes. Not every automobile body, of 
course, will fit any chassis, any more than every 
suit will fit any man. Manufacturers usually 
standardize the chassis, and make the body in a 
variety of styles to suit the individual tastes 
and needs of buyers. 

Styles and Uses of Automobiles. The word 
automobile was created to meet a sudden 
demand for some term which would describe a 
“horseless carriage.” There has been, recently, 
a tendency to substitute other terms, such as 
motor car, either motor or car alone, and motor 
vehicle. The British, in fact, have never used 
the word automobile, but have adopted the 
term motor car. The use of automobiles for 
business purposes has also led to the use of 
the term motor truck for the larger and heavier 
vehicles. As the word automobile, moreover, 
is really a French adjective, there is good 
reason for substituting a noun such as car, 
truck, or vehicle. 

The variety of purposes for which automo¬ 
biles are now used has led to the creation of 
three distinct types of cars, each of which is 
described in detail below. 

1. Pleasure Vehicles. All the earliest auto¬ 
mobiles were pleasure vehicles solely. They 
resembled closely the single-seated buggy or 
runabout, and the power was provided by a 
noisy one-C 3 dinder engine. The next step was 
a two-seated conveyance, seating four persons, 
and resembling the surrey. From this two- 
seated style, the present standard touring car 
has been developed. The speed of automobiles 
risked the safety of passengers on the open 
rear seat, and made necessary better protection 
from wind, rain, mud and dust. For these 
reasons the rear of the car was soon given a 
rounded shape, much like that of a cup or 
bowl. The French, seeing a resemblance to a 
barrel, called this part the tonneau, meaning 
literally hogshead. The name remains, but 
the exaggerated, bulging curves have long 
since disappeared. Later, as sheet steel and 
aluminum bodies were gradually substituted for 
wood, the designers began to construct more 
artistic models, following what are known as 
stream lines. This expression is borrowed from 
shipbuilders; it means that the general effect is 
one of length; the form tapers towards the 
front, or hood, to lessen air resistance. The 
length of automobiles has been gradually in¬ 
creased, while the width and the height from 
the ground have been decreased, 





































































AUTOMOBILE 


514 


AUTOMOBILE 



SHARP CONTRASTS IN DEVELOPMENT 

The car at the left was made by Elwood Haynes in 1894 ; in the next year it won a prize for 
excellence in design. The car at the right is a 1917 model from the factory of the same com¬ 
pany. 


A modern touring car usually seats five or 
seven passengers—the driver and one other 
person in front, three persons in the rear, and 
two on separate seats in the tonneau. These 
latter seats may be fixed in place, or made to 
fold out of the way when not in use. Touring 
cars are usually provided with collapsible cloth 
tops and sides, which can be lowered and folded 
at the back of the tonneau. When the top 
and sides are permanent, are made of wood or 
metal, and provided with glass in the doors and 
windows, the car is known as a limousine. The 
open touring car is the proper vehicle for use 
in the open country, because of its lighter 
weight, but for city use the limousine is some¬ 
times more desirable, as it gives better protec¬ 
tion from stormy w r eather. A limousine body 
is much heavier and somewhat more costly 
than a touring car. Another standard type is 
the roadster, which at first was a touring car 
built for two passengers, but by 1916 new 
model roadsters provided seats for one or two 
additional passengers in rather cramped quar¬ 
ters. The roadster is light, powerful, speedy, 
and particular^ serviceable for the owner who 
is also driver. There is, in addition, a variety 
of more or less standardized models for special 
purposes, including such familiar types as taxi¬ 
cabs, motor omnibuses and sight-seeing motors. 

2. Automobiles for Racing. From the road¬ 
ster has been developed a type of automobile 
specially built for speed. A car built for racing 
seats only two persons, the driver and his as¬ 
sistant, or mechanician. The body of the car 
is constructed to offer the least possible resist¬ 
ance to air; it stands close to the ground, is 
narrow for its length and often sharp-pointed 
at the front, and carries nothing which will add 
superfluous weight. Automobile race meets 
have been a regular feature since the automo¬ 
bile first came into general use. The two 


most important events in former years were 
the annual races for the Vanderbilt Cup in 
New York and for the Grand Prize of the 
Automobile Clubs, the former usually at 300 
miles and the latter at 400 miles. Later In¬ 
dianapolis built what was at the time the 
greatest speedway in the world, on which 500- 
mile races were run regularly every year on 
Memorial Day. Chicago followed with a sim¬ 
ilar speedway in 1915, itnd other cities by the 
dozen emulated these two examples, though 
on a less pretentious scale. 

The speed record for a mile is 25.40 seconds, 
or about 140 miles an hour. For 100 miles 
the record is fifty-six minutes 55.71 seconds, 
made in 1915 at New York; this speed is 
at the rate of 105.39 miles per hour. Various 
records both for longer and shorter distances 



have been made, with average speeds ranging 
from seventy to 100 miles an hour. The 
highest average for a distance over 100 miles 
was also made at New York in 1915, when the 
winner of a 350-mile race finished in three 



































AUTOMOBILE 


515 


AUTOMOBILE 



LONGITUDINAL SECTION THROUGH MOTOR AND TRANSMISSION 


hours twenty-four minutes forty-two seconds, 
an average of 102.60 miles per hour. This is 
faster than any railroad train has ever trav¬ 
eled for the same length of time. The fastest 
time ever made by a railroad train was in 
Florida in 1901 at the rate of 120 miles an 
hour for five miles, but the highest average 
for a distance of more than ten miles is only 
98.7 miles an hour, and for 100 miles the record 
is an average of only 84.6 miles per hour. The 
highest speed ever maintained by an aeroplane 
is 126.69 miles an hour. 

3. Trucks and other Commercial Vehicles. 
This class includes all styles from the small 
delivery wagons of the retail stores to great 
trucks for carrying coal, stone and other heavy 
materials. The special features of these ve¬ 
hicles are their greater capacity, as compared 
with horse-drawn wagons, and the greater dis¬ 
tance they can cover. The earliest cars were 
bodies of horse-drawn wagons placed on a 
motor chassis, but now special designs are in 
use for every possible purpose. Automobiles 
are being used for business purposes to an 
ever-increasing extent; the initial investment 
is somewhat greater than the cost of a horse 
and wagon, but the maintenance charge is 
less, and the amount of work done is much 
greater. A team and wagon can cover an 
average distance of sixteen to twenty miles a 
day; a small delivery automobile can cover 
this distance in an hour, and even a heavy 


truck can cover seventy to 100 miles a day. 
Under the same conditions the cost of deliver¬ 
ing a package by automobile is less than one- 
half the cost of delivery by horse and wagon. 
In the large cities the automobile is rapidly 
supplanting the horse for all business purposes. 

The Mechanism of an Automobile. The pro¬ 
pelling power of an automobile is derived 
either from steam, gasoline or electricity! 
Other methods have been tried, but these three 
are the only ones which have ever been in 
practical use. 

Steam-Driven Vehicles. This was the first 
type of automobile to be developed. In this 
type the fuel, usually gasoline, is burned under 
a water-filled boiler. The steam generated 
then drives a steam engine almost exactly the 
same as that of a railway locomotive. At 
first the “steamers,” as they were called, were 
the most popular variety. They ran quietly, 
because they had no noisy gears or transmis¬ 
sion; their speed could be varied merely by 
shifting a throttle; and there was always a 
reserve of power in the boiler which made it 
easy to start the machine. As the gasoline 
automobiles, however, were gradually im¬ 
proved, the disadvantage of the steamers began 
to weigh against them, and in a few years 
their popularity was largely gone. In 1916 
only one important steam car was manufac¬ 
tured. The chief objections to them were the 
danger of fire from the flame, the firebox being 


































































































AUTOMOBILE 


516 


AUTOMOBILE 


open, the possibility of freezing the water in 
the boiler in cold weather, and in all cases the 
length of time required to generate steam 
when the engine was cold. 

Gasoline or Internal-Combustion Engines. 
All of the pioneers who tried to construct a 
self-propelled vehicle, from the days of Sir 
Isaac Newton almost to the end of the nine¬ 
teenth century, used steam as a motive power. 
In 1872 George B. Selden of Rochester, N. Y., 
applied to the United States for a patent to 
cover a new idea, the application of an internal- 
combustion engine to a self-propelled vehicle. 
The patent was not granted until 1895, and 
by that time there were other inventors using 



HOW GEARS ARE SHIFTED 


As the car gains speed and less power is re¬ 
quired to drive it, the gear lever is shifted from 
low, or first speed, to the second, or interme¬ 
diate speed position. Then gear / is moved out 
of mesh with gear d to the position shown in 
the illustration, while gear g is moved into mesh 
with gear c. The power is then transmitted, on 
high, or third speed, through gears a, l>, c, 
and g. 


the same idea. Among them were Charles B. 
Duryea, sometimes called the father of the 
American automobile, Elwood Haynes, Alex¬ 
ander Winton, Frank B. Stearns, R. E. Olds 
and Henry Ford. Ford began to build his first 
machine in 1894, and finished it two years 
later; now his factory turns out finished cars 
at the rate of more than 1,500 a day. 

In the automobiles built by these and other 
men the propelling force is derived from an 
internal-combustion engine (which see). Va¬ 
rious fuels have been tried at one time or 
another, but gasoline is the only one now in 
general use (see Gasoline). Though the in- 


1 Cyl 

2 C y I. 
4 C y!. 

6 C y I. 


3 




Represents | _ 1 Represents 

power no power 

DIAGRAM SHOWING LOSS OF POWER 

A great many people find it puzzling to under¬ 
stand why continuous power can only be ob¬ 
tained from an engine of six cylinders or more. 
If the following simple explanation be followed 
carefully the reason will become evident, for, 
stripped of its technicalities, the subject is com¬ 
paratively simple. 

It should be remembered that the only part of 
an automobile which produces power is the en¬ 
gine—not the fly-wheel, carburetor or magneto. 
It is true that the first stores up energy, but it 
can produce none. Let the operations of a single 
cylinder engine be considered first, for multiple 
cylinder engines consist simply of a number of 
separate and similar cylinders, the power from 
which is applied in sequence and p-t different 
angles to the crank shaft. 

In the single cylinder engine, four strokes of 
the piston (two strokes toward the crank shaft 
and two strokes in the opposite direction) are 
required to complete each “cycle.” A cycle is 
simply one complete series of operations. Each 
cycle requires two complete revolutions of the 
crank shaft. 

The four strokes found in the single cylinder 
engine are: 

First. First half revolution of the crank shaft; 
piston travels toward the crank shaft; gas is 
drawn into the cylinder. This is the suction 
stroke. 

Second. Second half revolution of the crank 
shaft; piston travels back ; gas is compressed in 
the cylinder. This is the compression stroke. 

Third. Third half revolution of the crank 
shaft; piston travels toward the crank shaft; 
combustion and expansion of gas in the cylin¬ 
der ; this is the power stroke. 

Fourth. Fourth half revolution of the crank 
shaft; piston travels back; burned gas is ex¬ 
pelled from the cylinder. This is the exhaust 
stroke. 

These four strokes are continuously repeated in 
rotation as long as the motor runs. However, 
there is one important point to be remembered ; 
namely, power is not produced in any cylinder 
throughout all of the power stroke, but, approxi¬ 
mately, through only four-fifths of it. It is evi¬ 
dent then, even to the casual observer, that it is 
utterly impossible for the single or two-cylinder 
engine to deliver continuous power, as each cylin¬ 
der delivers power through less than one-fourth 
of the cycle. Many think, however, that the four- 
cylinder will give continuous power, and it would 
if it were not for this fact, that in not quite all 
this so-called power stroke is power available. 
As a consequence, to obtain continuous power 
the six-cylinder engine has been developed. En¬ 
gines of eight and twelve cylinders are also sold, 
but they do not develop continuous power more 
effectively than the six-cylinder. However, they 
add to the horse power of the engine. 

All this is much more easily grasped by in¬ 
spection of the second diagram. It will thus be 
seen why that small fraction of the power stroke 
which is not available for power shuts out the 
four-cycle engine from being an absolutely con¬ 
tinuous power producer. 

creasing cost of gasoline has led to the manu¬ 
facture of possible substitutes, none of these 
has yet taken its place. In a gasoline engine 
the liquid gasoline is forced through a car¬ 
buretor (which see), which turns it into a 
fine spray and mixes it with air. This mixture 






































AUTOMOBILE 


517 


AUTOMOBILE 




GRAPHIC COMPARISON OP POWER 

The above illustration graphically indicates the power produced by a six-cylinder and a four- 
cylinder engine, and gives fuller explanation of the illustration above. It shows that the great¬ 
est pressure of a four is greater than that of the six; but the “six” produces continuous and 
more nearly constant power, whereas in the “four” high pressure is followed by a moment of no 
pressure at all. Shaded portion shows graphically the total pressure applied in a single cycle. 
Both diagrams on same scale. 

Six-Cylinder (above): (a) highest pressure in a four whose power is equal that of a six; 

( b ) highest pressure in the “six”; (c) average pressure; (d) variations in actual pressure; (ps) 

indicates power stroke. , _ . . . 

Four-Cylinder (below): (b) highest pressure; (c) average pressure; (d) variations in actual 

pressure; ( ps ) power stroke. 


or gas is drawn into the cylinder of the engine 
by the suction of the piston, and when the 
piston returns is compressed. Either just be¬ 
fore or at the moment of greatest compression, 
the mixture is ignited, thus causing the gas 
to expand. The expanding gas drives back the 
piston, the piston communicates power to a 
crank shaft, and from the crank shaft through 



Before the year 1916 “roadsters” would seat 
but two people. In that year models seating 
three and four were designed, by adding a rear 
seat with narrow space for the feet back of the 
front seat and shortening the carrying space in 
the body over the rear wheels. 

an elaborate mechanism (called the transmis¬ 
sion) to the wheels. For details of this proc¬ 
ess see Carburetor; Gas Engine. The first 
automobiles made had only one or two cylin¬ 
ders. Later the number was increased to four, 
then to six, eight and twelve. Explosions in 


these cylinders do not take place at the same 
time, but one after another in regular succes¬ 
sion. (See diagram.) It is obvious that the 
more cylinders there are the greater is the 
power of the car. 

Electric Automobiles. The electric automo¬ 
bile owes its present development to Thomas 
A. Edison. It differs from the steam and inter¬ 
nal-combustion type in its essential feature; 
it operates with power generated elsewhere and 
stored in it, whereas the steam and gasoline en¬ 
gines themselves generate the power which runs 
them. The motive power in an electric auto¬ 
mobile is furnished by a storage battery (which 
see), which must be recharged from time to 
time. Places where electrical energy can be 
easily obtained are usually limited to cities, 
and a single charge is sufficient for only sixt 3 ^ 
to 100 miles. The speed of an electric automo¬ 
bile is less than that of the gasoline type; it 
seldom exceeds fifteen to twenty miles an 
hour. On the other hand, it has the decided 
advantage that it is cleaner, quieter and easier 
to operate than a gasoline car; for these reasons 
it has become a favorite for city use, especially 
for women. 

The Automobile in War. Along with its 

increasing usefulness in peace has been the 






















































































AUTOMOBILE 


518 


AVALANCHE 


development of the automobile for military 
purposes. In a small way motor vehicles had 
been used by the British in the South African 
War (1899-1902), by the Italians in Tripoli in 
1912, and by the Bulgarians in the Turko- 
Balkan War in 1912-1913; but it remained for 
the War of the Nations in 1914 to demon¬ 
strate that the automobile, perhaps more than 
any single weapon of offense or defense, has 
entirely changed the character of war. When 
Napoleon once remarked that an army fights 
on its stomach, he meant that its movements 
are dependent on the mobility of its food- 
supply. Once it was frequent occurrence for 
an army to wait for its supply trains, and 
Frederick the Great is known to have altered 
his plan of campaign on several occasions in 
order that his troops might keep close to their 
food supplies. Now it sometimes happens that 
the transport trains wait for the army, and 
rare are the instances in which food and am¬ 
munition fail an army because of poor trans¬ 
portation. 

The automobile has made possible the rapid 
movement of men and supplies on a scale hith¬ 
erto believed impossible. It has brought tons 
of food and ammunition to millions of men 
under circumstances in which horses could have 



ARMORED AUTOMOBILE 

Average type of automobile used in offensive 
attack in the War of the Nations. 


brought only pounds to thousands. It has 
made possible more rapid attacks and retreats, 
and has unquestionably brought death to added 
thousands of men. On the other hand it has 
saved thousands of lives, for men who other¬ 
wise would have lain on battlefields for hours 
or days have been transported almost in the 
twinkling of an eye to hospitals far from the 
firing line. Within ten days after the beginning 
of the war, the nations under arms were using 
over a quarter of a million automobiles in the 
field, and the number constantly increased as 
fast as factories at home and in the United 
States and Canada could finish new ones. 
They are used for every conceivable purpose, 
and everything movable is moved by gasoline 


if possible. There are light scout-cars, and 
heavy armored cars, ambulances, repair-shops 
and gasoline-tanks on wheels. There are 
motor-kitchens, motor operating-rooms and 
hospitals, and giant tractors drawing siege-guns 
or supply wagons by the score. There are 
automobiles carrying machine-guns, aeroplane 
guns, or heavy artillery, and there are others 
which are really small forts mounted on wheels. 
In place of the brave courier who rode a 
breathless horse the despatch carrier now rides 
in a puffing automobile. From generals to 
privates the whole army rides in automobiles 
when speed is necessary, and the horse has 
almost completely disappeared from the battle¬ 
field and its surroundings. France credits the 
automobile with the defeat of the first German 
“drive” upon Paris in September, 1914, when in 
a single night 60,000 troops were transferred 
by motors from Paris to the battlefield, forty 
miles distant, to oppose the invaders at a 
critical point at sunrise. 

Late in 1916 the British forces in France 
surprised their German foes by producing great 
armored tractors, weighing over 20,000 pounds 
and heavily armed, which could travel on 
“caterpillar” wheels over destroyed trenches 
and broken walls. Machine-gun and rifle fire 
could not injure the occupants. w.f.z. 

Consult Dyke’s Automobile and Gasoline ~En¬ 
gine Encyclopedia; Russell’s Automobile Driving 
Self-Taught; Manly’s Modern Motor Car. 

AUTONOMY, aw ton' o mi, a term derived 
from two Greek words which mean self and 
law; therefore it is applied to a state or com¬ 
munity which governs itself. In other words, 
autonomy means freedom in government. As 
now used it relates particularly to the freedom 
of a country to manage its own affairs when 
it is under the control of another country. 
Canada is a colony of the British Empire, and 
so far as its relations to foreign countries are 
concerned is subject to control by the British 
government, but in all matters pertaining to 
its own affairs it has perfect freedom, or 
autonomy. The relation of the various states 
of the American Union to the Federal govern¬ 
ment illustrates the same principle; each state 
is free to manage its own affairs, but beyond 
this its government cannot go, for interstate 
affairs are under control of the national gov¬ 
ernment. 

AVALANCHE, av' a lanch, from the French 
idiom, aialance, meaning descent, is the name 
given to masses of snow or ice that rush down 
mountain sides. They travel with great force 



















AVE MARIA 


519 


AVON 


and destroy trees, buildings, men and animals— 
everything in their path. When in winter the 
mountain sides become overloaded with fine, 
dry snow, these great snow caps may be started 
to lower levels by strong winds. They are 
known as wind avalanches. Ice or summer 
avalanches are great masses of ice detached by 
thawing from the high glaciers, and they occur 
in the warmest season. Sliding avalanches are 
masses which become too heavy for their 
support and, breaking away, crash to lower 
levels. Avalanches, also called landslides, 
which occur in summer are sometimes com¬ 
posed of melting snow and large areas of 
loosened earth. All avalanches take place so 
quickly that people seldom have time to get 
out of their way. Especially fatal are those 
that pour over high cliffs into valleys below. 
Two immense avalanches which occurred in the 
Italian Alps in 1885 contained 45,000 and 
250,000 tons of snow, respectively. 

The word is widely used in a figurative sense 
to indicate a mighty force which one cannot 
withstand. Thus, it is proper to say, “An 
avalanche of words silenced his opponents.” 
One should guard against using the term when 
it exaggerates the facts. 

AVE MARIA, ah'va mahree'ah (Latin 
Hail Mary), in the Roman Catholic Church, 
a form of prayer expressing honor to the Virgin 
and asking her intercession. The words are 
chosen from the beginning of the angel Ga¬ 
briel’s salutation to Mary, Hail, full of grace, 
the Lord is with thee (Luke I, 28). The 
prayer has been set to music by a number of 
famous composers, among them being Liszt, 
Schubert and Gounod, the composition of the 
last named being the one most frequently sung. 

AVERNUS, a vur’ nus, a lake occupying an 
extinct crater in Campania, Italy, about eight 
miles west of Naples. According to mythologi¬ 
cal lore, it formed the entrance to the lower 
regions, through which Aeneas and Ulysses 
descended and through which Pluto carried 
Proserpina, his stolen bride. In former times 
it was gloomy and forbidding, surrounded by 
dense forests and covered with a column of 
sulphurous vapor which was said to destroy 
all birds attempting to fly over its waters. In 
consequence of this belief the Greeks called 
the lake Aornis, a word meaning without birds. 

The modern name is Lago d’Averno, and the 
neighborhood is bare and desolate. The lake 
is about two miles in circumference and has a 
depth of 180 feet. (See the articles on mytho¬ 
logical personages named above.) 


AVESTA, aves'ta. See Zend-Avesta. 

AVOCET, or AVOSET, av'oset, a long- 
legged bird which wades in the marshes of 
Europe and America, migrating to the north 
in spring and to the south in autumn. Its 
distinguishing characteristic is its long, slender 



bill, which is elastic and bent upward at the 
tip, serving as a scoop with which to dig 
worms and small shell-animals from the mud. 
The plumage is brownish-black above and 
white below, the head, neck and chest being 
a light brown. The bird is about seventeen 
inches in length. It is considered a good game 
bird in some parts of its range. 

AVOIRDUPOIS, averdupoiz', from old 
French words meaning goods of weight, is a 
system of weights used for all ordinary coarse 
articles of commerce, such as coal, grain, food¬ 
stuffs, and the like. A pound avoirdupois con¬ 
tains 7,000 grains, divided into 16 ounces, as 
compared with 5,760 grains, or 12 ounces, troy 
or apothecary weight. The latter are used in 
weighing precious metals, gems and medicines. 
In the three kinds of weights the grain, the 
basis of computation, is unvarying. 

AVON, ay'von, a name made famous 
through its connection with the greatest name 
in the world’s literary history. There are in 







































AXIOM 


520 


AYLESWORTH 


England several small rivers called Avon, but 
the world is interested in only one, the Upper 
Avon, on which is Stratford, the birthplace of 
Shakespeare, the “Swan of Avon.” This stream, 
ninety-three miles in length, rises in Northamp¬ 
tonshire, flows through one of the most beauti¬ 
ful valleys in all England and falls into the 
Severn at Tewkesburg. 

AXIOM, ax'ium, a statement so general in 
its use that it is accepted without proof. Our 
text-books almost without exception define it 
as “a self-evident truth.” With simple accepted 
facts as a basis all other obtainable truth is 
searched for. It is used to apply to mathe¬ 
matics more generally, but by the Greek philos¬ 
ophers, it was applied to all general notions. 

Euclid assumed fifteen axioms as the basis 
for geometry. Among these are the following: 

(1) Equal quantities added to equal quanti¬ 
ties produce equal quantities. 

(2) A whole is greater than any of its parts. 

(3) Things equal to the same thing are equal 
to each other. 

(4) Magnitudes which coincide are equal to 
each other in every respect. See Algebra; 
Geometry. 

AXIS, an important term in botany, anat¬ 
omy and mathematics. It is a real or imag¬ 


inary straight line 
passing through a 
body or magni¬ 
tude, on which 
the latter re¬ 
volves, or may be 
supposed to re¬ 
volve. 

I n astronomy 
the word is used 
to indicate the 
center around 
which the earth 


Morth Pole 



Pole 


rotates. The axis of the earth has for its two 
extremities the 
North Pole and the 
South Pole. 

In botany the word 
is also used, the stem 
being termed the as¬ 
cending axis, the 
root the descending 
axis. 

In anatomy the 
name is given to the 
second vertebra from 
the head, that on 
which the atlas moves 



x y is axis of arch, 
(see Vertebra). 


In mathematics an axis is the straight line 
about which the parts of a figure or body are 
symmetrically arranged. 



x y is axis of prism a. 

AYE-AYE, i'i', a mammal of the lemur 
family, found in Madagascar, so named from 
the cry of surprise which the natives give when 
they see the animal, which they superstitiously 
reverence. The aye-aye is about as large as a 



THE AYE-AYE 


rabbit, and though a close relative of the 
monkey, resembles the squirrel in some partic¬ 
ulars, especially its long, strong teeth and its 
bushy tail. It has large eyes and ears, and is 
brown. Its most peculiar characteristic is a 
long, narrow third finger, with which it is 
thought to drag insects from their burrows. 
Like all of its family it is a creature of the 
night. Its nest of twigs is built in a high tree 
in the densest part of the jungle. 

AYLESWORTH, ayls' werth, Sir Allen 
Bristol (1854- ), a Canadian lawyer and 

Liberal statesman, one of the leading authori¬ 
ties on electoral and constitutional law in the 
Dominion. He was born at Newburgh, Ont., 
attended Newburgh Academy and the Uni¬ 
versity of Toronto, from which he was grad¬ 
uated in 1874, and was called to the bar in 
1878. He soon became a prominent lawyer, 
and on numerous occasions appeared in cases 
of great importance, notably in 1904, when he 
successful^ represented the old provinces of 
the Dominion when the effort was made to 
reduce their representation in Parliament. In 
























































AYLMER 


521 


AYR 


1903 he was one of the commissioners appointed 
to settle the Alaska boundary dispute, and to¬ 
gether with Sir Louis A. Jette refused to sign 
the award. In 1910 he prepared the case for 
the British colonies in the Atlantic fisheries 
arbitration by The Hague Tribunal. Mean¬ 
while, in 1905 he was elected to the Dominion 
House of Commons, was at once appointed 
Postmaster-General in Laurier’s Ministry, and 
was Minister of Justice from 1906 to 1911, 
when he retired from public life. He received 
the honor of knighthood in the same 3 ^ear. 

AYLMER, Que., a town in Wright County, 
eight miles west of Hull, with which it is con¬ 
nected by the Canadian Pacific Railway and 
by an electric railway. It is located on the 
north shore of Lake Deschenes, an expansion 
of the Ottawa River. Aylmer is of little im¬ 
portance industrially, greenhouses and saw 
mills being the most important establishments; 
it is rather a residential suburb of Hull and 
Ottawa, which lies across the river from Hull, 
and is also popular as a summer resort. Two- 
thirds of the people are French-Canadian. 
Population in 1911, 3,109; in 1916, estimated, 
3,500. a.m. 

AYLMER WEST, Ont., a town in Elgin 
County, twelve miles east of Saint Thomas, 
and 110 miles east of Detroit, on the Grand 
Trunk, Wabash and Michigan Central rail¬ 
ways. The Catfish River, which is not navi¬ 
gable, flows through the town. Aylmer West 
lies in a rich farming and dairying region, and 
among its chief industries are canneries and 
condensed milk factories which utilize farm 
products. There are also several saw and 
planing mills, a shoe factory, pump and scale 
works and other manufacturing interests. The 
development of the town will be greatly stim¬ 
ulated by the use of hydro-electric power, 
which the provincial hydro-electric power com¬ 
mission is planning to install. The local Do¬ 
minion post office, erected in 1912 at a cost of 
$50,000, is a noteworthy building. 

Aylmer West was founded in 1809 and was 
incorporated as a town in 1887. Population 
in 1911, 2,102, mostly native Canadians; in 
1916, estimated, 2,500. w.j.m. 

AYR, air, a seaport, summer resort and 
county town of Ayrshire, Scotland, famed for 
its associations with the poet Robert Burns, 
whose birthplace, the village of Alloway, lies 
two and one-half miles to the south. The old 
town of Ayr lies at the mouth and on the south 
bank of the River Ayr and on a beautiful bay 
of the Firth of Clyde, the shining, sandy 


beaches of which are an attraction to thousands 
of visitors each summer. About forty miles to 
the northeast is the city of Glasgow. Three 
bridges span the river, the Victoria Bridge, 
built in 1898, and the “Twa Brigs” that Burns 
made famous in his poetry. 



Ayr itself is rich in historical associations. 
In the twelfth century it was made the royal 
residence of the Scottish kings, and during the 
wars for independence was the scene of many 
fights between the English and the followers 
of William Wallace. When Cromwell invaded 
Scotland he built a fort in Ayr that covered 
ten or twelve acres, using for a storehouse the 
famous old Saint John’s Church, where in 1315 
the Scottish Parliament met to confirm the 
succession of Edward Bruce to the throne. 

South of the town is a famous race-course, 
and three miles north is Prestwick, a well- 
known summer resort and the headquarters of 
a popular Scottish golf club. Alloway, how¬ 
ever, outshines all of the outlying towns in 
point of interest. The “auld clay biggin,” 
the cottage where Burns was born, a picture 
of which accompanies the article on the poet, 
has been bought by the Ayr Burns’s Monument 
trustees, and visitors may view therein many 
articles of furniture once used by the Burns 
family. Near-by is the “auld haunted kirk,” 
now without a roof and deprived of all of its 



















AZALEA 


522 


AZTEC 


woodwork by relic-hunters. On the banks of 
the river that Burns so often refers to as the 
“bonnie Doon,” a monument to the poet has 
been erected, and a grotto close by contains the 
sculptured figures of Souter Johnnie and of 
Tam O’Shanter, the latter recalling the poem 
in which this famous character drank too freely 
and was assailed and pursued by spirit figures. 

AZALEA, aza'lea. Under this name are 
grouped some of the most beautiful of garden 
and hothouse flowers, as well as wild flowers. 
They are kin to the rhododendrons—indeed, 
some botanists class the two as one genus. 
There are in 
North America 
many species of 
azaleas, some 
evergreen, some 
having leaves 
which fall in the 
autumn, but all 
are distinguished 
by their showy 
trumpet - like 
flowers, which us¬ 
ually have an ex¬ 
tremely pleasant 
scent. Their col¬ 
ors range through 
all shades of pink 
white, yellow and 
purple azaleas are 
and red; also 
by no means un¬ 
common. 

Azaleas furnish 
a most interest¬ 
ing example of the way in which nature adapts 
means to an end. That the flowers may be 
fertilized, bees and butterflies must visit them, 
and honey is provided to attract them. But 
ants, which are of no help in distributing pol¬ 
len, like honey, too, and that they may not 
steal it many of the azalea blossoms are pro¬ 
vided with sticky hairs, past which these in¬ 
vaders cannot crawl. 

AZOIC, azo'ik, ERA, a term formerly used 
by geologists to describe a period in the earth’s 
history in which plant and animal life did not 
exist. The earliest era of geologic history is 
now known as the Archeozoic Era, and its 
rock formations are called Archean (see Ar- 
chean System). As late investigations dis¬ 
prove the theory that there was an earlier 
period without life, the term is no longer used. 
See Geology. 


AZORES, azorz or WESTERN ISLANDS, 

a group of nine rocky and lofty islands in the 
North Atlantic Ocean, belonging to Portugal. 
They form three distinct groups; the north¬ 
east consists of the islands of Sao Miguel (Saint 
Michael) and Santa Maria; the central, of 
Fayal, Graciosa, Pico, Sao Jorge and Terceira, 
and the northwestern, of Corvo and Flores. 
The Azores are farther from any continent 
than any other group of islands in the Atlantic 
Ocean, the African coast being 900 miles to the 
east and Newfoundland more than 1,000 miles 
to the west. 

The volcanic origin of the islands is proved 
by numerous hot springs and frequent earth¬ 
quakes, even in modern times. The hills and 
valleys are clothed with luxuriant vegetation, 
and corn-fields, vineyards, lemon and orange 
groves and rich open pastures are found wher¬ 
ever the land has been cleared of timber. The 
climate is mild and somewhat humid; but as 
a winter resort the islands are very popular. 

The Azores were discovered by Cabral about 
1431, shortly after which date they were taken 
possession of and colonized by the Portuguese. 
When first visited they were uninhabited and 
had scarcely any animals except birds, partic¬ 
ularly hawks, called in Portuguese acores, to 
which the islands owe their name. The capital 
is Angra, on the island of Terceira. It has 
the only good harbor in the entire group. 
Here resides the Governor-General of the 
islands, who receives his appointment and 
authority from Lisbon. Population, 256,475. 

AZOV, azawf', Sea of, a large inland sea, 
which the Strait of Ivertch connects with the 
Black Sea, of which it forms an arm. About 
200 miles long and 100 miles wide, it covers 
approximately 14,500 square miles, or an area 
two-thirds that of Lake Michigan. Its greatest 
depth is fifty-three feet. Its western end, called 
the Putrid Sea, is separated from the main 
expanse by a long sandy belt called Arabat, 
along which runs a military road. About 2,700 
vessels, totaling 500,000 tonnage, visit its ports 
annually. Numerous storms, its shallowness, 
and ice in winter render navigation dangerous. 
The Don and other rivers enter it, and its 
waters are quite fresh. The sea teems with fish. 

AZTEC, az'tek, a word in their own lan¬ 
guage meaning the heron clan, is a nation of 
Indians which built up in the southern part of 
the North American continent a fairly high 
civilization centuries before the white man 
ever made a settlement there. When Cortez 
(which see) reached Mexico early in the six- 






AZTEC 


523 


AZTEC 


teenth century he found that all the southern 
tribes had been made subject to the Aztecs, 
who ruled from their central city, Tenochtitlan, 
now the City of Mexico. One of their deities, 
Quetzalcoatl, whose appearance on earth they 



AZTEC CALENDAR STONE 


constantly expected, was supposed to be a “fair 
god,” and when this first white man, Cortez, 
came, they showed a readiness to worship him. 
But they speedily found that he had come not 
as a beneficent god but as a conqueror, and 
under their ruler Montezuma they offered a 
stubborn, though vain, resistance. Lew Wal¬ 
lace’s Fair God deals somewhat inaccurately 
with the legends about Quetzalcoatl; Prescott’s 
Conquest of Mexico tells the absorbing tale of 


the conquest, although it exaggerates very 
greatly the development of the Aztec civili¬ 
zation. 

The Aztecs, of whose origin nothing is 
known, seem to have lived in Mexico from the 
twelfth or thirteenth century. They learned 
much from the Maya Indians of Yucatan, but 
much of their civilization they developed 
themselves, and they showed a considerable 
knowledge of agriculture, architecture, sculp¬ 
ture and various useful arts. Maize and the 
agave were cultivated, and their feather work, 
weaving, and pottery showed a high degree of 
skill. To record events they used a compli¬ 
cated picture-writing, and they had a lunar 
calendar of unsual accuracy. Their temples, 
much like the Pyramids of Egypt in form, were 
in charge of a numerous priesthood, for the 
Aztecs were very religious. This, indeed, was 
the basis of their worst fault, for their religion 
demanded of them human sacrifices, and each 
year thousands of slaves or prisoners of war 
were put to death with the most incredible 
cruelty. 

To-day there are living in the villages about 
the City of Mexico man}' thousands of de¬ 
scendants of these Aztecs, who have lost the 
civilization of their ancestors but stubbornly 
refuse to acquire a new one from their Euro¬ 
pean neighbors, the Spanish conquerors. The 
present-day Aztecs are a harmless, timid peo¬ 
ple. It is impossible to determine what propor¬ 
tion of the great Indian population of Mexico 
is descended from the Aztec group. l.f. 
























ORGANIZED 

KNOWLEDGE 


TRADE MART REGISTERED 


rij 

. IN/STORY 

and" picture 



B, the first con¬ 
sonant and second 
letter in all alpha¬ 
bets which may be 
traced back to the 


3 £ £ B 


Phoenician (see 

Alphabet). Its name in the Phoenician alphabet was beth, which meant house, and in 
its form it suggested a crude picture of a house, with one side left open as a doorway. 
Gradually, as it was adopted by the Greeks, it was turned about, its straight lines were 
softened to curves, and it became the familiar capital B. This letter, pronounced only 
by the lips, is distinguished from p in that both the voice and the breath are used in 
producing it. It often happens that the b of one language is replaced by p in a related 
language, especially when it is the last ^ ^ 
letter of a word or syllable. {m 






m 


BAADER, bah' dur, Benedict Franz Xavier 
von (1765-1841), a German Roman Catholic 
philosopher, religious writer and mining en¬ 
gineer, the discoverer of a new method of 
making glass, by which Glauber’s salt instead 
of potash is used. He was born in Munich and 
educated in Vienna. He worked for several 
years as a mining engineer, and won a prize 
of about $5,000 for the discovery in regard to 
glass-making. Meantime, however, he had be¬ 
come interested in philosophy, and in 1822 
published a work on that subject that gained 
a good deal of attention, and is yet read by 
many churchmen. 

In 1826 Baader was made professor of philos¬ 
ophy and theology at the University of Munich, 
but twelve years later, having openly stated 
that the Catholic Church had no right to inter¬ 
fere in matters not religious, he was forbidden 
to lecture on the philosophy of religion. He 
had also opposed the Papacy as an institution. 

In spite of his disagreement with the Church 
leaders, he is looked upon to-day as one of the 
greatest Catholic writers on theology. 

BAAL, ba' al, a Hebrew word meaning lord, 
has been applied to a great many different 
gods. The people of Canaan and Phoenicia 
gave its name to various local gods, adding the 
name of a town or other place to show what 

524 


particular Baal was meant. Thus there w r as a 
Baal of Tyre, of Sidon, of the Lebanon, etc. 
Sometimes a Baal was distinguished by some 
special quality, as Baal-zebub (the fly-god), 
whom the Philistines worshipped. While there 
were as many Baals as there were towns or 
places of worship, a few Baals became very 
important, especially the Baal of Babylonia, 
more commonly known as Bel. When the 
Hebrews settled in Canaan they took up the 
worship of the Baals, and even gave the name 
to Jehovah. It was this corruption of the true 
worship that aroused the anger of Elijah and 
the prophets who followed him. Consult a 
Concordance to the Bible for references. 

BABBITT, bab'it, METAL, a soft metal 
resulting from melting together four parts of 
copper, twelve parts of tin and eight parts of 
antimony, adding twelve parts of tin when the 
mixture is fully melted. It is used with the 
view of obviating friction as far as possible in 
the bearings of journals, cranks and axles. 
Babbitt metal was invented by Isaac Babbitt, 
a goldsmith of Boston, Mass., from whom it 
takes its name. 

BABEL, bay' bel, Tower of, the place where 
the confusion of the tongues of mankind took 
place, as related in Genesis XI. In this story 
the descendants of Noah, after the Flood, 



























BAB-EL-MANDEB 


525 


BABOON 


wandered to the plain of Shinar, in Mesopo¬ 
tamia, and began to build a tower which should 
reach to heaven; but Jehovah caused their 
“speech to be confounded,” so that no man 
understood his neighbor, and the work was left 
unfinished. The word babel has been adopted 
into the English language to express a con¬ 
fusion of sounds, but it means gate of God, and 
not confusion, as is usually supposed. The 
Tower of Babel has been identified with one 
of the important buildings of ancient Babylon, 
the great temple of Belus (or Bel). 

BAB-EL-MANDEB, a strait connecting the 
Red Sea with the Arabian Sea and the Indian 
Ocean, and separating the Arabian peninsula, 
at the extreme southwest, from the continent 
of Africa. The name, meaning gate of sor¬ 
row, was applied to the strait because it has 
always been a dangerous channel for small 
sailing ships. The shore rises high on both 
sides, for on the east the strait is bordered by 
the cape of the same name, 865 feet in altitude, 
and on the west by the steep African coast, 
reaching its highest point 400 feet above the 
sea. Not far from the African shore is a group 
of volcanic islets called the Eight Brothers. 
An island in the strait divides it into two 
channels, of which the one on the east, two 
miles wide, affords the better anchorage. 

BABES IN THE WOODS, a favorite nursery 
tale about two children who were left to die 
in the forest by a wicked uncle. As they lie 
down to sleep the robins cover them with 
leaves. The origin of the story is unknown. 

BABIRUSSA, or BABYRUSSA, babiroo' sa, 
a Dutch word meaning pig deer, is the Malay 
name for the wild hog. It has a rough and 
nearly-naked skin, and inhabits Celebes, Burn 
and other East Indian islands. It does not 



BABIRUSSA 
Male and female. 

root in the ground as do other members of its 
family, but feeds upon fallen fruit and vege¬ 
tables. The male is remarkable for the curious 


growth of its upper canine teeth, w T hich ex¬ 
tend upward through openings in the skin on 
each side of the snout and curve backward 
nearly to the eyes, then downward and forward 
again. The flesh is highly esteemed by the 
natives and is said to be more delicate in flavor 
than pork. In some sections of its range the 
animal is nearly exterminated. 

BABOON, baboon', an ape distinguished by 
its long, dog-like muzzle. In ancient Egypt the 
baboon was regarded as sacred, and divine 
honors were paid to it on account of its sup- 



BABOONS 


posed superhuman wisdom. Its deep-set eyes, 
heavy eyebrows and serious-looking mouth give 
the animal an expression which could easily 
give rise to such a superstition. 

Most baboons are about the size of a large 
dog. Their four legs are nearly equal in length 
and are all used in walking; in fact, it is 
difficult for a baboon to hold itself upright in 
the familiar attitude of other monkeys. Strong 
tusk teeth, large flabby cheek-pouches and 
short tails are other characteristics of the ani¬ 
mal. It is usually a sullen creature, which 
defends itself by hurling stones or other handy 
missiles, but in Celebes is found a species of 
smaller stature which is quite amiable. This is 
the species usually seen in captivity. 

Baboons live in herds and eat fruits, roots, 
eggs or insects. In South Africa the pig-tailed 
baboon or chacma, which lives in rocky regions 
because it is a poor tree climber, is fought by 
the natives because of the damage it does to 
crops. This type is grayish brown, with long 
shaggy hair. The hamadryad of Abyssinia, the 
species once held sacred, has a cape of hair 
about its shoulders. See Mandrill; Monkey. 















BABY 


526 


BABY 



are sometimes known as “contests,” but best 
authorities prefer the other term. 

The Baby’s Heritage. The leaders in in¬ 
fant-welfare work have not forgotten the 
ancient law that the sins of the fathers are 
visited upon the children “unto the third and 
fourth generation.” They recognize the right 
of the baby to be well-born, and they preach 
the doctrine that diseased parents cannot pro¬ 
duce healthy offspring. The special science 
that has to do with “better parents” is there¬ 
fore inseparably bound up with the better- 
babies movement. It is known as Eugenics, 
and is fully discussed in these volumes under 
that title. 

Another and no less important phase of this 
movement is the care needed by the expectant 
mother before the baby comes. Her habits 
and the conditions surrounding her are vitally 
related to the welfare of the child. No mother 
can expect to have a strong, vigorous child if 
she is overworked, worried, unhappy or ill- 
nourished. Her diet should be most carefully 
selected because her own general condition and 
that of the baby are based upon it. This diet 
should include soups, fresh fish, eggs, cooked 
cereals, with cream, milk and sugar, potatoes, 
asparagus, tomatoes, peas, Lima and string 
beans, spinach, celery, lettuce, whole wheat, 
bran, Graham or corn bread, ripe raw fruits 
or cooked fruits. Only light meats should be 
eaten, and these very sparingly. Simple pud¬ 
dings, like custard, and pure ice cream are 
permissible. Pure water should be drunk 
freely, between meals; sweet milk, buttermilk, 
cocoa and chocolate are nourishing, milk being 
especially good for an expectant mother. She 
should not drink more than one cup of tea or 
coffee a day, and should avoid all alcoholic 
drinks, rich desserts and highly-seasoned foods. 
There is no foundation of fact in the belief, 
somewhat prevalent, that beer is beneficial. 

It is best for the expectant mother to bathe 


ABY, The. A public awakened to 
the necessity of saving the babies—this is the 
outcome of one of the most important educa¬ 
tional movements of the present time. The 
high death-rate among babies (see Infant 
Mortality) was long regarded as a condition 
that could not be remedied. Babies wure be¬ 
lieved to be “hard to raise,” and it was ex¬ 
pected that about one out of every five would 
die. People are wiser than they used to be. 
They have been brought to see that enlight¬ 
ened, intelligent care of infants is certain to 
lower the death-rate, that the babies are the 
material out of which future citizens are made, 
and that healthy children are a nation’s most 
valuable asset. In France, where the declining 
birth-rate made it absolutely necessary to save 
as many infants as possible, the baby-welfare 
movement was first placed on an organized 
basis. The results achieved there were brought 
to the notice of health authorities and social 
workers in other countries, and since the last 
decade of the nineteenth century the slogan, 
“Save the babies,” has come to stand for a 
world-wide movement. 

In the United States the leadership in the 
work was taken by the American Association 
for Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality 
(organized in 1909 with headquarters in Balti¬ 
more, Md.), and the topic has also been made 
the object of special investigation by the Fed¬ 
eral Children’s Bureau (see Children’s Bu¬ 
reau). Instruction and information are now 
reaching mothers and others who are interested, 
through various channels. Numerous pamph¬ 
lets, books and magazine articles on the subject 
have been issued and continue to come from 
the press; infant-welfare societies for prac¬ 
tical work in homes and neighborhood centers 
have been organized, and in many communi¬ 
ties baby “conferences” are held, at which the 
babies are examined and given marks on points 
of mental and physical development. These 





















































































BABY 


527 


BABY 


daily, in order to keep the pores in such a con¬ 
dition that they will do their share of the work 
of throwing off waste matter. Very hot or 
very cold baths are not advisable. Inhaling 
fresh air is quite as essential as bathing, for 
the lungs need oxygen as much as the body 
needs the cleansing medium of water. It is 
highly important, also, to keep the bowels mov¬ 
ing every day. All the household tasks should 
be performed in well-ventilated rooms, and the 
sleeping room should be especially looked 
after in this matter. If possible the expectant 
mother should have an outside bedroom. Eight 
hours of sleep at night and a daily nap or rest 


period are essential. Violent exercise and 
laborious work of any sort should be avoided, 
but the muscles must not be allowed to grow 
flabby and weak through inaction. A daily 
walk in the open air and such household tasks 
as are not tiring may be continued to the last. 
The clothing should be loose and comfortable, 
and lacing be avoided as dangerous to both 
mother and child. It is also unadvisable to 
wear tight gloves or shoes. 

The child of clean, healthy parents, with 
wholesome mental and physical habits, will be 
certain to possess the heritage of the well-born 
—a strong mind in a strong body. 


Care of the Baby 


There is nothing more helpless than a new¬ 
born infant. At the time of birth and for 
many months afterward it is absolutely de¬ 
pendent on others for everything. For this 
reason the care given the young child should 
be intelligent and systematic. The suggestions 
that follow apply, of course, to the average 
normal child. A sickly baby must have treat¬ 
ment and care which can be prescribed only by 
a physician familiar with the child’s special 
needs. The baby who comes into the world 
in good health will develop normally if ade¬ 
quate attention is given to such essential mat¬ 
ters as cleanliness, fresh air, sleep, hygienic 
clothing and habits, and proper feeding. 

Cleanliness. The daily bath not only adds 
greatly to the baby’s comfort, but is necessary 
for its healthful development. After the child 
is ten days old it should be bathed in a little 
tub of its own. For the average baby the water 
should be at a tempera¬ 
ture of 100° F. during 
the first eight weeks; 
it may then be lowered 
to 98°, and from the 
seventh to the twelfth 
month may be kept 
at 95°. During the 
second year a temper¬ 
ature of 85° to 90° is 
advisable. The mother 
should see that baby 
has a tub, wash cloths, 
towels and soap of his 
own, and that these 
are kept scrupulously 
clean. Sponges are 
liable to become breed¬ 
ing places for germs, 


and can well be dispensed with. The young 
baby has tender skin and should be patted, 
not rubbed, dry. In some cases the use of 
water is postponed until the third week, oil 
being used instead. Just as soon as the first 
teeth come they should be brushed with a 
small soft brush; unless the mouth becomes 
infected it need not be washed until the 
teeth come through, for pressure upon the 
developing teeth may break the delicate mu¬ 
cous membrane. After the teeth appear the 
mouth should be washed daily. The cloth¬ 
ing should be kept dry and clean, and be 
washed only with pure soap. Thorough rins¬ 
ing is far more important than starching. 
Everything about the child should be clean 
and sanitary—the furnishings of its bed and 
carriage, its toys and the people who care 
for it. 

Fresh Air and Sleep. No baby will thrive 

without an abundance 
of pure fresh air. Ex¬ 
cept in severe winter 
weather the child 
should be taken out 
for a daily airing; 
when bad weather pre¬ 
vents this, it should 
be dressed warmly and 
the windows of the 
nursery be thrown wide 
open for a half hour 
or more. If the car- 1 

I 

riage or crib is placed 
near a window and 
protected from drafts, 1 
the good effects of the 
outdoor airing may 
be had indoors. It is 


















BABY 


528 


BABY 


highly important that the sleeping room of the 
child be thoroughly ventilated, and open win¬ 
dows will not give the child a cold if precau¬ 
tions are taken in regard to drafts. If there is 
danger that the wind will blow on the baby a 



HOME-MADE SLEEPING BOX 


screen should be placed before the crib. In 
the summer outdoor naps are excellent for the 
child, and a simple bed for the purpose can 
easily be made by anyone familiar with tools. 
This is essentially a box with a hinged top, set 
on strong rollers and having sides of wire or 
cotton mosquito netting. Wherever baby 
sleeps, he should be protected from flies and 
mosquitoes. 

During the first month the child should sleep 
twenty hours a day, and then sixteen hours a 
day until the end of the first year. Daily 
naps should be continued for several years. 
If it can possibly be arranged the baby should 
sleep in a bed and a room of its own. The 
practice of having an infant sleep with its 
mother is most unwise and is strongly con¬ 
demned by all experts. Another unwise prac¬ 
tice is that of rocking the child to sleep. It 
is quite unnecessary to begin that way, and 
the habit if once acquired is hard to break. It 
is better to lay the little one in its crib in 
a cool and quiet place, see that it is comfort¬ 
able, and let it become accustomed to going 
to sleep alone. Pacifiers and other devices 
for putting children to sleep are pernicious, 
and should not be tolerated any more than 
the soothing syrups and other patent mixtures 
that are frequently advertised. 

Feeding. The ideal food for any baby, 
especially during the first few months, is milk 
from the mother’s breast. Unless there are 
reasons which make it unwise or impossible to 
do so, every mother should nurse her child. 
Breast milk never sours and is at all times 
ready for use. It does not have to be pre¬ 


pared, cooked or measured, and it passes to 
the child’s mouth directly from the source. It 
contains neither germs nor dirt and so is a 
protection against many baby diseases, espe¬ 
cially bowel disorders. It is the only perfect 
baby food known, for it contains all the food 
elements needed by the growing child, and 
these are always found in their proper propor¬ 
tions. By taking certain precautions the nurs¬ 
ing mother can protect her baby from the 
intestinal disorders that cause the death of so 
many infants. She must keep her own diges¬ 
tion in the proper condition, avoiding anything 
that may cause stomach and bowel trouble. 
She should eat nourishing food, drink plenty 
of pure water, have plenty of sleep and rest, 
exercise in the open air each day, avoid fretting 
or overworking, and be careful not to nurse the 
baby when she is herself overheated. The 
breasts should be carefully washed with water 
or boric acid after each nursing. 

Babies should be nursed at definite intervals, 
for regular feeding means regular sleep. If 
necessary at first, the child should be wakened 
at nursing time; he will soon acquire the habit 
of waking voluntarily when it is time to be 
fed. Dr. L. E. Holt, the well-known baby 
authority, advises the following schedule: Be¬ 
ginning with the third day, the baby should be 
fed not oftener than every three hours between 
six in the morning and ten at night; during 
the night there should be but one nursing. 
After four months no night feeding after ten 
o’clock p. m. should be given, and after six 
months the day feedings should occur at four- 
hour intervals. Breast-fed babies should have 
cooled (not iced) boiled water to drink between 
feedings. In many cases the baby needs more 
than breast food after the first months, and it 
is advisable then to give one or two bottle 
feedings a day at the regular nursing periods. 
As a rule, breast feeding should be discontinued 
at the twelfth month. 

Artificial feeding has become so general that 
authorities are giving a great deal of study to 
the subject. It is of course not always possible 
to feed the baby at the breast. In such cases 
the best substitute obtainable should be used, 
and that is clean, fresh milk from the cow. 
Every mother who feeds her baby from the 
bottle should insist on getting clean milk from 
a clean source. Milk delivered in bottles is 
the only safe kind, and city-dwellers should 
purchase certified milk. This is milk guaran¬ 
teed to be produced under sanitary conditions 
and handled with special care. If there is ever 














































































































































































BABY 


529 


BABY 


any doubt about the purity of the milk it 
should by all means be boiled. In the summer 
babies should not be given milk that is over 
twenty-four hours old, and in winter any that 
is older than forty-eight hours (see Milk). 

The preparation of cow’s milk for baby’s use 
is a most important matter. Since it is stronger 
than the natural food from the mother’s breast 
it must be modified, that is, adapted to the 
child’s digestion. In many cases infants thrive 
on simple dilutions of milk with boiled water, 
to which a small quantity of sugar is added. 
Before the baby’s food is prepared, however, 
the mother should consult a physician who is 
experienced in infant feeding and who under¬ 
stands her child’s needs. She should follow 
his directions carefully, weigh the child reg¬ 
ularly, and see that it is being properly nour¬ 
ished. Babies differ considerably in the matter 
of artificial feeding, and it is not possible to 
give a set of directions applicable to all. 
Bottle-fed babies are more liable to colic than 
those fed naturally, but this disorder can 
usually be prevented by rubbing the back of 
the child from the end of the spine upward, 
after each feeding. 

One cannot be too careful in regard to the 
hygiene of artificial feeding. When the milk 
is delivered it should be put on the ice at 
once, for warm milk spoils easily and spoiled 
milk means a sick baby. All utensils required 
for preparing the food should be kept spot¬ 
lessly clean, and it is a good idea to have a 
separate set of these for the baby’s use alone. 
Round, plain bottles and plain nipples should 
be chosen, and these should be washed after 
each feeding. The old-fashioned bottle with 
the long 'tube is a 
breeder of disease and 
has no place in a “bet¬ 
ter baby’s” equipment. 

The food should be pre¬ 
pared within twenty- 
four hours after delivery 
of the milk. As soon as 
it is read}' - it should be 
poured into the nursing 
bottles, which are then 

carefully stoppered and 
# 

placed on ice. Each 
bottle should hold just 
enough for one feeding. 

When it is time to feed 
the child, warm the 
milk by placing the 
bottle in hot water. 



Five Babies a 
mmu+e in +he 


Any food left in the bottle after the child has 
finished eating should be thrown out, as milk 
warmed a second time is liable to be unwhole¬ 
some. No child should be allowed to suck on 
an empty bottle or to sleep with the nipple in 
his mouth. 

In the case of healthy babies weaning is a 
gradual process. By the twelfth month the 
child, whether fed from the breast or from 
the bottle, should be trained to drink from a 
cup. At that age the average child can digest 
undiluted milk and cereals, strained fruit juices 
and plain mutton or chicken broth. During 
the second year he gradually becomes accus¬ 
tomed to solid foods, and at eighteen months 
may be given potatoes, peas, beans, carrots 
and beets, if they are thoroughly cooked and 
finely mashed. He may also have eggs, toast, 
cooked fruit, such as baked apple or apple 
sauce, and roasted or broiled chicken, roast 
lamb or chops, broiled fish and roasted or 
broiled beef. The young child should not be 
given candy, soda water, tea, coffee or any 
alcoholic beverage, and he should not be per¬ 
mitted to eat ice cream until he is two years 
old. The number of bottle feedings has all 
this time been gradually decreasing, and at 
eighteen or twenty months the weaning is 
completed. Throughout the period of child¬ 
hood the mother should see that the child has 
wholesome, nourishing food and is kept from 
eating rich desserts, stimulants, and an ex¬ 
cessive amount of candy. Too many sweets 
injure both the teeth and the digestion. 

Other Suggestions. To-day’s babies are more 
comfortably dressed than those of a generation 
ago. The practice of swaddling the little crea¬ 
tures in many layers of 
elaborate clothing has 
been happily outlawed. 
A properly-dressed baby 
has his clothing made 
to hang from the shoul¬ 
ders, and his slips, 
dresses and wrappers 
are one-piece garments. 
Tight clothing interferes 
with the circulation, 
breathing and digestion 
and is decidedly uncom¬ 
fortable. It is a mis¬ 
take also to put too 
many and too heavy 
garments on the child; 
if he perspires freely in 
winter or summer he is 


re born 
Uni-ted 


every 






BABY 


530 


BABY 


OUTLINE AND QUESTIONS ON THE BABY 


Outline 


. I. Tlie “Better-Babies’’ Movement 

(1) History 

(a) Beginnings in France 

(b) Growth in America 

(2) Baby conferences 

(a) Purpose 

(b) Method 

(c) Scoring 

(d) Measurements of the perfect 

child 

II. The Bight to Be Well-Born 

(1) Eugenics 

(2) Care of the mother—as to 

(a) Food 

(b) Bathing 

(c) Rest 

(d) Exercise 

(e) Clothing 

III. Care of the Baby 

(1) Keeping the baby clean 

(a) The bath 

1. Frequency 

2. Temperature 
8. Method 

(b) Care of the eyes (see Blindness) 

(c) Care of the teeth 

(d) Care of the clothing 

(2) Sleep 

(a) Amount needed 


(b) Harmfulness of “putting the baby 

to sleep” 

(c) Advantage of fresh air 

1. An out-of-door sleeping box 

(3) Proper feeding 

(a) Decided advantage of breast-feed¬ 

ing 

1. Frequency of nursing 

2. Need for additional food 

(b) Artificial feeding 

1. Certified milk 

2. Modifying milk 

3. Necessity for cleanliness 

4. Proper bottles 

(c) Weaning 

1. A gradual process 

(d) Proper food for the weaned child 

(4) Clothing 

(a) Simplicity 

(b) Danger of too heavy clothing 

(5) To be avoided 

(a) Over-stimulation 

(b) Kissing 

(c) Unsanitary toys 

IV. Children! ’s Diseases 

(1) Chicken pox 

(2) Cholera infantum 

(3) Croup 

(4) Diphtheria 

(5) Infantile paralysis 

(6) Measles 

(7) Scarlet fever 

(8) Whooping cough 


Questions 

How tall should a baby be at the age of one year? What should be the circum¬ 
ference of its head? 

What is the science called which has to do with “better parents”? 

What are the advantages of mother’s milk over cow’s milk for a baby? 

How often should a baby be bathed? Is a “good rub down” at the end of the 
bath beneficial? 

How has the theory regarding the necessity of children’s diseases changed? 
What is meant by “modifying” cow’s milk, and why is it necessary? 

How would you make an outdoor sleeping box for a baby? 

What may an eigliteen-months-old baby eat? 

How often should a baby be fed? 

What is the object of baby “conferences,” and how are the babies scored? 

How has the United States recognized officially the importance of the “better- 
babies” movement? 

What is the safe and sensible way of putting a baby to sleep? 














BABY 


531 


BABY 


over-dressecl. Prickly heat is evidence that an Many infectious diseases are communicated 

infant is dressed too warmly. For underwear, through kissing and careless exposure of the 

select that made of medium-weight silk and child. Mothers should refuse to believe that 

wool or cotton and wool. All-wool garments it is necessary for their children to have 

are irritating to the tender skin. measles, mumps, whooping cough and other 

Babies should not be bounced about or childhood ailments. Rather, they should see 

frolicked with, rocked or jogged. During the to it that the little ones are properly safe- 

first few months they will get sufficient exercise guarded. This care should extend to the child’s 

through crying and tossing their arms and legs playthings, from which should be excluded 

about. The baby who is constantly played woolly animals and toys covered with poison- 

with and over-stimulated will develop into a ous paint. Baby has a tendency to put every- 

nervous child. Babies should not be kissed thing he grasps into his mouth, and he should 

indiscriminately, and never on the mouth. not be allowed to play with unsanitary toys. 


Better Babies 

Baby conferences have become popular 
features in numerous localities; they are usually 
conducted under the auspices of woman’s clubs, 
health boards, infant-welfare societies, parent- 
teacher associations, civic clubs and similar 
organizations. The purpose of these confer¬ 
ences is to arouse interest in the hygienic and 
intelligent care of children. They are educa¬ 
tional rather than competitive, though the cus¬ 
tom of awarding prizes adds zest to the occa¬ 
sion. 

The children are examined and scored by 
competent physicians exactly as cattle, horses 
and hogs are appraised by stock judges. In 
every case a standard is established, and each 
child is measured according to that standard. 

A typical score card would contain the follow¬ 
ing points, each of which is marked on the 
scale of 100: height; weight; circumference of 
chest; circumference of abdomen; symmetry; 
quality of skin and fat; quality of muscles, 
hand grasp, rising, sitting, poise, walking, run¬ 
ning; bones of skull, spine, chest, limbs and 
feet; length of head, width and circumference; 
pupillary distance and shape of eyes; shape, 
size and position of ears; shape and size of 
lips; shape and size of forehead; shape of 
nose; shape and condition of jaw, hard palate 
and nostrils; number, shape, size and condition 
of teeth; disposition; energy; facial and ocular 
expression; attention. Beauty of face or body 
is not considered, but physical and mental 
development; a high-grade child, however, 
well-nourished, clean and firm of flesh, cannot 
be anything but wholesome and attractive. 

The perfect child has the following measure¬ 
ments (one pound less being counted for girls): 

Average weight, height and circumference of 
head and chest (for boys) : 

At birth—Weight, 7% pounds; height, 20% 
inches; chest, 13% inches; head, 14 inches. 


Conferences 

One year—Weight, 21 pounds; height, 29 
inches; chest, 18 inches; head, 18 inches. 

Two years—Weight, 26% pounds; height, 32% 
inches; chest, 19 inches; head, 19 inches. 

Three years-*—Weight, 31 pounds; height, 35 
inches; chest, 20 inches; head, 19% inches. 

Teeth—Central incisors appear about the sev¬ 
enth month; lateral incisors from eighth to 
tenth; anterior molars, twelfth to eighteenth; 
eye and stomach, fourteenth to twentieth; pos¬ 
terior molars, eighteenth to thirty-sixth. 

The child should make the first attempt to sit 
up at about the sixteenth week, be able to do 
so at about the fortieth, and be firmly seated 
at the end of the tenth or eleventh month. 

The first attempt to stand should be made 
about the thirty-eighth week. The fourteenth 
or fifteenth month is the average period for 
walking. A child who cannot walk by the eight¬ 
eenth month is backward in that respect. 

The flesh should be firm, the skin pink, the 
lips red, the tongue uncoated and the breath 
sweet. Breathing should be done through the 
nose. The child should not be fretful, nervous 
or disinclined to play. 

The normal child can say words like mamma , 
kitty, down, etc., by the end of the first year. 
By the end of the second it is able to join words 
into short sentences. 

Baby conferences have been productive of 
so much good that they are being encouraged 
by such an authoritative body as the Amer¬ 
ican Medical Association (535 N. Dearborn St., 
Chicago). By applying to the Secretary of the 
Council on Health and Public Instruction at 
this address, full instructions for holding con¬ 
ferences, together with score cards and other 
material, can be obtained. Explanatory ma¬ 
terial and score cards are also distributed by 
the Better Babies Bureau of the WOman’s 
Home Companion, New York, and' by health 
authorities of many cities. h.f.h. 

Consult Holt’s Care and Feeding of Children; 
Forsyth’s Children in Health and Disease; Op- 
penheim’s The Nervous System and the ChiVcL 
The above books are recommended to mothers 
by the American Medical Association. 


BABYLON 


532 


BABYLONIA 


Related Subjects. The reader who is inter¬ 
ested in this topic will find much that is help¬ 
ful in the following- articles: 

% 

Blindness Fly- 

Chicken Pox Health Habits 

Child Infantile Paralysis 

Cholera, subhead Infant Mortality 

Cholera Infantum Measles 

Croup Milk 

Diphtheria Scarlet Fever 

Eugenics Whooping Cough 

BABYLON, bob'i Ion, a city of the ancient 
world, the capital of Babylonia, situated on the 
left bank of the Euphrates River, about sev¬ 
enty miles south of Bagdad. Babylon, whose 
name is the Greek form of a word meaning 
gate of the Gods, is first known to history 
more than 5,000 years ago as the city of Sargon 
of Akkad (about 3800 b.c.). As the capital of 
all Babylonia in 2094 b. c., it was the prey of 
numerous Assyrian kings until 689 b. c., when 
it was destroyed by Sennacherib. It was re¬ 
built by his successor, Esarhaddon, and then 
under Nebuchadnezzar (604-561 b. c.) became 
one of the wonders of the ancient world, its 
walls of immense height and thickness enclos¬ 
ing magnificent buildings and pleasure grounds. 
The celebrated Hanging Gardens (see Hang¬ 
ing Gardens of Babylon) and the great temple 
of Belus are among the world’s greatest 
achievements. 

The city under Nebuchadnezzar was built 
in the form of a square, the area of which 
modern scholars give as twelve square miles. 
Cyrus the Great seized the city in 538 b. c., and 
with this conquest it became a part of the 
Persian empire. Under the Persian monarchs 
the once famous city began a rapid decline, 
and when Alexander the Great entered it he 
found it falling into ruins. 

The history of Babylon ends practically in 
275 b. c., when the remaining inhabitants were 
taken to the newly-founded city of Selucia. 
Modern excavations, begun in 1899, have 
brought to light many art treasures and inscrip¬ 
tions that reveal interesting facts about the 
city which Nebuchadnezzar called ‘‘Babylon 
the Great”; but little has been found which 
throws light on the earlier periods of its his¬ 
tory. See Babylonia. 

BABYLONIA, babilo'nia, the ancient 
southern portion of the Tigris-Euphrates Val¬ 
ley, the seat of a mighty empire, the earliest 
in the history of mankind. This land, after 
centuries of varying fortune, became a part of 
the Turkish Empire, and now is included in 
the modern Irak-Arabi, which contains parts of 
the divisions known as Bagdad and Basra. 


Geography. Babylonia was a plain lying 
south of Assyria and Susiana, and stretching 
southward to the Persian Gulf. Westward, it 
merged with the Arabian Desert; along the 
eastern border flowed the River Tigris. At 
various times its rule extended westward to the 
sea. The name Babylonia comes from Baby¬ 
lon, the ancient capital of the district, and the 
latter term is used in the Old Testament to 
mean the country as a whole. Akkad, or 
Accad, and Shumar, or Shinar, were applied in 
early times to the northern and southern 
divisions. 

Like the Valley of the Nile, the Babylonian 
plain was enriched by the deposits of rivers, 
and so fertile was the land that tradition made 
this region the scene of the Garden of Eden, 
“out of the ground of which God made to 
grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight 
and good for food” (Genesis II, 9). In ancient 
times Babylonia was covered by a network of 
dikes and canals, the ruins of which may still 
be seen in the present cheerless waste of 
country. 

People. It is supposed that the Babylonians 
were a union of the Semitic and non-Semitic 
races, the latter being the first inhabitants of 
the country, and the former a people who came 
there from Arabia. They were an industrious 
and peace-loving people, and became wonderful 
farmers and traders. Their harvests of grain 
excited the amazement of the Greek historian 
Herodotus. Across the Arabian Desert came 
caravans laden with precious stones, spices, cop¬ 
per and gold; from the East they received 
marble and precious metals, and the kings 
bought cedar-wood obtained from the Syrian 
mountains to adorn their temples and palaces. 
Babylonian traders traveled to far-distant lands 
with native products, thus putting the ancient 
world in contact with Babylonian civilization. 

Their language was much like that of the 
Hebrews and Phoenicians, and was written in 
the form of wedge-shaped characters, to which 
the name cuneiform has been given (see 
Cuneiform Inscriptions). For writing mate¬ 
rials they used clay and stone tablets, espe¬ 
cially the former. Babylonian literature in¬ 
cluded many different subjects—hymns, prayers 
to the gods, poetry, myths, history, science, 
agriculture and law. The Babylonians were 
ruled by kings who had absolute power; under 
the king were officers called viceroys, who 
governed the provinces. They had a religion 
of many gods, and each important city was 
the center of the worship of a particular god. 



BABYLONIA 


533 


BABYLONIA 



BABYLONIA 


Lion from Nimrud 


LYDIA 


M£D/T£/mAN£ANi 

s£aM3s&//M 


Present-day site of Babylon 

PRINCIPAL DATES 
NIMROD FOUNDED BABYLON ABOUT . 

RISE OF ASSYRIA. . 

ERA OF NAB0NAS5AR. 

FALL OF NINEVEH. . 

CYRUS CAPTURED BABYLON. 

ALEXANDER CAPTURED BABYLON.. 


B.C. 

2300 

.1250 

...747 

.625 

.538 

.331 


ARABIAN 

DESERT 


Babylonia at its greatest extent 


The famous Hanging Gardens 
Built to please a woman 


Bas-relief of warriors in battle 


^Babylon 


c 


]□[ 


They also believed that the earth was peopled 
by good and evil spirits who could aid or harm 
men. 

Art. The Babylonians were the first people 
to practice architecture as a fine art. As the 
country produced no stone, they were forced 
to use sun-dried clay bricks as a building 
material. To give their temples and palaces 
a firm foundation and also to lend them dig¬ 
nity, they erected them on great brick plat¬ 
forms, sometimes forty feet above the plain. 
Their palaces were one-story structures having 
many rooms, courts and passages, thick, verti¬ 
cal walls and flat roofs. The temples were 
sometimes one story high, but oftener were a 
type peculiar to Babylonia—a series of solid 
masses of brick placed one above the other, 
with each story smaller than the one beneath 
it. The plainness of these buildings was re¬ 
lieved by covering the bricks with stucco, upon 
which designs 'were painted. The Babylonians 
made grea.t progress in sculpture and engraving, 
and their alabaster and terra-cotta vases, cop¬ 
per and bronze statuettes, glazed tiles and seals 
and gems showed their ability in the minor 
arts. 

History. The history of Babylonia, like that 


of Assyria, begins in obscurity, and the two 
districts were so closely connected that his¬ 
torians find it impossible to treat them sepa¬ 
rately. The first line of kings of whom there 
is a clear record ruled about 4500 b. c. The 
first great name in Babylonian history is that 
of King Hammurabi (about 2100 b. c.), founder 
of the “Old Babylonian Empire,” who chose 
Babylon as the seat of government, and who 
made the oldest code of laws known to man. 
For over five centuries after 1761 b. c. Baby¬ 
lonia was ruled by Kassites, a people from 
Media, but a native king sat on the throne in 
1185 b.c. In the meantime there had been 
centuries of warfare with Assyria; and Baby¬ 
lonia, reduced to an Assyrian province in the 
eighth century, was completely conquered in 
689 b. c. by Sennacherib, the impious destroyer 
of Babylon. A century later the Babylonians, 
aided by a horde of Medes under Cyaxares, 
revolted, and captured and destroyed the As¬ 
syrian city of Nineveh. A new Babylonian 
kingdom was set up, which grew to be a great 
empire under Nebuchadnezzar (which see). 
This is known in history as the “New Baby¬ 
lonian Empire.” A line of weak kings followed 
Nebuchadnezzar, and in 538 b. c. Babylon was 































































BABYLONIA 


534 


BACH 





Outline and Questions on 
Babylonia 

I. The Country 

(1) Location, in Tigris-Euphrates Val¬ 

ley 

(2) Fertility of the soil 
(a) Agriculture 

II. The People 

(1) Origin 

(2) Characteristics 

(3) Language and literature 
(a) Cuneiform inscriptions 

(4) Commercial ventures 

(5) Art 

(a) Architecture 

(b) Sculpture 

(c) Minor arts 

(6) Religion 

(7) Government 

III. History 

(1) The Old Empire 

(2) Assyrian supremacy 

(3) Capture of Nineveh 

(4) The New Empire 

(5) Later subject condition 

Questions 

Is there a Babylonia to-day? 

Was ancient Babylonia an isolated 
nation, or did it have intercourse with 
other countries? 

Who drew up the earliest known code 
of laws? 

How did the empire rank among oth¬ 
ers in point of age? 

Why was this valley made the tradi¬ 
tional site of the Garden of Eden? 

What art originated with the Baby¬ 
lonians? 

What other names did the country 
bear? 

Wherein did the religion of the Baby¬ 
lonians differ decidedly from that of 
the Hebrews? 

Were they naturally a warlike peo¬ 
ple? 

To what nations were they subjected 
during the course of the centuries? 

What is there to show that the peo¬ 
ple employed irrigation? 

Describe a typical Babylonian tem¬ 
ple. 

What sort of writing material was 
employed? 

What were the written characters 
called, and what other nation used 
them? 

Who was Nebuchadnezzar, and how 
was he punished for his pride? 



captured by Cyrus the Great of Persia. There¬ 
after Babylonia was a Persian province until, 
with the Conquest of Alexander the Great, it 
passed under Greek control and then into the 
hands of the Parthians. Under the Parthians 
all that remained of Babylonian culture was 
lost, and in a. d. 1000 the country was given 
over to the Bedouins and Arabs. See Assyria; 
Babylon; Sennacherib. b.m.w. 

Consult Hilprecht’s Explorations in Bible 
Lands; Sayce’s Ancient Empires. 



BACCHUS, bak'kus, (in Greek, Dionysus), 
in classic mythology the god of wine, was the 
son of Jupiter and Semele. In early times he 
was connected with the springing up of plant 
life, and he taught how to cultivate the vine 
and how to make 
the wine from the 
fruit. Great 
feasts, known as 
Bacchanalia, o r 
Dionysia, were 
held at Athens 
in his honor. 

These were intro¬ 
duced into Rome 
in the second 
century b. c., but 
they became so 
debasing that 
they were forbid¬ 
den in 186 b. c. by 
the Roman Sen¬ 
ate. In art the 
forehead of the 
god is crowned 
with vine leaves 
or ivy, and he is 
represented as 
naked, or wearing 
a wide mantle 
about his shoul¬ 
ders and a faun 
skin across his 
breast. 

Bacchantes. The worshipers of Bacchus, 
both men and women, were called Bacchantes. 
These people, at the time of the feast of 
Bacchus, would gather on the woody heights, 
and, roused to frenzy by wine and excitement, 
spend days and nights in dancing and rioting. 
In modern speech, bacchantic is applied to 
riotous or drunken revels. 

BACH, bahK, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750), 
the first of the great German musicians, un¬ 
equaled as a composer of organ and choral 


Bacchus, that first from out 
the purple grape 
Crushed the sweet poison of 
misused wine. 

—From Milton’s Comus. 
























BACHELLER 


535 


BACON 


music, and called the “master of masters” be¬ 
cause his works inspired so many of the famous 
musicians who followed him—among them Mo¬ 
zart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, 
Chopin, Liszt, Rubinstein and Wagner. Bach 
came of a family distinguished in music for 
many generations, and he was trained in the 
art from early childhood. He secured his first 
paying position, that of violinist at the court 
at Weimar, when he was eighteen, and after¬ 
wards held several organ and choir positions 
until 1723, when he became music director in 
the two principal churches at Leipzig, where he 
remained until his death. 

Bach composed for the organ, piano, stringed 
instruments, and the human voice. His vocal 
works, including passion music, oratorios, 
masses and cantatas, are masterpieces, and his 
Saint Matthew Passion, Mass in B Minor and 
Saint John Passion are the greatest choral 
pieces ever written. His Contest of Phoebus 
and Pan is a famous cantata, and well-known 
oratorios are those for Easter and Christmas. 
Bach was the greatest organist of his time, 
and his preludes and fugues for the organ are 
the most perfect ever composed. The Well- 
tempered Clavichord is a book of instruction of 
great value. He also brought out a new system 
of fingering, which has had great influence on 
modern piano playing. Bach was married 
twice, and eleven of his twenty children were 
musicians. 

BACHELLER, batch' el er, Irving (1859- 
), an American novelist, born at Pierpont, 
N. Y., in a house overlooking Paradise Valley, 
the scene of the first part of his Eben Holden, 
the most widely-read of his books. He Was 
graduated at Saint Lawrence University, Can¬ 
ton, N. Y., wrote for several New York papers, 
and before Eben Holden appeared in 1900 he 
had published two novels and conducted a 
bureau for supplying magazines with literary 
material. Urged by a friend to put more of 
human interest into his stories, he wrote three 
novels of the North Adirondack region that 
established his fame, the one mentioned above, 
and Dri and I and Darrel of the Blessed Isles. 
All of these are natural and simple in style, 
and enlivened by quaint humor and homely 
philosophy. In'a different vein are two later 
stories, Charge It and Keeping up with Lizzie, 
ridiculing some modern American habits of 
spending money. 

BACHELOR’S BUTTON, a name shared by 
several plants whose flower heads resemble 
buttons, notably the bright yellow, double but¬ 


tercup, the blue cornflower, known in Germany 
as the Kaiserblume, and the purple globe ama¬ 
ranth. The children prefer to believe the 
story that bachelor’s buttons are so-called be¬ 
cause they were once carried about by young 
bachelors who were in love. A quick fading of 
the flower was a sign that their affection was 
not returned, but if the flower kept its fresh¬ 
ness, they knew their affairs of the heart would 
prosper. See Kaiserblume. 

BACILLUS, basil'us. See Bacteria and 
Bacteriology. 

BACKGAMMON, bak' gamun, a game of 
very ancient origin, the name being usually 
considered a contraction of a Welsh word 
meaning little battle. It is played by two 
people upon a double table containing twenty- 



BACKGAMMON BOARD 


four spear-shaped divisions called points, di¬ 
vided into four sections of six points. Each 
player takes 15 men, or checkers, which are 
placed on the table in the manner shown in the 
illustration. A player then makes a throw 
with two dice. The score of the dice indicates 
the point to which a checker may be moved, 
the points nearest to each player being num¬ 
bered from 1 to 12. The object of the game 
is to move all the checkers from point to 
point round the table on to the fourth section 
of 6 points. From -there they are removed in 
numbers according to the score of the dice 
thrown. The player first removing all his 
checkers is the winner. 

BACON, bay'En, the flesh of the hog, spe¬ 
cially prepared by salting and smoking. The 
best quality is made from the sides and back, 
though other portions of the carcass supply 
bacon of inferior grade. The flesh is first cured 








































































BACON 


536 


BACON 


by being saturated in a solution of salt, or a 
mixture of salt and sugar, and it is then smoked 
by being suspended over a wood fire. In cook- 



. —___ — — - * i a a 

Water, 18.8-A sh, 4.4- 


food VALUE OF BACON 

ing it is usually cut into very thin slices and 
fried, or it may be boiled in larger pieces. 
Because of its delicate flavor, bacon is a favorite 
dish in all civilized countries. It is largely 
composed (60 per cent) of carbon compounds 
and because of its heat producing quality as 
well as its flavor, is a part of the regular bill 
of fare in cold countries, especially in the lum¬ 
ber camps of the United States and Canada. 
Its value as a builder of bone and muscle is 
about half that of good fresh beef. See Food 
and its subtitles. 

BACON, Francis (1561-1626), an English 
philosopher, statesman and jurist, whose Es¬ 
says also rank him among the greatest of the 
world’s writers. He was born of good family, 
studied at Cambridge, and finished his educa¬ 
tion with foreign 
travel. That he 
was a born cour¬ 
tier is shown by 
his reply to 
Queen Elizabeth, 
who when he was 
but a boy asked 
him his age. 

Bowing low he 
replied, “Two 
years younger 
than your majes¬ 
ty’s happy reign.” 

Admitted to 
the bar when but 
twenty - one, he 
made an immediate reputation, and two years 
later entered Parliament. In 1618 he was 
created lord high chancellor, and in 1621 was 
raised to the peerage as Viscount of Saint 
Albans. He was accused of corruption as a 
judge and on pleading guilty to the charge, 
was heavily fined and sentenced to the Tower 


during the king’s pleasure. Subsequently his 
punishment was practically remitted, though 
not till he had suffered the full measure of 
disgrace. 

Bacon’s chief title to renown is in his devel¬ 
opment of the inductive method of reasoning 
(see Logic). He undertook to rearrange the 
whole system of human knowledge, and though 
his task was too great for him, he contributed 
more to real scientific progress than any other 
man since the daj^s of the Greek philosophers. 
The illness of which he died was contracted 
while he was making an experiment with snow, 
the success of which led to the cold storage 
systems of to-day. His Essays, fifty-eight In 
number, treating of a great variety of subjects, 
are as bright, as fresh, as applicable to life, as 
when they were written. They are so full of 
meaning, so condensed in style and so logical 
in arrangement, that they repay the closest 
study. Some of these are generally included 
among college entrance requirements in Eng¬ 
lish. The one most read by young people, and 
probably more appropriate for them than any 
of the others, is Of Studies. It is printed in 
full in the article Essay. c.w.k. 

BACON, Josephine Dodge Daskam (1876- 
), an American story-writer whose humor, 
original ideas and brilliant style have won for 
her a wide reputation. She was born at Stan¬ 
ford, Conn., educated at Smith College, and 
began her literary work by writing poems and 
stories for the Atlantic Monthly and other 
magazines. An early success was The Madness 
of Philip, which points out, in a humorous 
way, the supposed faults of certain kinder¬ 
garten methods. Her writings include Smith 
College Stories, The Imp and the Angel, In 
the Border Country, Memoirs of a Baby, The 
Luck o’ Lady Joan and The Open Market. She 
also compiled Best Nonsense Verse. Miss Das¬ 
kam married Seldon Bacon in 1903. 

BACON, Roger (1214-1294), an English monk 
and philosopher, one of the great men of the 
thirteenth century. He raised himself far above 
his age and added much to what was then 
known of science and nature. Bacon attended 
the universities of Oxford and Paris, receiving 
at the latter the degree of Doctor of Theology. 
About the year 1250 he joined the Franciscan 
Order and settled at Oxford, where he began 
a deep study of physics. Having announced his 
discoveries in that science, he was accused by 
his fellow Franciscans of dealing in the “black 
art,” the devil’s magic, and was removed to 
Paris, where he remained for ten years in 



If parts allure thee, think 
how Bacon shin’d, 

The wisest, brightest, mean¬ 
est of mankind. 

—From Pope’s Essay on Man. 











































BACON’S REBELLION 


537 


BACTERIA 


prison, without books or instruments. Though 
free from persecution for the next ten years, 
he was imprisoned a second time in 1278, 
through the ill-will of the head of the Fran¬ 
ciscan Order. About 1288 he was permitted to 
return to Oxford, where he remained until his 
death. 

Bacon held some of the incorrect ideas of 
his own time, but deserves honor for the new 
knowledge he gave the world on the subject 
of light and vision, for several discoveries in 
chemistry, for pointing out the errors in the 
calendar, and for establishing scientific method 


Berkeley executed a number of the leaders in 
the affair. Though nothing was gained, the 
uprising showed the courageous spirit of the 
Virginia colonists. 

BACTERIA, bakte'ria, AND BACTERIOL¬ 
OGY. Bacteria are the most minute organisms 
known to man. The name is derived from a 
Greek word, baktron, meaning a little staff or 
stick. The first bacteria discovered really 
looked like rods, but many of them are now 
known to be round, oval and of various other 
shapes. They are found everywhere, in the 
food we eat, in the water we drink, in the 



BACTERIA, VERY MUCH ENLARGED 

(a) Tetanus (lockjaw) bacilli; (b) anthrax bacilli; (c) diphtheria bacilli; ( d ) tuberculosis 
bacilli; (e) malarial fever parasites; (/) typhoid bacilli. 


in the investigation of all objects and phe¬ 
nomena. A copy of the corrected calendar 
which he made in 1263 is now in the library 
of University College, Oxford. His most im¬ 
portant writing is the Opus Majus (Great 
Work), an encyclopedia of the different 
sciences. 

BACON’S REBELLION, an uprising of the 
Virginia colonists, occurring in 1676 and di¬ 
rected against the mismanagement of affairs by 
Governor BerkelejL It was headed by Na¬ 
thaniel Bacon, a young planter who had 
settled in Virginia in 1673. He soon became a 
member of the governor’s council, and won 
the affection and trust of the colonists by his 
kindly manners. With his fellow colonists he 
had been bitterly dissatisfied with the policy 
of the home government and of Governor 
Berkeley, their chief causes for complaint being 
unequal taxation, the payment of unjust 
tobacco duties and unfairness in the voting 
system. 

This discontent became open rebellion when 
the governor refused to protect the people 
from outbreaks of the Indians. When his 
plantation on the site of the present city of 
Richmond had been attacked, Bacon asked the 
governor to permit him to head a band of 
troops against the Indians. When Berkeley 
refused, Bacon led out a company without that 
officer’s consent. Some fighting took place 
and Jamestown was burned, but the sudden 
death of Bacon put an end to the rebellion. 


air we breathe and growing in our bodies. It 
is due to bacteria that milk sours, butter 
becomes rancid and meat becomes “gamey,” or 
even spoils. The phosphorescence of sea water 
is often caused by bacteria. 

General Characteristics. Bacteria are vege¬ 
table organisms, and they can be distinguished 
only when examined through a microscope. It 
has been estimated that 1,500 of the rod¬ 
shaped kind, placed end to end, would just 
reach across the head of an ordinary pin. A 
single bacterium, so we are told, weighs no 
more than three-two-hundredth billionths of a 
grain. Many bacteria are able to move about 
by using their flagella, which resemble hairs. 
These flagella project from the body and can 
be whipped back and forth to drive the bac¬ 
teria through any liquid. This peculiarity first 
led scientists to suppose that bacteria were 
animals, but it is now understood that they 
are tiny plants. 

According to their shapes, bacteria are di¬ 
vided into three classes: (1) the bacillus 
(plural, bacilli ) is rod-shaped; (2) the spirillum 
(plural, spirilla ) is longer than the bacillus, but 
is curved or spiral; (3) the micrococcus (plural, 
micrococci ) is more or less spherical. Each of 
these classes shows many varieties. Bacilli, 
for example, may be found singly, in pairs, or 
in long strings. Spirilla may look like commas, 
or they may be long, thin spirals or short thick 
ones. If micrococci are arranged in rows like 
strings of beads they are called streptococci. 





















BACTERIA 


538 


BACTERIA 


Each kind reproduces its kind. Typhoid fever 
and tuberculosis are caused by bacilli; Asiatic 
cholera by spirilla; and pneumonia by micro¬ 
cocci ( pneumococci ). 

Kinds of Bacteria. It is because bacteria 
growing in our bodies result in many diseases 
that people now hear so much about bacteria. 
There are really two kinds. One kind or group 
feeds on dead animal or vegetable matter, the 
other kind only on living matter. Bacteria of 
the second class (see Parasites) are the more 
harmful. Although the former may be malig¬ 
nant, they are doing good in that they are 
destroying dead matter and decomposing it 
into its elements. But bacteria which live on 
living things destroy other lives to nourish 
their own; they are doing harm. Nearly all 
infectious diseases are known to be caused by 
bacteria. The few, including measles and scar¬ 
let fever, not known to be caused by bacteria, 
are believed to be caused by them, but the 
specific germ in each case has not yet been 
discovered. This is probably due to the fact 
that the germs in question are too small to 
be seen even under a powerful microscope. See 
Disease, subhead Germ Theory oj Disease. 

How to Kill Bacteria. Strong sunlight is a 
powerful germ killer, provided it acts long 
enough. Its power is lessened when it passes 
through glass; it is therefore best to sun things 
out-of-doors. Freezing and drying are uncer¬ 
tain methods of killing bacteria, for the organ¬ 
isms supposedly dead may be only lying quiet 
in their latent form. Heat, especially moist 
heat, is a sure way to destroy germs. Boiling 
milk or water or cooking meats and vegetables 
always destroys these harmful organisms and 
prevents any possible infection. This is the 
reason why health authorities should always 
warn people to boil their drinking water if 
the source of supply has been infected in some 
way. As a rule, milk which has been carefully 
handled from the start need not be boiled 
so long that its character and taste are affected, 
as ordinary germs are destroyed with moderate 
heat. Long-continued boiling, however, which 
greatly changes both its taste and nutritive 
qualities, is the only sure way of rendering 
milk absolutely sterile. Certain so-called 
germicides or disinfectants, such as alcohol and 
carbolic acid, also put an end to germs, but 
many advertised proprietary germicides are 
worthless. See Antiseptic; Antitoxin. 

Bacteriology. Bacteriology is the study of 
the character, development and effects of bac¬ 
terial growth, with especial reference to human 



Outline and Questions on 
Bacteria and Bac¬ 
teriology 

I. Characteristics 

(1) Vegetable organisms 

(2) Size 

(3) Flagella 

(4) Classes 

(a) Bacillus; rod-shaped 

1. The germ of typhoid fever 
and tuberculosis 

(b) Spirillum; long, curved or 

spiral 

1. The germ of Asiatic cholera 

(c) Micrococcus; spherical 

I. The germ of pneumonia 

(5) Where found 

II. Kinds of Bacteria 

(1) Those feeding upon dead animal or 

vegetable matter 

(2) Those feeding upon living matter 
(a) Germs of most infectious dis¬ 
eases 

III. The Destruction of Bacteria 

(1) By strong sunlight 

(2) By moist heat 

(3 ) By disinfectants 

IV. Bacteriology 

(1) The study of bacteria causing 

human diseases 

(2) Methods of studying these organ¬ 

isms 

(3) Means of getting a “pure culture” 

(4) Ways of determining the kind of 

germ 

Questions 

What do the bacteria that cause 
typhoid fever look like? 

Why does not milk taste the same 
after it has stood for several days? 

Can. all kinds of bacteria be grown 
in the same substance? 

What characteristics led scientists to 
suppose at first that bacteria were ani¬ 
mal organisms? 

Do different kinds live together in a 
single colony? 

What advantage has the back yard 
over the sun-parlor as a place for sun¬ 
ning things? 

Can any physician tell what the 
germs of scarlet fever and measles 
look like? 

How are bacteria specimens mounted 
for study? 

What method may be used to render 
milk perfectly sterile? 


















BACTERIA 


539 


BADEN 


diseases caused by them. When bacteria are 
to be studied they may be placed in a flask 
containing some nourishing substance, which 
must be absolutely free from germs. The dif¬ 
ferent kinds of bacteria flourish on different 
substances—for example, blood, potatoes, gela¬ 
tin and bouillon—and the material must be 
chosen for the bacteria under consideration. 

After this nourishing material or medium is 
prepared, and before the bacteria are inserted, 
it must be sterilized. This is usually done by 
exposing it to live steam for half an hour or 
more on several days in succession. When 
the medium is finally ready the bacteria are 
placed in the flask, which is then slowly heated 
dent. The medium is then allowed to cool, and, 
until the growth of the bacteria becomes evi- 
if it has been properly prepared, will harden 
quickly. The bacteria are then held motion¬ 
less in the cold gelatin, or whatever the 
medium may be. Minute specks of bacteria 
will be seen on the surface of the gelatin. Each 
speck is a colony of bacteria, and each colony 
includes only bacteria of a single species. By 
transferring one of these colonies to another 
medium, it is possible to raise additional colo¬ 
nies of these bacteria indefinitely. These 
specks or colonies are usually so tiny that it 
is impossible at first to transfer one and only 
one. After several such transfers the bacteri¬ 
ologist succeeds in getting a growth which is 
free from all life except the bacteria of a single 
species. This growth is a “pure culture.” 

So minute are many bacteria that no micro¬ 
scope is powerful enough to show differences 
between them. They all have peculiarities of 
development, however, which can be studied 
in pure cultures. For study with microscopes 
bacteria are usually placed on a glass slide and 
covered with a piece of thin glass. Some bac¬ 
teria are stained, for experiment or for purposes 
of diagnosis, to bring out their peculiarities; 
the tuberculosis germs, for example, can be 
recognized only by their reaction to certain 
stains. These germs are determined in the 
following manner: A suspected specimen is 
stained with a strong solution of a red dye 
called fuchsin, to which carbolic acid has been 
added. After staining, the specimen is washed 
in dilute acid, by means of which the stain is 
extracted from all other bacteria. Notwith¬ 
standing the action of the acid, the tuberculosis 
bacilli retain the red stain, and are thus dif¬ 
ferentiated. W.A.E. 

Consult Muir and Ritchie’s Manual of Bac¬ 
teriology; Ball’s Essentials of Bacteriology. 


BADEN, bah' den, a town in Austria, fifteen 
miles southwest of Vienna, especially noted for 
its hot, sulphurous springs. It is visited by 
more than 20,000 people annually for the sake 
of its waters, which are believed to have a 
beneficial effect in cases of rheumatism, gout 
and kidney and skin diseases. Many mansions 
are maintained there by the Austrian nobility, 
among them being the imperial palace of Weil- 
berg. Its chief industry besides caring for its 
visitors is the manufacture of small steel tools. 
To distinguish it from other cities of the same 
name it is generally called Baden Bei Wien, 
meaning Baden near Vienna. Population in 
1910, 14,083. 

BADEN, a famous watering-place at the 
edge of the Black Forest of Germany, in the 
Grand Duchy of Baden. It is often called 
Baden-Baden, to distinguish it from other 
places of the same name, of which there are 
many, for the word means baths. From the 
mineral springs of the town flows water with 
a temperature which ranges from 117° to 154°, 
famed from very early times. In normal times 
more than 70,000 people flock to Baden each 
year seeking relief from gout, rheumatism or 
diseases of the skin or kidneys, but the resi¬ 
dent population of the town is only 22,000. 

There are a number of attractive buildings, 
including the grand duke’s summer residence 
and an old castle. The city is arranged in the 
form of an amphitheater. Aside from caring 
for visitors, its principle industry is wood¬ 
carving. 

BADEN, Grand Duchy of, a South-German 
state on the east bank of the Rhine. It touches 
Lake Constance and is bordered by Switzer¬ 
land on the south and Alsace on the west. In 



size it is the fourth state, and in population the 
fifth state, in the German Empire. Its area of 



BADEN-POWELL 


540 


BAD LANDS 


5,823 square miles is slightly less than the com¬ 
bined area of Rhode Island and Connecticut; 
its population is 2,000,000. It is traversed by 
the lofty plateau of the Black Forest. Coal, 
iron, zinc, nickel and copper are mined in many 
places, and the fertile soil yields abundant 
crops of wheat, barley, corn, potatoes, flax, 
hemp, beetroot and tobacco. Grapes are ex¬ 
tensively cultivated, and Baden is noted for its 
light wines. 

The chief manufactures are textiles, tobacco, 
chemicals, machinery, jewels, pottery, musical 
instruments, wooden carvings and toys. The 
capital is Karlsruhe, with a population of 111,- 
200; other important towns are Mannheim 
(162,607), Freiburg (74,102), Constance (24,818), 
and Heidelberg (49,439), the seat of the oldest 
university of the German Empire. The min¬ 
eral springs of Baden are famous throughout 
the world (see Baden). 

j The duchy is governed by an hereditary 
grand duke, assisted by two chambers compris¬ 
ing a Parliament, or Landtag. Every citizen of 
legal age, not a pauper and not convicted of 
crime, has a vote. The low’er chamber consists 
of seventy-three members; the upper is com¬ 
posed of all adult male members of the reigning 
family, the archbishop of Freiburg, burgo¬ 
masters of small towns, representatives of the 
chamber of commerce and eight members who 
are elected for four years by the votes of the 
nobility. Baden became part of the German 
Empire in 1871, and sends to Berlin three repre¬ 
sentatives to the German Bundesrat, or Fed¬ 
eral Council, and fourteen Deputies to the 
Imperial Reichstag. 

BADEN-POWELL, Robert Stevenson Smith 
(1857- ), a British general who acquired dis¬ 

tinction through a brilliant military career, but 
is known in the United States and Canada 
chiefly through his keen interest in the Boy 
Scout movement. He entered the army in 
1876 and served in India, Afghanistan and 
South Africa. He was distinguished as com¬ 
mander of the native troops in Ashantee in 
1895, and later in the Matabele campaign. 
During the South African War his force of 
1,200 men was besieged for 215 days by a 
large Boer army at Mafeking, and despite 
famine and sickness he succeeded in repelling 
his assailants until he was relieved. Because of 
his success in defending the place he was pro¬ 
moted to the rank of major-general. 

General Baden-Powell has always taken a 
keen interest in the welfare of boys, and his 
wide experience and ready understanding 


admirably qualify him as an ideal for, and 
leader of, boys of all ages. His works on 
scouting are authoritative and are widely read. 
See Boy Scouts. 

BADGER, baj'ur, an animal belonging to 
the same family as the bears, weasels and 
skunks. It sleeps all day in a burrow and 
comes out to feed at night. It has short, thick 
legs, and powerful claws on its forefeet, with 



which it digs up roots and vegetables and also 
destroys the houses of ground squirrels, 
gophers and mice, which it eats. The badger 
is about the size of a large fox terrier, but its 
body is stouter and its legs are shorter. Its 
fur, of a grayish color, is valuable, and its long 
hairs are used for making artists’ brushes and 
shaving brushes. Natives of India eat its 
flesh, but it is not considered fit for food in 
most countries. It will always seek safety 
in its burrow rather than fight, but when cor¬ 
nered and compelled to fight it is a formidable 
enemy. 

“Badger baiting,” or “drawing the badger” 
was a cruel sport formerly practiced in England 
and America. A badger was put into a barrel, 
and dogs were sent in to drag him out. When 
this was accomplished, the dogs were called 
off and the badger was put back into the bar¬ 
rel and attacked again^ Several dogs might 
be killed or severely injured by the badger’s 
powerful teeth before he could be got out of 
his barrel. From this “game,” as it was called, 
we get the word badgering, which means worry¬ 
ing. 

Wisconsin is called the Badger State, because 
it is the principal American home of these 
animals. 

BAD LANDS, a name applied in the United 
States to certain lands which have been greatly 
eroded by rain and floods (see Erosion). The 
most striking example of such erosive action is 
found in the upper drainage basin of the Mis¬ 
souri River, near the Black Hills. There the 
soil is not protected by vegetation. It is com¬ 
posed of sand, gravel and horizontal strata of 
clay and limestone, and the hills are easily 
washed by rain into fantastic gullies. The 
term is a literal translation of Torres 









BAEDEKER 


541 


BAGDAD 


Mauvaises, the name first given to these 
regions by Canadian trappers. 

There is in the minds of some people a belief 
that the vicinity was so named because of the 
wild and vicious character of some of the early 
miners, hunters, and adventurers. This is un¬ 
true ; but the Sioux Indians, in their wars 
against the United States, found natural 
fortresses in the hills and valleys, and thus 
made more stubborn their resistance to author¬ 
ity; this fact probably emphasized the error 
above noted. 

The section is noted for the great variety of 
fossil remains found there (see Fossil). 

BAEDEKER, bed' eker, Karl (1801-1859), a 
German publisher born in Essen, whose trav¬ 
elers’ handbooks, called Baedekers, for the use 
of European tourists have become famous the 
world over. He began as a bookseller of 
Coblenz in 1827, and twelve years later issued 
the first of his series of travel-books, these 
being devoted to Belgium and Holland. The 
collection now includes all the European coun¬ 
tries and portions of North America and the 
Orient. Each volume is provided with good 
maps and the books are always accurate to the 
date of publication. Since 1872 the firm has 
had its central offices in Leipzig. 

BAFFIN LAND AND BAFFIN BAY, an 
island and bay in the Arctic regions to the west 
of Greenland, named after the English navi¬ 
gator, William Baffin. The area of the island 
is not accurately known, but it is estimated 
at about 236,000 square miles, making it the 
fourth largest island in the world, yet it is one 
of the least valuable. It is inhabited by a few 
Eskimos and is barren and inhospitable. In 
1911 Bernard Hantzsch, who had spent a year 
in its exploration, died there, after completing 
the most reliable maps and surveys yet ob¬ 
tained. 

Baffin Bay, separating the island from Green¬ 
land, is about 800 miles long, with an average 
breadth of 280 miles, and was first explored by 
Baffin in 1615. The bay is seldom free from 
ice, though open for a short time during the 
hottest time of the year. On the shores, which 
are high and rockjq are a few Eskimo and 
Danish settlements. The black whale, walrus 
and seal are found in-the bay; and bears, foxes 
and hares are numerous in the surrounding 
territory. 

William Baffin, the English navigator and 
explorer, was born about 1584. Having a 
fondness for the sea, he visited Greenland in 
1612, again in 1615, and also made voyages to 


Spitzbergen in 1613 and 1614, all before he was 
thirty years old. After his Arctic explorations 



BAFFIN LAND AND BAFFIN BAY 


he entered the service of the East India Com¬ 
pany, and in 1622 was killed while leading an 
expedition to drive the Portuguese out of 
Ormuz, in the Persian Gulf. 

BAGATELLE, bag a tel', an indoor game, 
supposed to have originated in Italy, played 
with spherical balls and a cue similar to that 
used in billiards, on a cloth-covered table about 
eight feet long and two feet wide. At one end 
of the table are nine holes, or cups, numbered 
from one to nine, in size just sufficient to 
receive the balls, of which there are nine, one 
black and eight white or red. The black ball 
is placed on a spot in front of the cups. From 
the other end of the table the player strikes 
a ball, playing at the black ball, which he 
must hit before he can score. Any ball going 
into a cup scores the number of the cup, the 
black ball being counted as double. Whoever 
makes the highest total after playing the eight 
balls is the winner. 

BAG'DAD, the capital city of a Turkish 
vilayet, or province, in Southern Mesopotamia, 
was once one of the most beautiful and greatest 
cities in the world, the capital of the caliphs 
and the center of Arabian culture and learning, 
famous in literature as the scene of the Arabian 
Nights Entertainment. The River Tigris, flow¬ 
ing through the city, separates the old town, 




BAGDAD 


542 


BAGPIPE 


on the west, from the new and larger part, on 
the east bank. For the most part the city is 
squalid and dirty, with winding, narrow streets 
and many ruins as reminders of its former 
glory. The typical Turkish houses, without 
windows on the street side, are also uninviting 
and suggestive of gloom, but the interior court¬ 
yards are often richly decorated and orna¬ 
mented with gardens and fountains. There 
are many mosques, some partly in ruins, and a 
number of famous bazars, or markets, but with 
the exception of the Governor-General’s palace 
and the citadel there are no public buildings 
of importance. The population, which is esti¬ 
mated at 150,000 to 225,000, is composed mostly 
of Arabs, Turks, Armenians, Persians and Jews, 
with a few Christians. 

Bagdad carries on a considerable trade in 
leather, silks, carpets and ornamental fabrics, 
and previous to the opening of the Suez Canal 
in 1869 was one of the chief centers of trade 
on the caravan route to India. Peace in Europe 



BAGDAD AND ITS RAILWAY 

This line is a part of Germany’s long-cher¬ 
ished plan to secure rail connection between 
Berlin and the Persian Gulf. Its hopes for 
supremacy in Southwestern Asia would thus be 
nearer fulfilment. 

and the completion of the Bagdad Railway will 
greatly extend its commercial importance. The 
city was founded in a. d. 762 by the Caliph 
Almansur, and has been under Turkish rule 
since 1638. In 1915 a British expeditionary 
force, advancing northward from the Persian 
Gulf, reached Ctesiphon, only eighteen miles 
from Bagdad, but was then driven back and 
finally compelled to surrender at Kut-el-Amara 
(see War of the Nations). 

Bagdad Railway. Bagdad lies on the natural 
overland route from Constantinople to India, 
and the desirability of constructing a railway 
on this route was long seen. After Russian 
and British offers to build such a line were 
rejected, Turkey in 1902 officially gave the right 
to a German company. The Euphrates Val¬ 


ley or Bagdad Railway is usually called a 
German enterprise, but it is interesting to 
note that German capitalists invested only 
forty per cent of the capital, French capitalists 
supplied thirty per cent, and the balance was 
divided among Austrian, Swiss, Italian and 
Turkish financiers. The construction work pro¬ 
ceeded slowly, and in disconnected sections, so 
that in 1914, when Turkey entered the War 
of the Nations, about 500 miles out of a total 
of 1,314 miles were actually in operation. With 
the outbreak of war the construction was 
pushed rapidly, both because the line was of 
military importance and because it was needed 
to transport to Germany and Austria-Hungary 
the mineral and agricultural products of Meso¬ 
potamia. W.F.Z. 

BAGOT, bag' ot, Sir Charles (1781-1843), 
British diplomatist and colonial administrator, 
Governor-General of the Union of Canada in 
1842. At various times from 1814 to 1834 he 
represented his government at Paris, Washing¬ 
ton, Petrograd, The Hague and Vienna. While 
at Washington he negotiated the Rush-Bagot 
treaty, which limited the number and size of 
war vessels on the Great Lakes. In January, 
1842, Bagot entered on his duties as Governor- 
General of Canada, the province which had 
been formed in the preceding year by the union 
of Upper and Lower Canada. Though ill 
health compelled him to resign before the end 
of the year, his term of office is important 
because it marks the beginning of responsible 
government in Canada. Baron Sydenham had 
recognized the principle a year before, but had 
not always acted in accordance with it. It was 
Sir Charles Bagot who first summoned Robert 
Baldwin to form a ministry whose responsi¬ 
bility to the legislative branch of the govern¬ 
ment was recognized (see Baldwin, Robert). 
Bagot himself was a Tory, and believed the 
ministry should be responsible only to the 
Crown, yet he appreciated that he was in Can¬ 
ada not to gratify his own wishes but to gov¬ 
ern in accordance with the popular will. 

BAGPIPE, a musical wind instrument, now 
regarded as the national instrument of Scot¬ 
land. It consists of a leather bag, into which 
air is blown through a pipe. Holding the bag 
under his left arm, the performer forces air 
into four other pipes by pressure of his elbow. 
In the Highland form, one pipe called the 
chanter, plays the melody; of the other three, 
called drones, two emit a monotone in unison 
with the lowest note of the chanter and the 
third gives forth a note an octave lower. The 





BAHAMA ISLANDS 


543 


BAHIA 


notes from the chanter are produced by means 
of holes, stopped with the fingers, or left open, 
as in playing a 
flute. 

The bagpipe is 
of great an¬ 
tiquity, having 
been used by the 
ancient Greeks, 
and it is popular 
among the coun¬ 
try people of Po- 
1 a n d, Italy, 

France and Ire¬ 
land. Scotland is 
by no means its 
original home, 
for it is thought 
to have been in¬ 
troduced into 
that country after 
William the Con¬ 
queror entered 
England in 1066. 

B A H A'M A 
ISLANDS, or 
LUCAYOS, lu 
kah' yos, a group 
of British West 
Indian Islands ly¬ 
ing northeast of 
Cuba and south¬ 
east of the coast 
of Florida. They 
are formed 
largely of wind 
blown coral sand. The principal islands are 
Grand Bahama, Great Abaco, Little Abaco, 
Andros Islands, New Providence, Eleuthera, 
Great Exuma, San Salvador, Acklin’s Island 
and Great Inagua. Of the whole group, which 
numbers over 3,000 islands and reefs, twenty 
are inhabited, and the most populous is New 
Providence, which contains the capital, Nassau 
(which see). The principal product is pine¬ 
apples, which form the chief export, though 
other fruits are also grown, as well as cotton, 
sugar, maize and ground nuts. The agave, 
from which sisal hemp is obtained, is exten¬ 
sively cultivated and its export is steadily in¬ 
creasing. Fishing for sponges also forms an 
important industry. 

The Bahamas are a favorite resort for in¬ 
valids suffering from pulmonary diseases. The 
first British settlement was made on New 
Providence toward the close of the seventeenth 


century. San Salvador, or Watling Island, is 
thought by some authorities to be the same as 
Guanahani, the land first touched on by Colum¬ 
bus in 1492. For location on map, see North 
America. Population, in 1911, 55,944. 

BAHIA, bahee'a, or SaO SALVADOR, 
souN sahl vah dohr, one of the chief cities of 
Brazil, capital of the state of Bahia, had a 
population of about 300,000 in 1915. In size 
it is the third city of Brazil, being exceeded 
only by Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. It is 
on the shore of the Bahia de Todos os Santos 
(bay of all the saints), which must not be con¬ 
fused with the famous coffee port of Santos. 
It is in latitude 13° south, and by water is 
742 miles distant from Rio de Janeiro, 4,000 
miles from New York, 4,500 miles from Lon¬ 
don and 7,670 miles from San Francisco.' 

Like many South American cities, Bahia is 
divided into two parts. The old or lower town, 
which lies on the long, narrow beach, has dirty, 
ill-paved streets, and is without protection from 
the surface w r ashings from the slopes above. 
This section, typical of old colonial life, con¬ 
tains the markets, post office, railway station, 
consular offices and principal business houses. 
The upper town, chiefly a residence district, 
lies on the western slope of a ridge rising from 
200 to 260 above the sea level. It is reached 
from the lower town by hydraulic elevators 
and by streets so steep that carriages cannot 
pass along them. Here are the governor’s 
palace, a public library, a museum, a cathedral, 
considered the finest in Brazil, and a lovely 
garden or park on the brink of the bluff and 
overlooking both the bay and the open sea. 

Bahia is called the “City of Churches,” and 
contains over a hundred of these. The Sao 
Joao and Polytheania theaters are worthy of 
note. Various hotels and schools and a large 
number of fine residences render the upper 
town attractive, and it has electric lights, elec¬ 
tric street railways and other modern im¬ 
provements. The port of Bahia is commo¬ 
dious and sheltered, and the city is the center 
of the sugar, cocoa and tobacco trade of the 
state. It also exports diamonds and other 
precious stones, and maintains important cot¬ 
ton industries. Bahia is one of the few South 
American cities which have docks to accommo¬ 
date the largest ocean liners. The harbor is 
the most strongly fortified in Brazil. 

Bahia was founded in 1549 by Thome de 
Sauza, who was the first Governor-General of 
Brazil. Twelve years later it was made the see 
of a bishop, and fifteen years later still it 




















































































BAHIA BLANCA 


544 


BAINBRIDGE 


received an archbishop. In 1624 the port was 
seized by the Dutch, who remained in posses¬ 
sion for some months. In 1863 the seizure of 
the Confederate States cruiser Florida by Cap¬ 
tain Collins of the United States ship Wachu- 
sett in the harbor of Bahia was a disregard of 
neutral rights for which the United States 
government apologized. 

The history of Bahia has been singularly 
uneventful, but the completion of its harbor 
improvements is expected to be followed by a 
great expansion in commercial lines. The ex¬ 
tension of the railway system from Bahia into 
the interior, which in 1916 was restricted to a 
line running northward, should also add to the 
prosperity of the city. h.m.s. 

BAHIA BLANCA, bah ee' a blang' ka, is the 
most important seaport on the Atlantic coast 
of Argentina, more wheat and oats being 
shipped from here than from any other port 
of the country. It is situated on the Neposta 
River, three miles from its entrance into the 
bay of Bahia Blanca, and on the southern 
boundary of the province of Buenos Aires. 
Buenos Aires, the capital, is about 450 miles 
northeast. There is steamer communication 
between Bahia Blanca and European ports, and 
railroads connect it with all parts of Argentina. 
Millions of dollars have been spent in building 
docks and elevators for loading grain and in 
dredging the channels for sea-going vessels. 
Excepting Buenos Aires, Bahia Blanca is the 
largest wool market in the country. 

The site was a trading post in 1829; the city 
did not begin to grow until about 1900, and it 
is therefore new. Most of the houses are 
low and are built of concrete, and the wide 
streets are so devoid of trees as to suggest 
that the place is too new to have trees. The 
municipal theater and the municipal adminis¬ 
tration buildings are noteworthy. Near the 
entrance to the harbor the government has 
erected Puerto Militar, a military and naval 
station. 

Bahia Blanca is a Spanish name and means 
white bay. In 1911 the population was 70,000. 

BAIKAL, bikahV, the largest fresh water 
lake in Asia, situated in Southern Siberia, cov¬ 
ering an area of 13,200 square miles, a trifle 
more than the combined area of the states of 
Vermont, Delaware and Rhode Island. It is 
surrounded by lofty and rugged mountains and 
has occasional depths of over 4,000 feet. The 
deepest recorded sounding is 4,997 feet, making 
it the deepest fresh-water lake in the world. 
The lake is frozen over from December to 


April and traffic is then conducted by sleighs. 
During the Russian-Japanese War (1904-1905) 
a railroad was constructed over the frozen 
surface of the lake for the conveyance of troops 
and supplies. The route of the Trans-Siberian 
railway skirts the southern shore, a new route 
having been opened in 1905. The salmon, 
sturgeon and seal fisheries are valuable and 
many oil wells are found in the vicinity of 
the lake. Over 300 rivers, mostly mountain 
torrents, empty themselves into Lake Baikal, 
the surplus waters being carried off by the 
Lower Angara, a tributary of the Yenisei River. 
For location on the map, see Asia. 

BAIL, a legal term applied to the property 
or surety which one person pledges as the 
security for another under arrest, that the latter 
may enjoy his liberty until the date of trial. 
Bondsmen, those whose pledges are accepted 
as bail, must be owners of property in value 
usually double the amount required in the 
bond, and must be citizens of the state residing 
within reach of the court. The responsibility 
of a bondsman ceases if the person is rearrested 
upon his complaint. A person accused of will¬ 
ful murder cannot apply for temporary liberty 
on bail bonds. 

BAILEY, Liberty Hyde (1858- ), an 

American educator, one of the best known 
authorities on agriculture and rural’ conditions. 
He was born at South Haven, Mich., and re¬ 
ceived his college training at the Michigan 
Agricultural College, from which he was grad¬ 
uated in 1882. After serving for a year as 
assistant to Professor Asa Gray at Harvard and 
for five years as professor of horticulture and 
landscape gardening at Michigan Agricultural 
College, he was professor of horticulture from 
1888 to 1903 at the New York State College 
of Agriculture at Ithaca. In 1903 he became 
director of that institution, and held the posi¬ 
tion until his retirement in 1913. Professor 
Bailey has been an authoritative and volumi¬ 
nous writer on botany and agriculture. His most 
important works include Lessons with Plants; 
Botany, an Elementary Text for Schools; The 
Nature-Study Idea; The Country-Life Move¬ 
ment and The Practical Garden Book. Lie is 
also the editor of Cyclopedia of American Hor¬ 
ticulture; Cyclopedia of Agriculture, and the 
Rural Science Series. 

BAINBRIDGE, William (1774-1833), one of 

the few American naval officers who have been 
voted gold medals by Congress for distin¬ 
guished services. After sailing some years on 
merchant vessels, he entered the United States 



BAKER 


BAKU 


navy in 1798 as a lieutenant. Two years later 
he commanded the frigate George Washington, 
which carried to Algiers the tribute the United 
States was required to pay the ruler of that 
country for commercial privileges in the Medi¬ 
terranean. In 1801, as captain of the Essex, 
he cruised in the Mediterranean. Under Com¬ 
modore Preble he commanded the frigate 
Philadelphia during the war with Tripoli, which 
put down the Barbary piracy. While chasing 
a blockade runner in 1804 his vessel grounded 
and was forced to surrender, the captain and 
his 300 men being held as prisoners for over a 
year. See Barbary States. 

In 1812 he commanded a squadron compris¬ 
ing the Constitution, Essex and Hornet, and 
later in the year captured the British frigate 
Java after a two hours’ engagement in which 
the British lost 300 in killed and wounded, the 
Americans, thirty-four. It was for this achieve¬ 
ment Congress voted the commodore a gold 
medal, and in addition voted his crew $50,000 
as prize money. In 1815 Bainbridge com¬ 
manded the Mediterranean squadron, and held 
the same post again in 1821, which was his last 
foreign assignment. 

BAKER, Sir Samuel White (1821-1893), a 
distinguished English explorer, the discoverer 
of the important lake Albert Nyanza. In 1861 
he began his travels in Africa that resulted in 
the discovery of the lake named for Albert, con¬ 
sort of Queen Victoria, and that also added 
much to what was then known of the sources 
and course of the Nile. In 1866 he was made a 
knight. The following year he headed an 
expedition sent by the khedive of Egypt to 
annex and open up to trade a large part of the 
newly-explored country, and was appointed 
Governor-General of the new territory formed. 
His successor in this work was Colonel Charles 
Gordon (which see). Baker’s writings include 
The Albert Nyanza, Great Basin of the Nile, 
Cyprus as I Saw It in 1879 and Wild Beasts and 
Their Ways. 

BAKERSFIELD, Cal., the county seat of 
Kern County and a thriving industrial city, 
situated in the southwestern part of the state, 
on the Kern River. Fresno is 106 miles north¬ 
west, Los Angeles is 171 miles southeast, and 
San Francisco is 313 * miles northwest. The 
Southern Pacific and the Atchison, Topeka & 
Santa Fe railroads serve the city. The place 
was settled in 1869 and named in honor of 
Colonel Baker, an American soldier of early 
California history. In 1914 the population was 
15,538, an increase of 2,809 since 1910. 


Bakersfield is located in a stock-raising and 
fruit-growing section and is a shipping point 
for live stock, wool, hides, grain and fruit. It 
has large fruit-packing establishments, oil- 
refineries, foundries and railroad and machine 
shops. In the locality are found deposits of 
gold, gypsum, borax, marble, salt, copper, tung¬ 
sten, iron and sulphur. The Kern River fur¬ 
nishes water for irrigation and power for manu¬ 
factures. Bakersfield has a $400,000 courthouse, 
two high schools, a library and a county hos¬ 
pital. L.C.B. 

BAKING POWDER, a fine white powder 
which the housewife uses in place of yeast to 
“raise” bread, biscuits and other preparations 
of flour or meal. The baking powder of best 
repute is made of cream of tartar and soda 
mixed with starch or flour. The starch or 
flour keeps the soda and cream of tartar dry 
and thus prevents their acting upon each other 
until ready for use. As soon as the baking 
powder is wet the cream of tartar attacks the 
soda and sets free carbonic acid gas. The gas, 
passing through the dough, makes it light and 
porous, and it “rises.” Soda and sour milk 
have the same effect as baking powder. 

Cheaper baking powders are made by using 
alum or acid phosphate of lime, or both, in 
place of the cream of tartar. As a food con¬ 
stituent alum has always been regarded with 
suspicion, but recent investigations by the 
Referee Board of Consulting Scientific Experts 
of the United States Department of Agriculture 
failed to reveal any injurious effects due to 
alum baking powders in the quantities used in 
an ordinary diet. They, however, advised 
against the excessive use of foods made with 
baking powders, since all the commercial kinds 
leave substances in the bread, which in large 
doses affect the bowels. See Adulteration in 
Foodstuffs and Clothing. j.f.s. 

BAKU, bah koo', a Russian port on the west¬ 
ern coast of the Caspian Sea, and the com¬ 
mercial center of a district that produces nearly 
one-fourth of the world’s supply of petroleum. 
The principal industries are connected with 
the pumping and refining of oil, but the city 
has large tobacco and chemical factories and 
big plants for distillation of water from the 
Caspian Sea for domestic purposes, for the 
water in the oily regions is unfit for home use. 
Baku, which has an excellent harbor, is also 
an important forwarding depot, transmitting 
eastern products from Persia and manufactured 
goods from Europe. The city presents a 
curious combination of ancient and modern 


BALAAM 


546 


BALANCE 


structures, the old town contrasting strongly 
with the new business section which has grown 
with the development of its principal industry. 
The harbor is strongly fortified, and is a station 
of the Russian Caspian fleet. Population in 
1910, 206,031. 

BALAAM, bay'lam, a soothsayer and seer 
whom Balok, king of Moab, called upon to 
curse the Israelites when they were about to 
overrun his country. The first time the Lord 
commanded Balaam not to go, but the second 
time permission was given, with the command 
that Balaam was to do whatever the Lord 
commanded. On the way the angel of the 
Lord appeared before him with a drawn sword 
in his hand. B}^ a miracle the ass which 
Balaam was riding saw the angel, but Balaam 
could not see him. The ass turned aside into 
the field, and Balaam struck her to force her 
back into the path. But the angel was still 
in front of the ass and she still resented, finally 
lying down under her master, and Balaam 
smote her the third time. The ass was then 
made to speak, and Balaam replied: “Because 
thou hast mocked me I would there were a 
sword in mine hand, for now I would kill thee.'’ 
The narrative continues: “Then the Lord 
opened the eyes of Balaam and he saw the 
angel of the Lord standing in the way with his 
sword drawn, and he bowed down his head and 
fell flat on his face.” Under the command of 
the Lord Balaam blessed the Israelites four 
times, and his prophecies are among the grand¬ 
est in the Bible. See Num. XXII-XXIV. 

BALAKLAVA, bah la klah' vah, a small port 
on the Black Sea, in the southwest of the 



THE CRIMEAN PENINSULA 
Locating the spot made famous by the “Light 
Brigade.” 

Crimea, famous for the battle of the Crimean 
War in which the heroic English *‘Light BrL 


gade,” riding to certain death, gave the world 
an unforgettable example of obedience. 

The battle oj Balaklava was fought on Oct. 
25, 1854, between the Russian field army and 
the allied English, French and Turkish troops. 
Through a misunderstanding, an English bri¬ 
gade of light cavalry, numbering about 600 
men, was ordered to charge the Russian cavalry 
stationed at the end of a long valley, the 
ridges on both sides of which were also held 
by the enemy’s infantry and cavalry. At the 
word of command the “Light Brigade” swept 
down the plain, exposed to a deadly fire from 
the front and both sides, and only a remnant 
found their way back. (See Crimean War.) 
This heroic charge inspired the stirring poem 
to which its author, Alfred Tennyson, gave the 
title, The Charge of the Light Brigade. One 
of the stanzas is here given: 

Forward, the Light Brigade! 

Was there a man dismayed? 

Not though the soldier knew 
Someone had blundered: 

Theirs not to make reply. 

Theirs not to reason why. 

Theirs but to do and die: 

Into the valley of Death 
Rode the six hundred. 

Balaklava is about eight miles southeast of 
Sebastopol (formerly Sevastopol). Its harbor 
is shut in by lofty hills, and the entrance 
is so narrow that scarcely more than one 
vessel can enter at a time. On the heights 
overlooking the bay are the houses of the 
inhabitants, mostly Greek fishermen, who num¬ 
ber about 1,500. 



THE TRUE BALANCE 


BALANCE, a mechanical device for weigh¬ 
ing substances, from almost the tiniest particle 
of matter to great masses of the heaviest ma¬ 
terial The simplest form of weighing machine 









































BALANCE OF POWER 


547 


BALANCE OF TRADE 


is called a spring balance, which is not really a 
balance in the true sense of the word. In this 
device the goods to be 
weighed are placed in a 
pan which is suspended 
from or presses on a 
spring. The weight 
causes the spring to ex¬ 
pand or close, forcing a 
needle or indicator round 
a dial, which is marked 
off in spaces indicating 
pounds and ounces. This 
form of balance is suffi¬ 
ciently correct for meas¬ 
uring meat and groceries, 
but is not so delicately 
adjusted as to measure 
drugs for medicine or 
other substances requir¬ 
ing the utmost accuracy. 

The true balance con¬ 
sists of a horizontal arm 
from each end of which a 
pan is suspended. The 
arm is perfectly balanced 
across a knife edge of 
metal or other hard sub¬ 
stance. In one of the 
pans is placed a weight; 
in the other, the sub¬ 
stance to be weighed. 

When the weights in the 
two pans exactly corre¬ 
spond, the arm of the bal¬ 
ance remains horizontal. 

If the weights are uneven 
one side of the arm will 
rise. Balances are made 
with such delicate adjust¬ 
ment that they will indi¬ 
cate the weight of a hu¬ 
man hair; these are 
usually enclosed in a 
glass case to protect them 
from dust and prevent corrosion from the 
atmosphere. The Romans and Egyptians used 
a balance that is still almost extensively em¬ 
ployed, known as a steelyard (which see). 

BALANCE OF POWER, the condition which 
exists among nations when no one power or 
dynasty is sufficiently powerful to endanger 
(lie independence of other nations. The prin¬ 
ciple involved is as old as history, for it is 
nothing more or less than the law of self- 
preservation, expressed in diplomatic terms. 


If one nation, or a group of nations, becomes 
so powerful as to threaten the independent 
existence of less powerful neighbors, it is nat¬ 
ural for the latter to form alliances in self 
defense and thus restore the balance wherein 
lies safety. Even primitive tribes have been 
known to unite forces against an aggressor. 

While the principle is thus as old as history, 
it is only in modern times that it has become 
one of the fundamental doctrines of diplomacy. 
It is, in fact, the foundation of international 
law. Obviously, if any nation can impose its 
will on weaker countries, there is an end to 
international law, for in such case the will of 
the strongest is law. According to Grotius and 
later writers, it is not only to the interest but 
is the duty of every nation to interfere, even 
at the cost of war, when any member of the 
family of nations tries to disturb the balance. 

Wars have been waged to preserve the bal¬ 
ance of power as often as they have been waged 
to destroy it. Between 1648 and the fall of 
Napoleon in 1815, Europe was almost con¬ 
tinuously at war, the preservation of the bal¬ 
ance of power being the customary excuse for 
the endless rearrangement of alliances. The 
great coalition against Napoleon was one more 
attempt to secure the same end. 

Since Napoleon’s fall, the theory has still 
held its place in Europe’s diplomacy. To this 
theory and to the diplomacy of Talleyrand, 
France owed the favorable treatment it re¬ 
ceived at the hands of the Congress at Vienna 
in 1815 (see Vienna, Congress of). When 
Russian ambitions for expansion threatened the 
life of the theory, Great Britain and France 
fought the Crimean War to save it. The for¬ 
mation of the Triple Alliance, between the 
German Empire, Austria-Hungary and Italy, 
was followed by the Dual Entente, later the 
Triple Entente (which see), to offset the pre¬ 
dominance of Germany in European politics. 
The balance of power was, therefore, one of the 
underlying causes of the War of the Nations 
in 1914. See Triple Alliance; Triple En¬ 
tente. E.D.F. 

BALANCE OF TRADE, in political econ¬ 
omy, is the excess of exports over imports, or 
vice versa. If the exports are larger, the bal¬ 
ance is said to be favorable; if the imports, 
the balance is unfavorable. The phrase first 
came into common use in the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries, in connection with the 
“mercantile theory,” which measured the pros¬ 
perity of a country by the amount of actual 
gold and silver it received or paid out for this 



too — 


200 



COMMON SPRING 
BALANCE 








BALBOA 


548 


BALDNESS 


excess. It was then believed that no country 
was prosperous unless it received in cash more 
than it paid to other countries. 

If the buying and selling of commodities 
were the only factors in creating a balance of 
trade, this doctrine would be sound. But as 
Adam Smith pointed out in 1776, money is 
merely a commodity which obeys the same 
laws of supply and demand as do dry goods, 
for instance. There are, moreover, transporta¬ 
tion and commission charges, citizens’ invest¬ 
ments abroad, and local investments by for¬ 
eigners, and other factors which should be 
included in a true balance of trade. As these 
factors cannot be accurately measured, the 
theory is no longer accepted by the majority 
of economists. 

The balance of trade is still, however, a pop¬ 
ular though inaccurate index of a country’s 
prosperity. Campaign orators make it an issue 
without understanding, sometimes, what it 
means. A new country, such as Canada or the 
United States, usually shows a favorable bal¬ 
ance of trade; its exports are larger than im¬ 
ports, and money comes in freely. As a matter 
of fact, the balance is really often unfavorable, 
for much of the money is coming for invest¬ 
ment and is balanced by bonds and other evi¬ 
dences of debt which do not appear in the 
trade balance. w.f.z. 

BALBOA, balbo' a, Vasco Nunez de (1475- 
1517), the first European who looked upon the 
waters of the Pacific Ocean from America’s 
shores. Having dissipated his fortune in Spain, 
he sailed to America and was at Darien in 1510. 
An insurrection placed him at the head of the 
colony, and he immediately began a search 
for a great western ocean of which the Indians 
had told him, upon whose shores there was sup¬ 
posed to lie the famous land of gold. On 
Sept. 25, 1513, having reached the top of the 
mountains, he saw for the first time the Pacific, 
and five days later he stood upon the shore 
and claimed the new-found water and all the 
lands, whose shores it washed, in the name of 
the king of Spain. He little realized the vast¬ 
ness of that domain. 

Returning to Darien, he found himself sup¬ 
planted by a new governor, and anger and 
jealousy at once arose on both sides. Balboa 
submitted, and Davila, the new governor, ap¬ 
parently became reconciled to him, but shortly 
afterward had him beheaded on a charge of 
intent to rebel. A great statue of Balboa 
graced the Panama-Pacific Exposition grounds 
at San Francisco in 1915. 


BALDER, bawl' der, in Norse mythology the 
god who personified the sun and the charm of 
summer. He was the son of Odin and Frigga, 
and was a general favorite with the gods and 
goddesses because of his beauty and goodness. 
His one enemy was the wicked Loki, who hated 
him and plotted his destruction. Balder’s 
mother, fearing that he might be harmed, had 
exacted from all the things in the world, save 
only a small spray of mistletoe that grew on 
an oak tree, a promise that they would not 
injure her son. The gods, therefore, made a 
pastime of hurling their dangerous weapons 
at Balder, that they might enjoy the sport of 
seeing them fall harmlessly to the ground. But 
the scheming Loki made a dart from the mistle¬ 
toe, and this he put into the hand of Balder’s 
blind brother, telling him how to throw it. 
As the dart struck Balder he fell dead. The 
death and funeral of the god, and his journey 
to the underworld, form the theme of a beauti¬ 
ful poem by Matthew Arnold, entitled Balder 
Dead. See Odin. 

BALDNESS, complete or partial loss of the 
hair, resulting from various causes. It most 
frequently accompanies the physical changes 
due to old age; however, many instances of 
baldness are observed among men in the prime 
of life. Some such cases may be due to inher¬ 
ited tendency, but generally they are the result 
of severe illness or certain forms of skin dis¬ 
eases. The wearing of close fitting, unventi¬ 
lated hats or caps, and the use of too much 
alkaline shampoo are said to cause baldness. 
But in all cases the leading cause is that the 
hair fails to receive proper food, as a result of 
poor circulation of blood in the scalp. 

The most effective treatment for preventing 
loss of hair consists in daily massage with the 
fingers or a brush for the purpose of increasing 
the circulation. Practically all advertised 
remedies which claim to grow hair on a bald 
scalp are worthless. If the sources of growth, 
the root and its nourishing vessels, are dead, 
no remedy can be of the slightest effect. Where 
loss of hair results from extreme dryness or 
scurfiness, an oil or vaseline that will clear 
away the scurf should be used. For old-age 
baldness there is never a cure. 

Women are much less liable to baldness than 
are men. The probable explanation of this 
lies in the fact that they take better care of 
their hair and especially that they massage the 
scalp more frequently and do not destroy the 
natural oil of the scalp by using too much 
strong alkaline shampoo. Women wear their 






BALDWIN 


549 


BALDWIN 


hats fewer hours daily than do men, which also 
is to their advantage, and their headwear is 
lighter and better ventilated. e.d.f. 

BALDWIN, Matthias William (1795-1866). 
“The locomotive-engine, built by M. W. Bald¬ 
win, of this city 7 ', will depart daily, when the 
weather is fair, with a train of passenger-cars. 
On rainy days horses will be attached.” This 



FIRST BALDWIN LOCOMOTIVE 

Engine and coach of the train referred to in 
opening paragraph of this biography. 


unique advertisement, which appeared in a 
Philadelphia paper in November, 1832, referred 
to Old Ironsides, one of the earliest American- 
made locomotives and the first to draw a train 
in the state of Pennsylvania. 

Baldwin, its builder, had been apprenticed to 
the jewelry trade and while quite young had 
invented a simplified process of gold-plating. 
He graduated into the manufacture of book¬ 
binders’ tools, and later revolutionized the 
calico-printing industry by the invention of 
cylinders operated by steam power. Then, 
since the six-horse-power engine which he had 
designed for his own shop was proving so satis¬ 
factory, he launched out into the manufacture 
of stationary engines for the trade. 

About this time people were becoming 
curious about the wonderful locomotives made 
in England by the Stephensons and others, 
some of which were being brought to America. 
As a business-getting novelty, the owner of 
the Peale Museum in Philadelphia ordered 
from Baldwin in 1831 a small working model 
of a train drawn by a locomotive. This con¬ 
sisted of an engine and two cars, each accom¬ 
modating two passengers, and the tour of the 
museum was made over a circular track. The 
following year Baldwin was commissioned by 
the Philadelphia, Germantown & Norristown 
Railway to construct the practical locomotive 
figuring in the announcement quoted. He had 
an opportunity to make notes and sketches of 
the unassembled parts of a Stephenson locomo¬ 
tive which had just been received, but so sim¬ 


plified the combination scheme that Old 
Ironsides was actually superior to the English 
model. It was in active service for over twenty 
years. 

His second engine was made in 1833 for the 
South Carolina Railway, and set a type which 
American locomotives have followed in the 
main ever since. After this many other orders 
came to him, and he began to organize a shop 
along new lines; he educated workmen in the 
special mechanics of the locomotive, designed 
the tools and machinery needed, and in general 
laid the foundations of the industry which has 
grown into the famous Baldwin Locomotive 
Works of Philadelphia—the largest business of 
its kind in the world. l.m.b. 

BALDWIN, Robert (1804-1858), a Canadian 
statesman who contributed more than any 
other person to make responsible government 
in Canada an accomplished fact. Even in his 
own day his name was so inseparably con¬ 
nected with the 
struggle for gov¬ 
ernment which 
should be re¬ 
sponsive to the 
people’s will that 
he was known as 
“the man with 
one idea.” Yet 
his p ol i t i c a 1 
achievements 
were not his 

ROBERT BALDWIN 

greatest distinc¬ 
tion. To him is due the admiration which 
comes to a politician by profession who never 
stooped to disreputable practices, either to 
win votes or to keep himself in office. Men 
differed then and may differ now as to the 
wisdom of his policies, but of his good faith to 
friend and opponent there is no doubt. In the 
midst of the bitter fight for responsible govern¬ 
ment, one of his most powerful opponents 
could say of him that he was “a gentleman 
highly respected for his moral character, mod¬ 
erate in his politics, and possessing the esteem 
and confidence of all parties.” The extraor¬ 
dinary confidence in which his contemporaries 
held him was justified at every step in his 
career. 

Robert Baldwin was born in York (now To¬ 
ronto), on May 12, 1804. His father was a 
prominent lawyer, who also practiced medicine 
and taught school. The elder Baldwin in 
middle life inherited from a distant relative 
a large fortune which made him and his son 


























































BALDWIN 


550 


BALFOUR 


financially independent. The son studied law 
and became his father’s partner in 1825. Their 
practice was large, but the son was drawn into 
politics, and after one defeat on a technicality 
was elected to the Upper Canada assembly in 
1830. He lost his seat at the general elections 
in 1831, but during the next few years labored 
as a private citizen for the great cause which 
he had at heart. This cause was responsible 
government, which means the expression of the 
popular will through a ministry responsible to 
the people’s chosen representatives, the legis¬ 
lature. Believing that Sir Francis Bond Head, 
then Governor-General, agreed with his views, 
Baldwin accepted an appointment to the ex¬ 
ecutive council in 1836, but speedily resigned 
when he found that he had been deceived. 
The struggle for responsible government 
reached a climax in the rebellion of 1837, of 
which Baldwin disapproved. One of its results 
was the union of Upper and Lower Canada in 
1841. With high hopes Baldwin again accepted 
an appointment to the council, but when it 
appeared that Lord Sydenham, the Governor- 
General, was placing obstacles in the way of 
real responsible government, Baldwin refused 
to lend his name to the support of the Gov¬ 
ernor-General and resigned. 

In 1842 Sir Charles Bagot, appointed to suc¬ 
ceed Lord Sydenham, fully recognized the prin¬ 
ciple at stake by summoning to his council 
only the leaders in whom the assembly had 
confidence. Of this ministry Baldwin was the 
head. In 1843, however, Baron Metcalfe com¬ 
pelled the resignation of the Baldwin ministry, 
and not until 1848 was responsible government 
established beyond recall. Baldwin, with Sir 
Louis Lafontaine, organized a ministry, which 
held office for three years. During this period 
the amount of constructive legislation was un¬ 
precedented, including the organization of the 
municipal system in Ontario, the establishment 
of the University of Toronto on a non-sec¬ 
tarian basis, the creation of the courts of com¬ 
mon pleas and chancery and the abolition of 
primogeniture (which see). Unfortunately, 
Baldwin’s moderation, did not meet the ap¬ 
proval of many radical reformers. He refused, 
moreover, to pledge himself to secure the 
secularization of the “clergy reserves,” and in 
1851 was defeated for reelection. 

His health was already impaired, and the 
remainder of his days was spent in retirement. 
His defeat in 1851 was a bitter blow, but he 
preferred defeat to office held by deceiving the 
voters as to his views. “I go to the House,” 


he said, “as a free man, or I go not at all. 
If you approve of my opinions, and elect me, 
I shall carry them out in Parliament. If I 
should alter those opinions I will come back 
and surrender my trust, when you will have an 
opportunity of reelecting me or of choosing 
another candidate; but I shall pledge myself 
at the bidding of no man.” Throughout his 
life those were his principles. g.h.l. 

BALEARIC, bal e air' ik, ISLES, a group of 
fifteen islands forming a Spanish province, sit¬ 
uated in the Mediterranean Sea a short dis¬ 
tance east of Spain, the largest of which are 
Majorca and Minorca. Their combined area 
is 1,935 square miles. The coasts are rugged 
and dangerous but Minorca has one of the 
finest harbors in Europe. Vines, olives and 
other fruits are cultivated and the fisheries are 
valuable. The islands, previously forming a 
separate kingdom, were annexed to Spain in 
1343. Population 311,650. 

BALFE, bal], Michael William (1808-1870), 
the composer to whom the world will always 
be grateful for the bright and tuneful opera 
Tine Bohemian Girl. It contains three songs 
that are widely known and loved— Heart Bowed 
Down, Then You’ll Remember Me and I 
Dreamt 1 Dwelt in Marble Halls. 

Balfe was born in Dublin. He early dis¬ 
played remarkable ability as a musician, play¬ 
ing difficult pieces for the violin at the age of 
seven, and writing a ballad two years later 
that was sung in public by a well-known artiste. 
At sixteen he joined the Drury Lane The¬ 
ater orchestra, where he played the violin, 
and soon after went to Italy to study. In 
1827 he was singing in Italian grand opera 
at Paris, but soon returned to Italy to take 
up the work of operatic composition. Of the 
thirty operas which he composed the ones 
which have found the highest favor with the 
public are, besides his Bohemian Girl, The 
hose of Castile and Satanella. His operas 
please by reason of their sweet melodies and 
gayety. 

BAL'FOUR, Arthur James (1848- ), one 

of the foremost of present-day British states¬ 
men, for more than twenty years the leader 
of the Conservative party in the House of 
Commons and Prime Minister from 1902 to 
1905. Even after 1912, when he retired from 
official leadership of the Conservatives, he still 
remained in many ways their chief, and he 
was probably the most influential private mem¬ 
ber in Parliament. In 1915, when the War of 
the Nations caused the formation of a coalition 











BALFOUR 


551 


BALKAN PENINSULA 


Cabinet under the premiership of Asquith, he 
was appointed to the important post of First 
Lord of the Admiralty, succeeding Winston 
Churchill. More 
than that, he be¬ 
came one of the 
inner council of 
the Cabinet, the 
group directly re¬ 
sponsible for the 
prosecution of the 
war. 

Like many 
other Englishmen 
who have won 
fame in public 
life, Balfour first 
achieved distinction in literature, and his early 
political career was generally regarded with 
mingled amusement and scorn. He first sat in 
the House of Commons in 1874, but not for a 
decade did the House take him seriously. He 
was an Eton and Cambridge man, also a 
nephew of the third Marquis of Salisbury, and 
he belonged to the class which thought of 
membership in the House of Commons as a 
duty, almost to be passed from one generation 
to another, together with the family estates. 
He was thought by many to be amusing him¬ 
self with politics, and his delicate physique and 
somewhat languid manner only added to the 
popular impression. 

Not until 1887, when Lord Salisbury ap¬ 
pointed him Secretary of State for Ireland, 
did he have opportunity to show his true worth. 
Previously he had served his uncle as private 
secretary, and had held the minor Cabinet 
positions of President of the Local Government 
Board and Secretary of State for Scotland. 
From 1887 to 1891, in spite of the jeers of the 
Irish Nationalists, he administered the duties 
of the latter office with good sense, although 
his strict enforcement of unpopular laws in 
Ireland caused some discontent. In 1891 he 
was promoted to the position of First Lord 
of the Treasury and Conservative leader in the 
Commons. These positions he held until 1902, 
except for the years 1892 to 1895, when he 
was leader of the opposition during the minis¬ 
tries of Gladstone and Rosebery. 

As Prime Minister. On the resignation of 
Lord Salisbury, on July 11, 1902, Balfour suc¬ 
ceeded him as Prime Minister. His succession 
to power practically coincided with the end 
of the South African War and the coronation 
of King Edward VII. While the war left 


many problems for the ministry, a new ques¬ 
tion caused its downfall after three years and 
broke its party into two. This question was 
whether or not Great Britain should abandon 
its historic policy of free trade. Balfour ad¬ 
mitted the desirability of protecting British 
trade from unfair foreign competition, but he 
was opposed to the sudden and complete adop¬ 
tion of a protective policy such as was advo¬ 
cated by Joseph Chamberlain. By skilful 
parliamentary tactics Balfour held his party in 
power, but at the end of 1905 Chamberlain 
refused to wait any longer. Balfour resigned 
on December 4, and was succeeded by Sir 
Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who won a 
sweeping victory at the polls. 

Since 1906 Balfour has represented the city 
of London in Parliament. His leadership of 
the Conservatives and Unionists was reestab¬ 
lished after his defeat, and he also proved 
again his preeminence among parliamentarians. 
In 1909 and 1910 he counselled submission to 
the Liberal policy as shown in the famous 
budget submitted by Lloyd-George, an action 
which called forth such criticism from his own 
party that he resigned its leadership in Novem¬ 
ber, 1912. He remained in Parliament, how¬ 
ever, and in 1915 became the leading Conserva¬ 
tive in the coalition war ministry. g.h.l. 

BALIOL, ba' le ol or baV yol, John De (1249- 
1315), king of Scotland from 1292 to 1296, a 
ruler who owed his succession to the throne to 
Edward I of England. On the death of Mar¬ 
garet, granddaughter of Alexander III, Baliol 
claimed the throne of Scotland by virtue of his 
descent from David, earl of Huntington, 
brother of William the Lion. Robert Bruce, a 
descendant of David by another line, opposed 
him. Edward I, invited to settle the dispute, 
decided in favor of Baliol, whom he induced 
to swear allegiance to him. Irritated by Ed¬ 
ward’s harsh exercise of authority, Baliol con¬ 
cluded a treaty with France, then at war with 
England, but after a crushing defeat at Dun¬ 
bar in 1296 he was obliged to give up his 
crown to Edward. He was sent with his son 
to the Tower, but in 1297 obtained liberty to 
retire to his Norman estates, where he died. 
His subjects called him Toom Tabard, or 
“Empty Jacket.” 

Balliol College, one of the colleges in the 
University of Cambridge (see Cambridge, Uni¬ 
versity of). 

BALIZE, baleez'. See Honduras. 

BALKAN PENINSULA, the easternmost of 
the peninsulas of Southern Europe, called be- 



ARTHUR JAMES 
BALFOUR 



BALKAN PENINSULA 


552 


BALKAN WARS 


cause of the turbulent nature of its inhabitants 
the “powder magazine of Europe.” It is not, 
like the peninsula of Italy to the westward, one 



BALKAN PENINSULA 

A good understanding of the size of the 
Balkan states is reached by a study of the 
above maps, drawn to the same scale. 

nation, for within its 175,000 square miles are 
comprised Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, part of 
Croatia, Greece, Herzegovina, Montenegro, 
Serbia and that small part of Turkey which is 
left in Europe. Rumania, though politically 
a Balkan state, is not geographical^ a part of 
the peninsula. These states are described in 
alphabetical order in these volumes. 

The Balkan Peoples. The people who inhabit 
the Balkan Peninsula are not all of one race. 
Besides Albanians, who are descended from the 
ancient Illyrians, there are several Slavic fami¬ 
lies, Greeks and Turks. Yet all the Balkan 
peoples have certain common characteristics. 
Hot-tempered and quick to resent injustice, 
they have always been ready to turn the 
sword against each other. On the other hand, 
Greeks, Albanians and Slavs have long been 
united in their enmity to the Turks. Like the 
Swiss and other races who have developed 


their national history in a mountainous coun¬ 
try, the people of the Balkans are imbued with 
the spirit of liberty. For centuries they chafed 
under the weight of Turkish oppression, but 
little by little they freed their mountainous 
peninsula from Oriental despotism, until now 
Turkey rules no more than one-eighteenth of 
the region. The only instance of a Slav race 
of the Balkans becoming an ally of Turkey 
occurred in 1915, when Bulgaria joined the Ger¬ 
mans, Austrians and Turks in the War of the 
Nations. 

Since the peninsula is in a measure isolated, 
the inhabitants might be left to fight their own 
battles, but almost inevitably other parts of 
Europe are drawn into their conflict. The 
Balkan War (which see) was practically a local 
affair, but the greatest conflict of all times, the 
War of the Nations, had its final cause in an 
outbreak in one of the Balkan states. See 
War of the Nations. 

Geographical Features. The Danube and the 
Save rivers form the northern boundary of the 
peninsula. To the east is the Black Sea, to 
the south the Sea of Marmora, the Dardanelles 
and the Aegean Sea, and to the west the 
Adriatic and the Ionian seas. As a whole, the 
region is very mountainous, the chief range 
being that from which the peninsula takes its 
name, the Balkans. 

Balkan Mountains. This mountain chain, 

the name of which means high ridge, is the 
eastern branch of the Alpine system of Central 
Emope. It forms the watershed between the 
Danube and the short, rapid rivers of the 
Balkan Peninsula. Beginning at the Iron Gates 
of the Danube, where the boundaries of Hun¬ 
gary, Serbia and Rumania come together, it 
extends southward through Serbia, then west¬ 
ward through Bulgaria to the shores of the 
Black Sea. There are a number of peaks over 
7,000 feet in height, the tallest reaching an 
altitude of 7,789, and several passes lie at a 
height of from 4,000 to 5,000 feet. Valuable 
deposits of iron, copper and lead are found in 
the western part of the Balkans. e.d.f. 

BALKAN WARS,, the wars waged in 1912- 
1913 by Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro and 
Serbia against Turkey, and another conflict, the 
outgrowth of the first, in which four Balkan 
states were allied against Bulgaria. 

The First War. It is sometimes said that 
the causes of the Balkan Wars go back to the 
Treaty of Berlin, in 1878, when the powers of 
Western Europe intervened between Russia 
and Turkey. In fact, however, they must be 
























BALKAN WARS 


553 


BALKAN WARS 


traced to the fourteenth and fifteenth cen¬ 
turies, when the Turks laid the foundations of 
their European empire. Thereafter, until the 
beginning of the nineteenth century, the Balkan 
peninsula was never free from Turkish rule. 
Uprisings and wars were many, but in spite of 
occasional defeats the Turks maintained their 
dominion. The natives of the peninsula, how¬ 
ever, never became Turks, in spite of every 
effort to suppress race feeling among them. 
The Turks, though cruel and merciless to the 
conquered foe, left them two privileges, the 
right of local self-government and freedom of 
worship, which went far to keep burning the 
flame of national consciousness. Parts of 
Greece, for example, were under Turkish rule 
for four centuries, yet the people remained 
Greeks and Christians. 

The Eastern Question. The gradual decline 
of Turkish power in Eastern Europe during the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries coincided 
with the development of strong national units 
in Western Europe. Russia, too, began to 
expand, largely at Turkish expense, and occa¬ 
sionally offered some encouragement to the 
Slavic peoples in the Balkans in their con¬ 
tinuous warfare against the Turks. The ex¬ 
panding interests of the European powers, 
particularly England, Russia and Austria, con¬ 
flicted not merely with each other and with 
Turkish desires, but also with the nationalist 
aspirations of the Balkan peoples. One by one 
the Balkan states, beginning with Greece in 
1830 and ending with Bulgaria in 1908, de¬ 
clared their independence and won acknowl¬ 
edgment of it through pressure exerted by the 
powers upon Turkey. Yet these same powers 
prevented the Balkan states from attaining 
their ultimate ambition, the adjustment of 
boundaries according to nationality. Every 
one of the Balkan countries, except Monte¬ 
negro, ruled a large section of territory which 
was claimed or coveted by another, and Turkey 
still held Macedonia and Albania, which all of 
them wanted. 

This triangular conflict of interests has occu¬ 
pied the attention of European diplomats since 
the middle of the eighteenth century, and is 
generally summarized as the Eastern Question. 
The Congress of Berlin (see Berlin, Congress 
of) established a delicate balance of interests 
which survived for a generation, but in 1908 
and 1909 the status quo, that is, the existing 
condition, was overturned. The successes of 
the young Turks (which see), the proclamation 
of Bulgaria’s independence, and the annexation 


of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria pro¬ 
duced a new set of problems. In the Turkish 
part of the peninsula, moreover, oppression 
finally drove the inhabitants of Northern Al¬ 
bania into revolt in 1910, and in the next year 
the war with Italy greatly weakened the Turk¬ 
ish military power. 

The Attempted Solution. This combination 
of circumstances led the Balkan countries to 
form what many wise statesmen had believed 
impossible, a league against Turkey. Sinking 
their own differences for a time, they declared 
war against the latter. Their reasons as stated 
by Czar Ferdinand of Bulgaria were that the 
Christians under Turkish rule in Albania and 
Macedonia had not been able to obtain condi¬ 
tions of life that were bearable, and that “to 
succor the Christian population of Turkey 
remains to us no other means than to turn 
to arms.” This was a part of the reason, but 
the immediate occasion for war was the prob¬ 
ability, almost a certainty, that Turkey would 
be defeated. Reorganization at home and the 
victory of Italian arms in Tripoli left Turkey 
handicapped to meet the new attack. It was 
less a war of liberation than a war of conquest. 
The elimination of the Turk from Europe was 
the first step in the solution of the Eastern 
Question. 

The War. In September, 1912, the Balkan 
countries began to mobilize troops, and in 
October military operations were begun. Ac¬ 
cording to the plan of campaign the Monte¬ 
negrins were to capture Scutari; the Serbians 
were to drive the Turks from Macedonia; the 
Bulgarians were to overcome the Turks in 
Thrace and then move on towards Constan¬ 
tinople; the Greeks were to capture Saloniki. 
The four armies moved forward at practically 
the same time. The Turks, unable to mass 
their forces to resist any one attack, were de¬ 
feated by the Bulgarians in the great battles 
of Kirk-Kilisse and Lule Burgas, and within 
three weeks had lost several important for¬ 
tresses. The main Turkish army took a strong 
position behind the works at Tchatalja, the 
only stronghold between the allied forces and 
Constantinople. On November 8 the Greeks 
captured Saloniki. 

Proposals for Peace. The speedy victories 
of the allies forced the Turks to ask for a stay 
of hostilities; an armistice was declared Decem¬ 
ber 3, and a peace conference was called to 
meet at once in London. The allies demanded 
that Turkey abandon her territory in Europe, 
except a small region around Constantinople, 


BALKAN WARS 


554 


BALKAN WARS 



BEFORE AND AFTER THE BALKAN WARS 

At the left, the boundaries of the countries before the conflicts ; at right, the boundaries after 

peace was declared. 


and pay a war indemnity. These conditions 
the Turks regarded as too humiliating, and the 
delegates could reach no agreement. 

The War Resumed. The Balkan delegates 
withdrew from the conference, and hostilities 
began again in February, 1913, continuing until 
May 3. During this second campaign Janina 
was captured by the Greeks, the Bulgarians 
took Adrianople, and Scutari fell before the 
Montenegrins. 

Second Peace Conference. A second peace 
conference met in London on May 20, and on 
May 30 arranged a treaty of peace between 
Turkey and the Balkan states. By this treaty 
Turkey lost nearly all her territory in Europe; 
Albania was made an independent principality; 
Serbia obtained large additions of territory in 
Macedonia; Bulgaria secured an extension of 
territory to the Aegean Sea, and secured 
Adrianople; and Greece gained Crete and ex¬ 
tended her boundaries to include the province 
of Saloniki. 

The Second War. Evidences of jealousy 
among the allies first appeared a month after 
the opening of hostilities, when the Bulgarians 


and Serbians insisted on sending some of their 
troops to Saloniki, which had already been 
occupied by the Greeks. A more serious prob¬ 
lem, which now appeared, concerned Albania 
(which see). In March, 1912, Bulgaria and 
Serbia made a secret treaty providing for a 
division of the territory they planned to con¬ 
quer from Turkey. By this agreement Serbia 
was to receive the greater part of Albania, and 
thus win a port on the Adriatic Sea. Serbia 
was deprived of this territory by the erection 
of Albania into an independent principality. 
Bulgaria, on the other hand, by the treaty of 
peace received not merely the territory agreed 
upon by the secret treaty with Serbia, but also 
Adrianople and a considerable area in addi¬ 
tion. Serbia at once claimed that the treaty 
of peace established new conditions as a result 
of which “Bulgaria should not expect the pre¬ 
liminary engagements to be carried out.” To 
this claim Bulgaria replied that a treaty was 
a treaty, and that the gain of eastern Thrace in 
no w T ay invalidated the old agreement. 

In April, 1913, Serbia announced that it 
would not be bound by the treaty of alliance of 
















































































































































BALKAN WARS 


555 


BALKAN WARS 


March, 1912, and for two months following 
there was an unofficial state of war. The 
Greeks, too, set up extravagant claims against 
the equally extravagant claims of Bulgaria with 
reference to Saloniki and the Aegean coast. 
In June, when it was already apparent that 
Bulgaria, rather than yield to the claims of 
Greece and Serbia, was preparing for war, 
Rumania notified Bulgaria that it would not 
remain neutral in a second war except for a 
territorial consideration. Bulgaria’s hesitation 
made Rumania an ally of Serbia and Greece; 
Montenegro, as Serbia’s particular ally, was 
also involved. 

Hostilities were begun by the Bulgarians on 
June 30, 1913, and by the end of July the war 
was over. Against Serbia, Greece and Monte¬ 
negro, Bulgaria had an even chance, but the 
addition of Rumania, which declared war on 
July 10, made the odds hopeless, and on July 
21, when the allies were within twenty miles 
of Sofia, Bulgaria asked for an armistice. By 
the Treaty of Bucharest, signed on August 10, 
Bulgaria lost a considerable part of the terri¬ 
tory taken from Turkey. The latter, in the 
meantime, seized the opportune to retake 
Adrianople, which had been given to Bulgaria 
by the Treaty of London, and Bulgaria was 
obliged to cede the fortress and a large area 
beyond it to Turkey. 

Effect of the Wars on European Diplomacy. 

The two Balkan Wars, instead of providing a 
settlement of the Eastern Question, created 
new problems, and left Europe in a state of 
general distrust which was one of the causes 
of the War of the Nations. All the antagon¬ 
isms of the nations involved, instead of being 
lessened, were sharpened by the realization that 
the situation left by the treaty of peace could 
not last. In fact, before peace was finally 
declared, each of the great European powers 
was making preparations for war. The budgets 
of 1913 provided increases in equipment and 
personnel greater than had ever been provided 
before, and the possibility of a general Euro¬ 
pean war was again considered by careful ob¬ 
servers. The spark for the conflagration was 
the assassination of the Archduke Francis 
Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne. See 
War of the Nations. 

Summary of Losses and Gains. In both the 
first and second wars Bulgaria bore the brunt 
of the fighting, lost more soldiers and spent 
more money than any other of the Balkan 
countries, while Greece and Montenegro, in 
proportion to their expenditure of money and 



Outline and Questions on 


the Balkan Wars 

I. The First War 

(1) Far-reaching causes 

(a) Turkish domination in the 

peninsula 

(b) Failure to suppress race con¬ 

sciousness 

(c) Prevention by European pow¬ 

ers of division according to 
nationality 

(2) Immediate causes 

(a) Bulgarian assumption of in¬ 

dependence 

(b) Annexation of Bosnia and 

Herzegovina by Austria 

(c) Oppression of Albania 

(d) Turko-Italian War 

(3) League of the Balkan'states 

(4) The actual struggle 

(a) Defeat of Turks at Kirk- 

Kilisse and Lule Burgas 

(b) Capture of Saloniki 

(c) Unsuccessful peace proposals 

(d) Resumption of hostilities 

I. Capture of Janina, Adrian¬ 

ople and Scutari 

(5) The treaty 

(a) Loss of nearly all of Turkish 

territory in Europe 

(b) Independence of Albania 

(c) Territorial additions to Serbia, 

Bulgaria and Greece 

II. The Second War 

(1) Jealousy among the allies 

(a) Serbian resentment at Bul¬ 
garian claims 

(2) Greece, Serbia, Rumania and 

Montenegro join against Bul¬ 
garia 

(3) Bulgarian submission 

(4) Results 

(a) Bulgarian loss of territory 

(b) Turkey regains Adrianople 

III. International Effects 

(1) No settlement of Eastern Question 

(2) Increased antagonism among 

states 

(3) One of causes leading to War of 

the Nations 


Questions 

What other war was a determining 
cause of the first Balkan War? 

What three strongholds were taken 
by the allies in the second struggle? 

In what way would Bulgaria have 
been better off if it had not brought on 
the second war? 

How did the Balkan states manage 
to retain their race consciousness 
through centuries of subjection? 

Why were the Turks defeated with 
such ease in the first struggle? 

What was Serbia’s grievance against 
Bulgaria at the close of the first war? 

What was the result to Turkey of the 
first war? 

What is the “Eastern Question” ? 
Was it settled by the Balkan Wars? 

What interest did Russia have in the 
Balkan question? 

Why could not the first peace con¬ 
ference settle matters at the close of 
the first war? 

At the end of the second, which state 
received the largest increase in area? 
In population ? 




















BALKASH 


BALL 


COST OF THE WARS, 1912 TO 1913 



Total Army 

Killed and 
Wounded 

Percentage, Killed 
and Wounded 

Expenditures 
of Money 

Bulgaria . 

350,000 

140,000 

40.0 

$436,500,000 

Greece . 

150,000 

30,000 

20.0 

121,250,000 

Montenegro . 

30,000 

8,000 

26.6 

3,880,000 

Rumania* . 

250,000 

35,000 - 

14.0 

75.000.000 

Serbia. 

250,000 

70,000 

28.0 

242,500,000 

Turkey . 

450,000 

100,000 

22.2 

388,000,000 

Total. 

1,480,000 

383,000 

25.9 

$1,267,130,000 


* The figures for Rumania are estimates, and are probably too large. 


GAINS IN TERRITORY AND POPULATION 



Area Acquired 

Increase in 

Population 

Square Miles 

Percentage of 
Increase 

Numerical 

Percentage 

Bulgaria . 

6,111 

16.4 

600,000 

13.86 

Greece . 

16,919 

67.6 

1,700.000 

63.76 

Montenegro . 

2,129 

60.7 

230,000 

79.31 

Rumania. 

2,969 

5.8 

350,000 

4.82 

Serbia . 

15,241 

81.8 

1.636,000 

55.32 

Total. 

43,869 

32.4 

4,516,000 

25.82 


men, received the greatest increases in terri¬ 
tory. The above tables summarize the cost 
of the wars to each of the nations involved and 
also indicate approximately the gains made by 
each. w.e.l. 

BALKASH, bahl kahsh', a large inland body 
of salt water, ljung 780 feet above sea level, 
near the eastern border of Russian Central 
Asia. Its area of 8,500 square miles is one-third 
that of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, 
a little larger than that of the state of Massa¬ 
chusetts and nearly three times as great as that 
of Salt Lake in Utah. Its length is 330 miles, 
and its width varies from six miles in the 
eastern portion to fifty-four miles in the west. 
The water of the lake is clear but shallow, its 
maximum depth being less than eighty feet. 
The northern shores are low and marshy and 
the fisheries are unimportant. The lake is fed 
by the waters of the River Hi and is remark¬ 
able in that it has no visible outlet, the surplus 
being apparent^ carried off by evaporation. 

BALL, Thomas (1819-1911), an American 
sculptor whose influence in his special field 
of work has been permanent and uplifting. His 
first interest in art Avas acquired in his early 
youth, and was due to his being employed by 
the old New England Museum, in Boston, as 
boy-of-all-work. He first took up the study 
and practice of portrait painting, beginning his 


work as a sculptor by modeling a small bust of 
Jenny Lind, who was at the time appearing in 
song recitals in America. Then he attempted 
busts of other personages, and finally achieved 
success when he completed a life-size bust of 
Daniel Webster. In 1854 he was able to go to 
Florence, Italy, for further study, and remained 
there two years. Much of his later life was 
also spent in that city. He died in Montclair, 
N. J. 

Ball devoted four years (1860-1864) to model¬ 
ing an equestrian statue of Washington, and 
when it was unveiled in New York it was 
declared to be the best of its tj’pe produced up 
to that time. A few years later he completed 
his statue of Edwin Forrest in the role of Corio- 
lanus, now a prized possession of the Actors’ 
Home in Philadelphia. In 1875 a bronze repre¬ 
sentation of Lincoln freeing a kneeling slave 
—the Emancipation Group —was unveiled in 
Washington, and the following year saw the 
completion of the colossal bronze, Daniel Web¬ 
ster, in Central Park, New York. His statue 
of Josiali Quincy occupies a prominent place 
before the city hall, Boston, and in the Forest 
Hills Cemetery of that city is the well-known 
head, Saint John, the Evangelist, sculptured by 
him. 

Ball was seventy years of age when he began 
the masterpiece of his later period, the Wash- 



















































































BALLAD 


BALLARAT 


557 


ington monument at Methuen, Mass. A 
notable bronze figure of the Father of His 
Country surmounts a great block of Carrara 
marble, at the base of which are four seated 
figures representing Oppression, Revolution, 
Victory and Cincinnatus. Above these are 
busts of four important generals who fought 
with Washington. Ball’s figures were always 
notable in conception and dignified in treat¬ 
ment. 

BALLAD, bal' ad, a story poem which is 
written not in the flowing meter and carefully 
chosen words which distinguish most poetry, 
but in a crude, almost rough, style and in the 
simplest and most natural of words. These 
differences are explained by the manner in 
which ballads were written, or rather, grew up; 
for most of the true ballads had no one author. 
In such a poem, for instance, as Bryant’s To a 
Waterfowl, it is easy to understand how the 
poet, having seen the solitary bird and been 
impressed by it, went to his home and wrote 
down his thoughts and feelings in poetic form. 
He chose the very best words he could, study¬ 
ing long over some of them, and made the 
lines as musical as a song. But no ballad had 
such a history. 

When an event occurred, as a great battle, 
the marriage of a hero, the death of a beautiful 
girl, the people of some little village would 
gather to talk of it, and to celebrate or to 
mourn. Over and over the event would be 
described, until gradually the more gifted per¬ 
sons would make a sort of song of the tale, one 
person contributing a line, perhaps, and then 
another. Thus grew up the earliest ballads, 
strictly in the language of the people. There 
was no printing in these early ballad days, but 
parents handed down the verses to their chil¬ 
dren from generation to generation. Occa¬ 
sionally stanzas would be dropped or others 
added, and once in a while a man of unusual 
poetic ability would work over the ballad and 
make it more perfect. 

So there grew up among every European 
people a ballad literature, each country with 
few exceptions possessing its own “folk songs,” 
as they are sometimes called. As learning 
spread and printed books became common, the 
literary class often knew nothing whatever of 
these old verse tales which the people treas¬ 
ured in their hearts; but occasionally there 
arose a man who had an intense interest in old 
literary forms, and who anxiously sought out 
the ballads, taking them down from the lips of 
old peasants who could not remember the time 


when they did not know them. In England 
and Scotland in the seventeenth and early 
eighteenth centuries these were often printed 
on single sheets of paper, “broadsides,” as they 
were called, and sold in the street. 

Finally an Englishman, Percy, began to make 
a real study of ballad literature, and in 1765 
published his Reliqucs of Ancient English 
Poetry. This served to interest others, and in 
the continental countries, especially in France 
and Germany, a similar revival took place. In 
England, Scott was among those who took up 
the study, publishing in 1802-1803 his Border 
Minstrelsy . These old ballads had a real in¬ 
fluence on the writing of other forms of poetry, 
which had shown a tendency to become stilted 
and artificial but now took on a greater free¬ 
dom. 

Among the most famous of the old English 
and Scottish ballads are the series known as 
the Geste (or Deeds) of Robin Hood, Sir Pat¬ 
rick Spens, The Two Corbies, Fair Helen of 
Kirkconncl Lea and The Ballad of Chevy 
Chase. Many of the best-known English poems 
show the influence of the ballad, being imita¬ 
tions in form or in subject, as witness the fol¬ 
lowing: Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient 
Mariner, Tennyson’s Revenge, Rossetti’s Sister 
Helen, Macaulay’s Horatius at the Bridge, 
Campbell’s Lord Ullin’s Daughter, Cowper’s 
John Gilpin’s Ride and Longfellow’s Wreck of 
the Hesperus. An idea of the form and man¬ 
ner of the old ballad, with all its crudeness, 
may be seen from the following stanzas from 
Chevy Chase, a ballad of the days of James I: 

At last these two stout earls did meet; 

Like captains of great might, 

Like lions wode, they laid on lode, 

And made a cruel fight. 

They fought until they both did sweat, 
With swords of tempered steel, 

Until the blood, like drops of rain, 

They trickling down did feel. 

a.mc c. 

BALLARAT, bal a rat', an important city in 
Victoria, Australia, the center of one of the 
richest gold-yielding districts in the world. In 
1851 it was the scene of a most remarkable 
“gold rush,” during which the largest nuggets 
ever unearthed were found, one specimen being 
sold for $52,500. The gold mining brought 
other industries to the town and now it has 
large iron foundries, flour mills and distilleries. 
It is divided into two distinct municipalities, 
Ballarat East and Ballarat West. It is seventy- 
four miles northwest of Melbourne, with which 
it is connected by railroad. It also has railway 


BALLET 


55S 


BALLOON 


connection with all important Australian towns. 
From a rough mining camp, Ballarat has 
quickly developed into a well-built, flourishing 
town, with handsome public buildings, excel¬ 
lent schools and beautiful parks and gardens. 
It is the see of both Roman Catholic and 
Protestant bishops, and has two fine cathedrals. 
The surrounding district is particularly suited 
to sheep breeding, and great quantities of wool 
are exported. Population in 1911, 42,403. 

BALLET, ballay ', an artistic dance, devel¬ 
oped and perfected in France, now used chiefly 
between the acts in a theatrical performance. 
Its original aim was to represent actions and 
feelings through dancing and gestures. This 
idea arose early in the eighteenth century, but 
the modern ballet is a spectacular dance rather 
than a dramatic representation, the main pur¬ 
pose being to please the eye. The ballet as 
used in modern operas is more nearly the ballet 
of old, for it is usually more or less closely 
connected with the play and incorporated in 
it, as in Faust and Tannhduser. The costumes 
used in the ballet of to-day are extremely ex¬ 
pensive. To secure the effects desired the most 
delicate fabrics and daintiest shades and hues 
are employed, and the designing calls for the 
utmost in art and skill. 

The modern ballet is almost always danced 
by girls who are chosen because of their beauty, 
and the gowns and dances are designed to 
exhibit their charms. For this reason many 
people believe the influence of the ballet is 
not altogether wholesome, and frequently it 
may be pernicious. 

BALLOON, baloon '. From the earliest 
times man has known how to navigate the 
seas, but to navigate the air was a far more 
difficult problem, not solved for many cen¬ 
turies. Birds did it, even large and heavy 
birds; it was, therefore, evident that the air 
could be made to support weight that was 
properly distributed and properly buoyed up, 
but the method w T as not apparent. That the 
ancients speculated on the subject may be seen 
from the legend of Daedalus and his son Icarus, 
and their attempted flight across the sea (see 
Daedalus), but nothing practical was accom¬ 
plished until toward the end of the eighteenth 
century, when the balloon was invented. A 
balloon is distinguished from an airship or 
flying machine, the other modern air-navigating 
device, by the fact that the former uses gas 
or hot air to make it buoyant, while the latter 
depends on complicated machinery, and is 
heavier than air. 


Historical. It is almost impossible, in a da} r 
when air craft have become so common as to 
attract comparatively little attention, to realize 
the intense excitement that prevailed over the 
first successful balloon. It was an Englishman 



A PRESENT-DAY BALLOON 


named Cavendish who first announced the 
principle that a bag of some light material 
filled with a gas lighter than air, preferably 
hydrogen, was certain to rise naturally. How¬ 
ever, he made no attempt to prove his theory 
by an experiment, and it was left for two 
Frenchmen, the Montgolfier brothers, to carry 
out his principles. They read Cavendish’s 
book, experimented on a small scale, and 
finally, on June 5, D83, sent up a great sphere 
of paper-covered pack cloth, thirty-five feet in 
diameter. They did not use hydrogen to inflate 
their balloon, but hot air, obtained by burning 
damp straw and wool in a little grate below 
the open mouth of the bag. Any child who has 
sent up paper balloons by burning alcohol on 
a sponge at their openings, knows exactly the 
principle on which this first big balloon was 
operated. It went up into the air over a mile, 
and came down safely; and the conquest of 
the air had begun. 

Improvements. But the hot-air balloon had 
its disadvantages. When the air cooled, the 
balloon was bound to fall, and its time in the 
air could not be regulated; but a scientist of 
Pans, Professor Charles, in August, 1783, con¬ 
structed a balloon which had practically all 


















BALLOON 


559 


BALLOON 


the features of a balloon of to-day. It was 
made of varnished silk, and was filled with 
hydrogen, which it had taken Professor Charles 
four days to produce by the slow methods then 
employed. Scores of thousands of people gath- 



MONTGOLFIER BALLOON 

It operated on the same principle as the pres¬ 
ent-day paper balloons, so popular with boys and 
girls on festive occasions. 

ered to watch it as it rose over Paris, and for 
almost an hour it remained in view, about 
3,000 feet above the earth; but then it began 
to drift, and later came to earth fifteen miles 
away in a field, where it was torn to pieces by 
the terrified peasants. The next step was the 
sending up, in a car below the gas bag, of live 
passengers—a fowl, a duck and a sheep; and in 
November, 1783, two men ascended in a hot¬ 
air balloon to a height of 500 feet, and trav¬ 
eled for five miles before descending. As 
always when inventions are in progress, there 
were not lacking men who, through scientific 
interest or sheer love of adventure, were willing 
to risk their lives in perilous balloon ascen¬ 
sions, and in 1785 two men crossed the English 
Channel from Dover to Calais. 

Modern Balloons. Improvements continued 
to be made in details, though not in principle, 
until the balloon of to-day was evolved. This 
consists of a bag of soft cloth, silk, woolen or 
cotton, coated with rubber varnish and covered 
with a network of cords, to which the wicker 


car for passengers is attached. In the top is a 
valve for the escape of gas, operated by a cord 
which reaches into the car, and the bottom of 
the bag is left open. The gas most used is 
coal gas, which is far cheaper than hydrogen 
but not so entirely satisfactory because of its 
greater heaviness. A balloon which is to carry 
any considerable weight must be large, and 
some with a diameter of 118 feet have been 
constructed. 

Besides the human freight in the dangling car, 
the aeronaut has his instruments, thermom¬ 
eters and barometers for the reading of at¬ 
mospheric conditions, and a quantity of ballast, 
usually in the form of sand-bags, which may 
be thrown out when he wishes to rise to a 
greater height. By means of these and the 
valve he can control his ascent and descent, but 
that is all the guidance he can give; as to 
horizontal directions, the balloon must move 
“at the wind’s will.” Dirigible balloons or 
“guidable” balloons, have been invented and 
have proved most useful, but on account of 
the machinery necessary for their control they 
are classed rather as airships. See Flying 
Machines, subhead Dirigible Balloons. 

Uses of Balloons. The uses of these bal¬ 
loons which cannot be directed are, of course, 
limited, but they have been of value in the secur¬ 
ing of scientific information as to air conditions. 
Since men cannot breathe if more than a cer¬ 
tain distance above the earth, unlimited up¬ 
ward flights are impossible for manned balloons, 
but little ones of india-rubber have been sent 
up frequently to great heights, and the record¬ 
ing apparatus attached to them gives valuable 
information. The balloons themselves do not 
return to the earth,, for the inner pressure 
explodes them in the thin upper atmosphere, 
but a parachute brings the instruments down 
in safety. In 1912 one of these sounding bal¬ 
loons, as they are called, which wa's sent up 
from Pavia, Italy, reached a height of 123,505 
feet (nearly twenty-five miles) and brought 
back the information that at that great height 
the temperature was —60°, and the pressure of 
the air only ^50 of what it is at the earth’s 
surface. 

In warfare, balloons have been used in • 
various ways. The besieged people of Paris, 
during the Franco-German War, in 1870-1871, 
conducted most of their communication with 
the outside world by means of them, and since 
that date every large country has had in its 
military service a balloon corps. It is not the 
freely moving balloon which is of use in mili- 




















BALLOON 


560 


BALLOT 


tary operations, but the captive or anchored 
balloon. It is attached to a cable, by means 
of which its movements are controlled, and it 
floats above the field just high enough to make 
clear observation possible. The great useful¬ 
ness of balloons in such operations was further 



BASKET OP BALLOON 

The weights on the sides are sand-bags, re¬ 
ferred to m the text. 


demonstrated in the War of the Nations, which 
began in 1914; each nation used them as sta¬ 
tionary observation stations, leaving them in 
the air but a few moments at a time, then 
hauling them down to positions of safety. 
For most uses of observation and scouting, 
however, aeroplanes have proved far more ef- 
lective, for they can mount to great heights 
with observers and move with incredible swift¬ 
ness. 

Balloon Records. For half a century the 
altitude record for balloon ascents was that of 
Cox well and Glaisher, who, in 1862, reached a 
height of almost six miles. In the rarefied 
upper air one of the aeronauts became uncon¬ 
scious, and the other nearly so; thirteen years 
later two men died in mid-air during ascensions 
in France. When two German aeronauts made 
an ascent in 1901 to a height of 35,600 feet 
(nearly seven miles), they carried with them 


oxygen for inhaling, and so reached earth in 
safety. Their record has not yet been broken. 
In 1895 Salomon August Andre, a Swedish 
scientist, attempted to reach the North Pole 
in a balloon. Had he been successful he would 
have established the world’s record not only in 
ballooning but in polar exploration and discov¬ 
ery. However, his fate is unknown, for no 
word ever came from the expedition (see 
Andre, S. A.). 

In long-distance balloon traveling the record 
was established in 1913, when one of the con¬ 
testants for the James Gordon Bennett cup 
race sailed from Stuttgart, Germany, to the 
neighborhood of Moscow, a distance of 1,361% 
miles. Every year competitions for this cup 
are held, the race starting in the country 
which won the cup the year before. Air-navi¬ 
gation by means of balloons has thus become a 
sport rather than a serious pursuit, and it seems 
unlikely that new uses for unguided balloons 
will ever be evolved. a.mc c. 

BALLOT, baV ut, a device employed for the 
expression of preferences in secret voting. The 
word is derived from the French ballotte, mean¬ 
ing a little ball; voting by ballot takes its 
name from the ancient custom of using colored 
balls in secret voting. Even to-day applicants 
for membership in clubs, lodges, etc., are voted 
on by means of balls, and a person rejected is 
said to be blackballed. Debating and literary 
societies and similar organizations usually elect 
their officers by writing names of candidates 
on small slips of paper. 

The form of ballot most widely used in mod¬ 
ern political elections is the written or printed 
ticket. Such ballots were in use in nearly all 
of the original thirteen American states when 
the Constitution was ratified, and were adopted 
gradually by the states that later came into the 
Union. Certain grave defects were character¬ 
istic of early methods of voting. It became the 
genei al custom for the political committees of 
the various parties to prepare and distribute 
the ballots, and the tickets were arranged in 
such a way that it was very difficult for a voter 
to express individual preferences for candidates 
outside his own party. Moreover, the voter 
received his ballot within a few feet of the 
polls, and coercion and bribery, were common. 

To correct these evils, the adoption of the 
Australian ballot system was seriously urged 
about 1885 (for details see Australian Ballot). 
This system, which provides for an official 
piinted ballot supplied by state or local author¬ 
ities and insures the voter absolute secrecy in his 




























BALM 561 

balloting, was first used in the commonwealth 
of South Australia in 1857. It was officially 
adopted in England in 1872, and was soon after 
introduced into Canada. The first complete 
law for the adoption of the Australian ballot 
passed by an American state was enacted by 
the legislature of Massachusetts in 1888, and 
the other states gradually fell into line in the 
matter of electoral reform, until now the Aus¬ 
tralian ballot system is used in every state in 
the Union. 

This is, however, not the end of ballot reform. 
The large number of officials chosen at one 
time in American elections has necessitated the 
printing of huge tickets sometimes two or three 
feet long, and these are often so complicated 
that the inexperienced or illiterate voter is 
quite unable to give an intelligent expression of 
his preferences. There is now a widespread 
movement for the simplifying of the election 
ballot; the various measures proposed are dis¬ 
cussed in the article Short Ballot. 

Ancient Customs of Balloting. In ancient 
Athens the judges of the highest court gener¬ 
ally gave their verdict by dropping stone or 
metal balls into boxes selected for that purpose. 
Those pierced in the center, or colored black, 
stood for a verdict of condemnation, while the 
unpierced, or white balls, meant acquittal. 
Shells with marks ( ostrakon ) were also em¬ 
ployed, and their use in popular elections gave 
rise to the institution of ostracmn (which see), 
by which citizens who were considered danger¬ 
ous to the welfare of the state were driven into 
exile. The Romans generally used wooden 
tickets ( tabellae ); when a change in law was 
proposed those in favor marked the ballot with 
the letters U B (for Uti rogas, meaning as you 
ask ); a vote against the change was indicated 
by the letter A (for Antiquo, meaning for the 
old). In an election of candidates for public 
office the names of the candidates were written 
on the ballots. These customs of secret voting 
continued into the Middle Ages. e.d.f. 

BALM, bahm, a tall, showy and fragrant 
plant of the mint family, growing wild in the 
damp and shady woodlands of the southeastern 
part of the United States, Southern Europe and 
Western Asia. It is cultivated in gardens as a 
honey-producing plant and seasoning herb. A 
common medicine was once made from its 
leaves and stem, which were cut for this pur¬ 
pose before the appearance of the flower. In 
different localities the plant is known as horse- 
mint, bee balm and Oswego tea, and it is often 
confused with a common variety of catnip, 


BALTIC SEA 

which has a similar odor. When dried the 
plant has a delightful, lasting fragrance. The 
bastard balm, a native of Southern England 
and many parts of Europe, is a beautiful plant. 
Moldavia balm is a native of Eastern Europe 
and Siberia. 

Balm of Gilead, the gum or resin from a tree 
found in Southern Syria and Northeast Africa. 
The balm of Gilead of the shops, or balsam of 
Mecca or of Syria, is obtained by making an 
incision in the trunk of the tree. The gum has 
a yellowish or greenish color, a warm, bitterish, 
biting taste and a sharp, fragrant smell. It is 
valued for its fragrance and its supposed medic¬ 
inal powers. The name originated from the 
Scriptures. The word balm is now more often 
used to signify anything which heals. 

BALSAM, bawl' sam, the name given some¬ 
what generally to a resinous, spicy substance 
secreted by certain plants. In North America 
the valuable Canada balsam, a secretion of the 
balsam fir, is most familiar, but technically 
the balsams of Peru have the best right to 
the name. These are of considerable impor¬ 
tance commercially, as they are used in per¬ 
fumery, in confectionery and in medicine, 
chiefly in the manufacture of lozenges for 
throat troubles. Balsams are either solid or 
liquid, and are soluble in alcohol and in ether. 

BALTIC, bawl' tik, SEA, an inland sea of 
Northern Europe, of great commercial impor¬ 
tance, affording Russia its principal outlet to 
the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. It 
forms part of the coastline of Denmark, Ger- 



LOCATION OF BALTIC SEA 


many, Sweden and Russia, and covers about 
160,000 square miles, a little more than the 
area of the state of California. Its greatest 
length is about 950 miles—farther than the dis¬ 
tance from New York to Chicago; the greatest 



BALTIMORE 


562 


BALTIMORE 


width is 400 miles. Including gulfs and bays, 
its coastline measures nearly 5,000 miles. Ex¬ 
tensions are formed on the north and east by 
the gulfs of Riga, Finland and Bothnia. 

More than 250 rivers flow into the Baltic; 
this fact, in connection with its small outlet, 
makes its water much less salt than that of the 
ocean. The narrow straits of the Great Belt, 
Little Belt, the Sound, the Skagerrack and 
Cattegat give access to the ocean, and the Kiel 
Canal connects the Baltic and the North Sea. 
A chain of islands guards the entrance to the 
Gulf of Riga and the Aland Archipelago forms 
a barrier across the mouth of the Gulf of 
Bothnia. The trade of the Baltic is consid¬ 
erable but is interrupted in its northern por¬ 
tions by ice during winter. The principal har¬ 
bors are at Copenhagen, Kiel, Danzig, Memel, 
Riga, Kronstadt and Stockholm. 

At the opening of the War of the Nations 
in 1914, the Baltic Sea became the scene of a 
struggle between the German and Russian 
navies. The port of Riga was heavily bom¬ 
barded by the Germans in August, 1915, but 
it was not captured. See War of the Nations. 


BALTIMORE, Sir George Calvert, Lord 
(1580-1632), an English statesman, to whom 
King Charles I granted the right to found the 
colony of Maryland. He became secretary of 
state to James I in 1619, but six years later, 
having declared himself a Roman Catholic, 
resigned his position and thereafter gave all 
of his attention to the work of colonizing in 
the New World. It was Lord Baltimore’s de¬ 
sire to establish a colony where his Roman 
Catholic countrymen would be free from per¬ 
secution. He had founded a small settlement 
in Newfoundland in 1621, but the unfavor¬ 
able climate led him to give up the enterprise. 
Charles I, who came to the throne in 1625, 
was friendly to him, and in 1631 granted him 
a tract of land in Virginia north and east of 
the Potomac. Before the charter was signed, 
Lord Baltimore died, and the charter rights 
passed to his son Cecilius Calvert, the second 
Lord Baltimore, who founded the colony that 
was named Maryland in honor of Henrietta 
Maria, queen of Charles I. The successes and 
discouragements that beset the new colony are 
told in the article Maryland. 



ALTIMORE, Md., the largest city 


of the state and the seventh city in the United 
States in population. It is noted as a great 
commercial and industrial center, as an impor¬ 
tant seaport and coaling station, and as the 
leading oyster market in the world. It is sit¬ 
uated in the north central part of the state, 
at the head of navigation on the Patapsco 
River, fourteen miles from Chesapeake Bay. 
Washington, D. C., is thirty-eight miles south¬ 
west, and Philadelphia is ninety-seven miles 
northeast. Below the city the river widens 
sufficiently to form a harbor and an outer bay 
beyond, which are capable of accommodating 
the largest ocean steamships. This port is 
regularly visited by nineteen steamship lines, 
including trans-Atlantic lines. There is an 
extensive coastwise trade, and bay craft of 
many kinds bring to the city large quantities 
of sea food and fruits. Railway transporta¬ 


tion is provided by the Pennsylvania; Balti¬ 
more & Ohio; Western Maryland; Maryland 
<fc Pennsylvania; and Maryland, Delaware & 
Virginia railroads. In common with most sea¬ 
ports, Baltimore has a mixed population, which 
increased from 558,485 in 1910 to 584,605 in 
1915. Negroes comprise about one-sixth of 
this number; Germans and Irish predominate 
in the foreign element. 

Location. The city is irregularly divided by 
Jones’ Falls, a stream which has its source at 
springs twenty miles north and flows 500,000 
gallons per day. The construction of more 
than twenty arches across this stream in the 
city proper has converted it into a highway 
called the Fallsway. One of these, constructed 
of white marble, between the stations of the 
Pennsylvania Railway and the Baltimore & 
Ohio, is a beautiful engineering triumph. The 
section east of the Falls along the harbor con- 






































































BALTIMORE 


563 


BALTIMORE 


tains wharves, factories and canneries. An irreg¬ 
ular strip extending southeast from the Falls 
is known as Locust Point, and here are located 
immense wharves and railroad terminals, 
mammoth grain elevators and some of the 
largest coal piers in the world. Fort McHenry 
protects the harbor. North of the harbor lies 
the wholesale section; extending beyond this 
toward the west is the retail district, and still 
farther on lies the most desirable residential 
locality. Beyond the city to the north and 
northwest is a rapidly-growing, attractive dis¬ 
trict easily reached by electric lines; Roland 
Park, Mount Washington, Forest Park and 
Arlington are the largest of these suburbs. 

Parks and Boulevards. Of the city’s many 
delightful parks and squares, well distributed 
over its area, Druid Hill Park is the most 
famous. It covers 674 acres of natural beauty, 
and may reasonably be ranked with the finest 
parks in the United States. Druid Lake is a 
large, artificial basin, and is part of the city’s 
waterworks system; the park contains statues 
of Christopher Columbus (erected in 1792), 
Sir William Wallace and George Washington. 
Other parks worthy of mention are Gwvnn’s 
Falls (375 acres), Clifton (267 acres), Wyman, 
Carroll, Riverside, Swan and Federal Hill 
parks; Patterson Park, overlooking the har¬ 
bor, contains several guns used in the War of 
1812. These with the numerous squares scat¬ 
tered throughout the city comprise a park 
reservation exceeding 1,400 acres. Green 
Mountain is the most beautiful of the city’s 
cemeteries, and Baltimore Cemetery is the 
largest. Westminster Cemetery, one of the 
oldest and smallest, is the burial place of 
Edgar Allen Poe. 

Charles Street Boulevard is a wide parkway 
leading to a handsome residential district, and 
Mount Vernon Place, with its famous Wash¬ 
ington Monument, is considered one of the 
most beautiful residential streets in the Union. 
The Washington Monument, 164 feet high, 
erected in 1815, was the first memorial by any 
city or state to the illustrious American; Bat¬ 
tle Monument, in Monument Square, scarcely 
less conspicuous, was erected to the memory 
of the defenders of North Point in the War 
of 1812. To Washington and Battle monu¬ 
ments rather than to the great number of 
monuments adorning the parks and squares, 
the city owes its popular name, The Monu¬ 
mental City. The Wells, McComas, Armis- 
tead, Taney, Wildey, Howard, Ridgely, Con¬ 
federate, and Soldiers’ and Sailors’ monuments 


and several bronzes in Mount Vernon Place 
are all works of artistic merit. In memory 
of Francis Scott Key, who wrote The Star 
Spangled Banner in Baltimore, the city has 
erected a most striking monument surmounted 
by a figure of Columbia guarding a flag. 

Buildings and Churches. Solidity is the first 
impression given by the architecture of Balti¬ 
more. The most notable of the public build¬ 
ings are the $2,750,000 white marble court¬ 
house, the city hall, which cost $2,271,000, and 
the Federal building, the construction of which 
cost over $1,500,000. The city jail, Johns 
Hopkins Hospital, one of the largest and best- 
equipped hospitals in the world, the Baltimore 
& Ohio and the Pennsylvania railway stations, 
the Y. M. C. A. building, the Armory and 
Walter’s Art Gallery are all structures above 
the average of their kind. All denominations 
are represented in the city’s churches, which 
number nearly 500; the most prominent are 
the massive Roman Catholic Cathedral, built 
in 1800 and containing valuable paintings and 
works of art; the Methodist Episcopal Church, 
which was the first of this denomination 
founded in the United States; First Presby¬ 
terian Church, Jewish Synagogue, Har Sinai 
Temple, Saint Paul’s, Grace, and Christian 
Science churches. Baltimore is the see of a 
Protestant Episcopal bishop and of a Roman 
Catholic cardinal (Cardinal Gibbons), whose 
diocese is the first in the United States. 

Institutions. Johns Hopkins University, one 
of the world’s great educational institutions, 
was opened in 1876. Peabody Institute, with 
its vast library, art gallery and conservatory 
of music; the Woman’s College (Methodist 
Episcopal), Saint Mary’s Seminary of Saint 
Sulspice, Loyola College, Saint Joseph’s Sem¬ 
inary (colored), Morgan College (colored), 
McDonough School, Bryn Mawr School, Vis¬ 
itation, Notre Dame of Maryland, and Mount 
De Sales academies are institutions of high 
rank. Professional schools include the Poly¬ 
technic Institute; the law and medical de¬ 
partments of the University of Maryland; 
Baltimore Medical College; Baltimore Col¬ 
lege of Dental Surgery, the oldest of its kind 
in the United States (1839); Maryland Col¬ 
lege of Pharmacy, and the College of Physi¬ 
cians and Surgeons. In addition to the public 
libraries, the joint gift of Enoch Pratt, the 
city and Andrew Carnegie, there are the libra¬ 
ries of the Maryland Institute and Maryland 
Historical Society, the Baltimore Bar Library, 
the Maryland Diocesan Library, the New 


BALTIMORE 


564 


BALTIMORE ORIOLE 


Mercantile Library and the libraries connected 
with the various educational institutions. 
Besides Johns Hopkins Hospital, the city has 
Maryland Hospital for the Insane and Spring- 
field State Hospital. There are homes for 
aged men, for boys, for young women, asy¬ 
lums for orphans, an association for improv¬ 
ing the condition of poor children, an asylum 
for the blind and an almshouse. See Johns 
Hopkins University. 

Commerce and Industry. Although Balti¬ 
more is industrially the youngest of the great 
Atlantic coast cities, it has for many years 
been a prominent seaport, its fame in earlier 
days being carried far by the world-renowned 
“Baltimore clippers,” a picturesque sea-craft 
no longer in use. One of the largest floating 
dry-docks in the world, the “Dewey,” was 
constructed here in 1905. Baltimore is the 
center of an immense import and export trade, 
owing to its nearness to agricultural, coal and 
mineral wealth and its facilities for shipment, 
anchorage and dockage. It is the largest 
corn-exporting port in the Union, and it sends 
out enormous quantities of other grain, coal, 
provisions, live-stock, and tobacco; next to 
New York it is the largest grain market on 
the Atlantic coast. Cotton, fruits (chiefly 
bananas), iron and copper ores are the prin¬ 
cipal imports. The freight handled annually 
is estimated at 48,000,000 tons. 

As a manufacturing center the city is rap¬ 
idly forging ahead, making almost every com¬ 
modity known to trade. Its largest single 
product is that of men’s clothing; the allied 
copper, tin and sheet-iron products rank sec¬ 
ond. It has one of the largest copper-refining 
plants in the United States, and the Bessemer 
Steel Works at Sparrow’s Point have a daily 
capacity of 2,000 tons. Baltimore leads thn 
other great cities in making cotton duck, straw 
goods and fertilizers, and in canning oysters 
and fruits; the cotton-duck mills here produce 
three-fourths of the sail-duck made in the 
United States. Shipbuilding, slaughtering and 
meat packing, printing and publishing are im¬ 
portant industries. The city has more than 
1,000 wholesale houses, and the jobbing trade, 
exclusive of the commission business, amounts 
to $250,000,000 annually. 

History. The city was named in honor of 
Cecilius Calvert, second Lord Baltimore, who 
founded the colony of Maryland. The town 
was settled in 1730. In 1732 Jones’ Town, on 
the opposite side of the stream was settled, 
and in 1745 the two were consolidated. Orig¬ 


inally the city was included in Baltimore 
County, of which it became the county seat in 
1767; later, city and county were separated, 
and at the present time Baltimore has a gov¬ 
ernment independent of the county. During 
the Revolutionary War the city for two 
months was the seat of government, when the 
Continental Congress was forced by the Brit¬ 
ish to retire from Philadelphia. Since 1780 it 
has been a port of entry, and since 1796, when 
it united with Fell’s Point, it has been an 
incorporated city. In September, 1814, it re¬ 
pulsed two attacks by the British, in the 
battle of North Point and the bombardment 
of Fort McHenry. In Baltimore, April 19, 1861, 
was shed the first blood of the War of Seces¬ 
sion, when Union troops, passing through the 
city in response to Lincoln’s call for volun¬ 
teers, were attacked by citizens; the city re¬ 
mained under martial law until the close of 
the war. In 1888 and in 1890 the area of the 
city was considerably enlarged by the annex¬ 
ation of adjoining territory. 

On Sunday, February 7, 1904, the city was 
visited by a great fire, which continued for 
two days and required the combined efforts 
of sixty-two fire companies to extinguish it. 
The entire business district was destroyed, the 
loss being estimated at $125,000,000. Later, 
the fire was regarded as a blessing rather than 
a disaster, as this section arose from the ashes 
in new buildings of the most modern type. 
Baltimore was the first city in the country to 
illuminate its streets by gas (1821); the first 
steam passenger train in the United States 
was operated on the Baltimore & Ohio Rail¬ 
way from this point to Ellicott Mills (fifteen 
miles). To Baltimore from Washington was 
strung the first telegraph line, and here the 
first telegraphic message was received, on May 
24, 1844. a.s.g. 

BALTIMORE ORIOLE, HANGBIRD, FIRE¬ 
BIRD or GOLDEN ROBIN, an interesting 
song-bird that nests in the Northern United 
States and Southern Canada, known for its 
splendid plumage and musical whistle, and, 
above all, for its remarkable skill in nest build¬ 
ing. The nest, formed like a long, slender 
purse, from six to eight inches deep, is woven 
onto the limb of a tree which has long, droop¬ 
ing branches, the elm and the weeping willow 
being favorites, and hangs at some distance 
from the ground, protected from sun and rain 
by the overspreading leaves. The materials 
used are principally grass, strips of bark, strings, 
hair and vegetable fibers. The eggs, four to six 














BALUCHISTAN 


565 


BALZAC 


in number, are less than an inch long, and are 
dull white, with irregular, dark-brown blotches. 




THE NEST 


The male bird 
is a handsome 
creature from 
seven to eight 
inches long, with 
glossy-black head 
and upper parts, 
white - tipped 
wings and bril¬ 
liant orange un¬ 
der parts. The 
female is a little 
smaller than her 
mate and paler 
in color, with the 
black sometimes 
replaced by olive- 
brown or grayish- 
orange. These 
birds feed on 
small caterpillars, 
certain kinds of beetles and small flies, and as 
they seldom disturb any of the garden fruits 
they are harmless as well as useful. They are 
cheerful and playful when placed in cages, 
and make interesting pets. The Baltimore 
oriole winters in Central America. Linnaeus, 
who obtained his first specimen from Maryland, 
gave the name Baltimore oriole to the bird, as 
a compliment to Lord Baltimore, proprietor of 
the colony, because his colors, like the birds, 
were orange and black. 

BALUCHISTAN, ba lu chi stalin', a semi¬ 
independent county of Asia, which has so few 
desirable features to offset its disadvantages 
that in 1911 it had an average population of 
only six to the square mile—810,850 inhabit¬ 
ants to its 134,- 
638 square miles 
of territory. 

From its south¬ 
ern bound ary, 
where it meets 
the Arabian Sea 
a steep, in¬ 


hospitable shore 
line, to the bor¬ 
ders of Afghan¬ 
istan on the 
north, it is rocky, dry and desolate. Mountain 
chains, some of them attaining a height of from 
10,000 to 12,000 feet, are found everywhere ex¬ 
cept in the northwest, where stretch wide plains 
of mingled stone and sand. Several short rivers 


LOCATION OF BALU¬ 
CHISTAN 


start from the north toward the sea, but few 
of them finish their course, for unless they 
sink into the sand and disappear they are 
drawn off for irrigating purposes, for Balu¬ 
chistan has very little rain. Some districts 
average only five inches a year, and even the 
most primitive agriculture cannot be carried 
on without some irrigation. Where this can 
be practiced, grains, cotton, indigo and vari¬ 
ous fruits will grow, and the date palm, as in 
so many dry countries, is a staple product. 

The People, Their Life and History. Two 
races live in Baluchistan—the Baluchis, for 
whom the state is named, and the Brahnis. 
The former are Aryans, and related to the 
peoples of India and Persia, but of the race 
connections of the latter nothing has been 
learned. Scarcely any of the people can be 
considered more than partly civilized, and the 
large proportion of the inhabitants who roam 
the deserts with their goats, sheep and cam¬ 
els, are very primitive in their methods of 
life. (See Nomad Life.) In religion, prac¬ 
tically all are Mohammedans. 

Government and History. The history of 
this barren and uninviting country previous 
to the time that Europeans began to interest 
themselves in Southern Asia, is little known. 
A member of the Persian ruling house estab¬ 
lished himself firmly about the middle of the 
eighteenth century, and made the various 
tribal chiefs acknowledge the supremacy of 
the khan, or king, of Khelat. Because this 
ruler opposed Great Britain during the Afghan 
War, a force of British soldiers entered the 
country in 1839; fifteen years later Great 
Britain acquired a protectorate over the en¬ 
tire state, the khan of Khelat receiving each 
year a subsidy from the British government. 
From Quetta, their capital city, the British 
now control much of the country, but the 
semi-independent wandering tribes still ac¬ 
knowledge the somewhat hazy supremacy of 
the khan who rules from Khelat, the native 
capital city. 

BALZAC, balzak', Hon ore de (1799-1850), 
the foremost of French novelists, whose 
Eugenie Grandet is considered by some crit¬ 
ics the greatest novel ever written. This is 
not because it has an absorbingly interesting 
plot, for the story is a simple one, with no 
exciting incidents; nor yet because its pen 
pictures are beautiful or unusual, for the setting 
is a dull, bleak old house in a village street; 
but the character-drawing is masterly. No¬ 
where else in literature is there such a study 




BALZAC 


566 


BAMBOO 


of avarice as the old Monsieur Grandet pre¬ 
sents, and the other characters grouped around 
him show equal skill in pen portraiture. Had 
Balzac written 
but this one 
novel, he would 
still stand in the 
first rank as an 
interpreter of hu¬ 
man nature. 

Balzac was 
born at Tours, on 
May 16, 1799, of 
a family which 
could lay no 
claim to rank or 
to intellectual 
distinction. He himself showed no sign of un¬ 
usual ability in his somewhat neglected youth, 
and was much more fond of playing truant and 
of wandering about the country than of study¬ 
ing. Though educated for the law', he firmly 
refused to practice and held true to his desire to 
live by his pen. His family could give him no 
financial aid, and the public paid little or no 
attention to his early novels; but he persisted, 
and in 1829, with the publication of The 
Chouans, it became evident that he was a writer 
of real genius. Not content with simply turning 
out one novel after another, planlessly, he 
formed for himself a vast design, so ambitious 
that a long lifetime would have been all insuffi¬ 
cient for carrying it out. This was no less than 
the writing of a series of novels, under the gen¬ 
eral title of The Human Comedy, which should 
picture every phase of human life in the 
France of his day. 

His plan was left incomplete at his death, 
but it had resulted in an astonishing number 
of novels, containing those marvelous character- 
delineations which entitle him to rank next 
below Shakespeare in his power to describe 
men’s character. The person who reads any 
considerable number of his books is conscious 
of a longing for more “sweetness and light,” 
for he does not hesitate to introduce the most 
sordid and even vicious of characters and hap¬ 
penings; but with all of this he keeps his 
emphasis true, and makes the better and more 
ideal aspects of life the more attractive. The 
best of his novels, in addition to the one men¬ 
tioned above, are considered to be Old Gariot, 
a study of a father’s self-sacrificing and unre¬ 
paid devotion to his daughters; Cousin Betty, 
which treats of the love of a niece and an aunt 
for the same man; Cousin Pons, which has as 


its theme the poor relation who has outstayed 
his welcome; and Lost Illusions, a long, com¬ 
plicated tale of Parisian life, with emphasis 
on its baser elements. 

During the latter part of his life Balzac was 
much under the influence of Madame Hanska, 
a Polish lady with whom he was in love, and 
this intense emotion interfered considerably 
with his work. Only a few months before his 
death he married her. a.mc c. 

BAMBOO', the popular name for the giant, 
tree-like grasses of the tropics and adjacent 
regions, the uses of which are exceedingly 
numerous. There are about 200 species, found 
in Asia, America and Africa, varying in height 
from a few T feet to 
120 feet. The 
largest bamboo 
trees are some¬ 
times three feet 
around. The stem 
of the bamboo, 
like that of other 
grasses, is 
j o i n t e d , and 
springs from a 
jointed, under¬ 
ground rootstock. 

The plant usu¬ 
ally grow,s tall 
and erect, reach¬ 
ing its full height 
before putting 
forth branches, 
when the hori- 
z o n t a 1 limbs 
appear, forming 
a dense thicket 
near the top of 
the stem. The 
flowers hang in 
large clusters, some species blossoming every 
year, others only once in many years. The 
bamboo stem, hard, light, elastic and hollow, 
is the most interesting and useful part of this 
plant. 

Uses. The bamboo rivals the palm in use¬ 
fulness, and serves the people of Malay, India, 
Ceylon, China, Japan and the Philippines in 
innumerable w r ays. The bamboo wood, split 
up, is made into floors, or rafters in dwelling 
houses; sections of the stem form posts or col¬ 
umns. Often the entire roof is made of bam¬ 
boo wood. The Japanese have forests of these 
trees, which they cultivate for building pur¬ 
poses. Travelers in Japan tell of the most 



BALZAC 















































BAN 


567 


BANANA 


charming bamboo greenhouses, and of bamboo 
stems used as waterpipes in connection with 
bath houses. The outer layer of the stem the 
Japanese cut into thin strips to be used in 
basket making, and the bamboo fibers are 
employed in the manufacture of paper. 

The Chinese have bamboo beds, couches, 
chairs, tables and stools; children in China 
play with bamboo toys, the workman uses tools 
with bamboo handles, and the boatman has 
bamboo ribs for the sails of his ship. Bamboo 



SOME USES OF BAMBOO 

The building, the pier, and even the boat, are 
made from the indispensable bamboo. 


cooking utensils, life-preservers, bows, arrows, 
quivers, fishing rods, mats, canes, musical 
instruments, fans, parasols, pipes and playing 
cards are other examples of the extreme useful¬ 
ness of this interesting plant. 

The grains of the bamboo are valued as food, 
and in China they take the place of rice when 
the crop of the latter fails. The young shoots 
of some species are pickled in vinegar and are 
sometimes cooked like asparagus. The bamboo 
also has ornamental qualities, and some of the 
hardier varieties are cultivated in England and 
the United States in landscape gardens and 
greenhouses. b.m.w. 

BAN, a word with an interesting history and 
a variety of meanings, used at the present time 
in the sense of to 'prohibit or condemn. Thus, 
a person who has rude, coarse manners is said 
to be banned by society, or to be under its ban. 
In its earliest use ban meant a proclamation, 
and also the fine imposed for disobeying it. 
Later, in France, the term was applied to a 
summons to arms, and from this, to the vassals 
of the king who were called upon to perform 
military service. During the Middle Ages a 
person under the ban was one who had been 
outlawed, and this expression was also applied 
to the outlawing of entire cities. In the history 
of the Church those who suffered excommunica¬ 


tion were said to be under the Papal ban. In 
the course of time ban came to be used in the 
sense of curse, and so occurs in Hamlet: 

VVith Hecate’s ban thrice blasted, thrice in¬ 
fected. 

The earliest meaning of the word, that is, a 
proclamation, survives in the expression 
banns of marriage (which see). 

BANANA, banah'na or banan'a, is the 
name borne by a tropical fruit which is now 
relished the world over, though scarcely known 
as late as 1870. To say that the great heavy 
bunches of bananas which are so familiar a 
sight in the markets do not grow on trees, but 
upon herbs, sounds at first absurd and impos¬ 
sible. It is, however, the truth, but in the 
tropics herbs grow to such great size that they 
would not be recognized as such by people in 
temperate regions. 

How It Grows. The banana has an under¬ 
ground stem which sends up suckers or sprouts 
that attain their full growth in a year and a 
half or two years (see Perennial). Its “trunk” 
is not really a trunk at all, but a false stalk 
formed by the curled bases of the leaves, which 
wrap themselves about the flower stem. This 
stalk, almost a foot in diameter at the bottom, 
rises to a height of from ten to forty feet, its 
great leaves, a foot or two in width and from 
six to ten feet in length, drooping outward. 
When the plant has reached its full growth 



HOW BANANAS GROW 
At left is shown an opening; flower. 

there appears a huge flower bud, which opens 
and shows a bunch of little purple flowers, 
each of which makes way for a tiny banana. 
The great flower cluster hangs toward the earth, 
but as the separate fruits begin to grow they 


















































BANANA 


568 


BANANA 




turn upward. From 50 to 150 bananas, weigh¬ 
ing altogether from 40 to 100 pounds, may 
grow in a bunch, and their lower ends point 
upward. A bunch of bananas as displayed in 
a store is hung bottom side up. 

The Banana Industry. The banana thrives in 
a hot, moist climate, and is raised in the tropical 
regions of both the Eastern and the Western 
hemispheres. In the Americas it grows on most 
of the West India islands and along the coasts 
of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, 
from Vera Cruz to the mouths of the Amazon 
River. California, Florida and Louisiana pro¬ 
duce a small crop. The greatest banana sec¬ 
tion in the world is in Central America, 
although there are single groves in Colombia 
containing 100,000 acres. 

Bananas are imported in great quantities by 
the countries of Europe and temperate North 
America. The people of the United States and 
Canada alone consume about 50,000.000 bunches 
of the fruit a year, but the development of the 
American industry is comparatively of recent 
date. In the year 1866 a small cargo of bana¬ 
nas, raised on plantations in Northwestern 
Colombia, near the present Panama Canal 
Zone, was delivered at the port of New York. 
This was the beginning of the banana industry 
in the United States and Canada. In the early 
days of the industry the individual fruits sold 
for about ten cents each, or fifty cents per 
half dozen. It is a remarkable fact that the 
banana has maintained its present reasonable 
price of from ten to twenty-five cents per dozen 
throughout the era of high food values. It is 
one of the few commodities in common use for 
which the consumer has not had to pay double 
and treble the price demanded a few years ago. 
This is due to the scientific methods of pro¬ 
duction and marketing adopted by the com¬ 
panies which handle the trade. Bananas from 
the American tropics have been imported into 
Great Britain and the continental European 
countries since 1903. 

Uses. For the most part the fruit is the 
only portion of the banana plant used, and the 
leaves and stalks, which must be cut down after 
the fruit has matured, are thrown away. Some 
species, however, produce a useful fiber, and 
the leaves of certain kinds are used for roofing 
houses and to make mats, bags and baskets. 
Dwarf varieties of the plant are sometimes 
raised for ornamental purposes. 

Food Value. The uncooked banana is most 
wholesome and nutritious when the peel is of a 
yellow-brown color. The fruit is brought to 


Northern markets green and is ripened arti¬ 
ficially. An unripe banana contains a large 
proportion of starch, which changes into sugar 
in the process of ripening. An uncooked green 
banana is as Rard to digest as a raw potato. 
When cooked, however, the fruit becomes read¬ 
ily digestible, and many delicious dishes are 
prepared by the natives in banana countries 
by baking the green fruit in hot ashes. In 
countries which depend upon importations 
cooked bananas are also finding favor; they are 
fried, made into croquettes or fritters, cooked 
with ham or bacon, and prepared in other ways. 
For cooking purposes it is always preferable to 
use unripened fruit. Banana flour, which is a 
common article of diet in the tropics, is coming 
elsewhere into use. It is made by grinding the 
dried, unripened fruit. It has been estimated 
that one pound of banana flour is equal in 
nourishment to two pounds of wheat flour, and 
it has been found of special value as an ingre¬ 
dient of milk mixtures for infants. / 



FOOD VALUE 

Three-fourths of the edible part of the banana 
is water. 

The banana is the only sweet fruit which can 
be obtained fresh and in a good condition in all 
parts of a country and at all seasons. It has 
the further advantage of being put up by 
Nature in a germ-proof package, for its inedible 
peel constitutes an air-tight protection against 
every form of germ or dirt. The following fig¬ 
ures show the average composition of the fruit: 
water, 75.3 per cent; protein, 1.3; fat, .6; car¬ 
bohydrates (starch and sugar), 22; ash, .8. Its 
water content is low T er than that of apples and 
oranges, but it is superior to either of these 
fruits in actual nutritive value. Its energy 
value is 460 calories per pound (see Calorie; 
Food, subhead Chemistry of), as compared with 
465 calories for green peas. In the words of a 
leading medical authority, the banana is a 
‘ fruit-food, containing in an agreeable form all 
of the elements of nutrition.” b.m.w. 











Copyright: Underwood & Underwood 







Copyright: Underwood & Underwood 





















BANCROFT 


569 


BAND 


BANCROFT, George (1800-1891), an Amer¬ 
ican historian whose best-known production, a 
history of the* United States, is a standard work 
on that subject. He was born at Worcester, 
Mass. After his graduation from Harvard Col¬ 
lege in 1817, he 
went abroad and 
devoted several 
years to the 
study of history 
and philology in 
Germany and to 
travel elsewhere 
in Europe. On his 
return to Amer¬ 
ica, in 1822, he 
became a teacher 
of Greek in Har¬ 
vard, but feeling 
restricted by the 
conventional at¬ 
mosphere of the Cambridge school, he joined 
a friend in the organization of a high school 
at Northampton, Mass. While teaching in this 
school he was elected to the state legislature on 
the Democratic ticket, but declined to serve. 

He had become well known in Democratic 
politics by the time of Martin Van Buren’s 
election to the Presidency (1836), and was 
appointed by that official, collector of the port 
of Boston. Nathaniel Hawthorne was one of 
his appointees while he was filling this position. 
Bancroft became President Polk’s Secretary of 
the Navy in 1845, and served until 1846, when 
he was sent as minister to London. For a 
short period in 1846 he also acted as Secretary 
of War. During the time he was in the Cabinet 
he lent his influence toward the establishment 
of the Naval Academy at Annapolis and had 
much to do with shaping its policies. In the 
same administration, while acting as temporary 
Secretary of War, he gave the order for the 
American forces to march into Texas (see 
Mexican War). 

Bancroft’s first published work was a collec¬ 
tion of poems and translations, issued in 1823, 
and from that time on he gave much of his 
energies to writing. The first volume of his 
History of the United States was published in 
1834, and at intervals other volumes were 
issued, the last revised edition of the completed 
work appearing in 1884-1885. This work stamps 
him as one of America’s leading historians, and 
reveals painstaking preparation, breadth of 
scholarship and imaginative insight into the 
affairs of nations. He was also the author of 


numerous orations and political addresses and 
magazine articles. His services to his country 
continued into his latter years, for he was 
selected by Congress in 1866 to deliver a spe¬ 
cial oration in honor of Lincoln, and in 1871 
was appointed minister to the new German 
Empire. On April 27, 1886, he delivered at 
Washington, D. C., his last public oration. 

BANCROFT, Hubert Howe (1832- ), an 

American historian, whose voluminous History 
of the Pacific States represents a collection of 
manuscripts, pamphlets and books to the num¬ 
ber of 60,000. He was born at Granville, O., 
and in 1852 went to San Francisco, where he 
became a bookseller. His deep interest in the 
history of the Pacific coast region led him to 
devote himself to the work of compiling a com¬ 
plete and original history of the Pacific states, 
and the results of his labors, begun in 1856, 
were turned over to the University of Cali¬ 
fornia in 1905. Some of the material was dic¬ 
tated to him by prominent pioneers of the 
West. Bancroft is also the author of the West 
American Historical Series, in thirty-nine vol¬ 
umes. His latest writings include The Book of 
Wealth, and Retrospection, Personal and Polit¬ 
ical. 

BAND, a combination of musical instru¬ 
ments that may be played in harmony, com¬ 
prising drums and such wind instruments as 
can be played while the players are marching. 
In theory, no device that cannot be carried by 
a man on foot can enter into a grouping of 
band instruments, although in the development 
of this kind of music many great bands now 
seldom play except when seated, and some of 
these have added several instruments too cum¬ 
bersome to carry. 

There had been no attempt at musical organi¬ 
zation of any kind until after the middle of the 
thirteenth century, when wandering pipers and 
trumpeters joined together in guilds. The 
first of these was probably that of the Brother¬ 
hood of Saint Nicholas, organized in 1228 in 
Vienna. From these guilds town bands devel¬ 
oped throughout Germany and Austria, in 
which the trumpets and kettledrums were 
reserved only for the nobility. At first these 

musicians played no written music, in order 

• 

to make their order seem more secret, but at 
the close of the seventeenth century their 
music began to be noted down and its mo¬ 
notony was relieved by the introduction of 
trumpets tuned in other keys. 

In addition to the fife and drum corps which 
is a popular form of band in America, bands 



GEORGE BANCROFT 





BAND 


570 


BANDAGE 




/ 

Recurrent 

Bandage 


Forearm with 
Simple Spiral 
below, and the 
Reverse above 


Figu re-Eight 
"'Bandage 


Bpica ofthe 
Shoulder 


Four-tailed 

Bandage 



VARIOUS FORMS OF BANDAGES 


are chiefly of two types— brass bands and mili¬ 
tary bands. The former, in addition to bass 
and snare drums, have only cornets and trom¬ 
bones, while the latter have other wind instru¬ 
ments as well—clarinet, piccolo, flute, oboe and 
saxophone. The military band is therefore 
able to achieve a far wider range of effects, 
and the brass band is generally made use of 
only where no band of the military type is 
available. 

Military Bands. As the name strictly im¬ 
plies, military bands are connected with a mili¬ 
tary body, such as an infantry or cavalry regi¬ 
ment, but the term has been broadened to 
include citizen organizations that have adopted 
the instruments named above which distinguish 
the military from the brass band. A number 
of military bands in America have had note¬ 
worthy careers as concert bands, and have 
fallen not far behind orchestras in the enthu¬ 
siasm which they have aroused. In the United 
States Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore had more to 
do than any other one man with the increased 
efficiency and popularity of military bands; 
and later John Philip Sousa, trained in the 
United States Marine Band at Washington, the 
foremost organization of its kind in the United 


States, came prominently before the public 
as a leader of concert bands. See Orchestra. 

BANDAGE, a covering for an injured part 
of the body, used to keep dressings on wounds, 
to apply pressure, to control circulation, to 
reduce swelling, to prevent movement and 
to furnish support. Bandages vary in width 
from one to six inches, and in length from a few 
inches to several yards, according to the por¬ 
tion of the body for which each is intended. 
They are made most commonly of gauze, crino¬ 
line, muslin, flannel, linen or cheesecloth. Rub¬ 
ber bandages are used as a means of support in 
the treatment of weak ankles and varicose 
veins, and to check hemorrhage. There are five 
fundamental bandages, on which a large num¬ 
ber of special bandages are based. These are 
the circular, the spiral, the spiral reverse, the 
figure 8 and the recurrent. 

The first, and the simplest, consists of two or 
three circular turns, each of which covers the 
preceding one, as shown in diagram a. The 
spiral bandage is wound around the limb in a 
series of oblique turns, so that each turn over¬ 
laps the previous one about one-half its width 
(see diagram b). The spiral reverse is an 
ordinary spiral bandage with reverse folds. 









































BANDICOOT 


BANFF 


571 


That is, the bandage is doubled back upon itself 
when it is necessary to adjust it to the enlarg¬ 
ing or tapering parts of the limb (see dia¬ 
gram c). 

A figure 8 bandage, the turns of which cross 
each other in such a manner as to resemble 
the figure 8, is sometimes used instead of the 
reverse spiral in bandaging the extremities, and 
is especially valuable in giving support to the 
joints. Diagram d shows a figure 8 bandage 
applied to the lower part of the leg. The recur¬ 
rent bandage is one in which a series of turns 
are passed back and forth across the injured 
part, each turn overlapping the other one-half 
its width, and the ends being secured by a cir¬ 
cular turn around them. This form of bandage 
is used chiefly in keeping dressings in place on 
the ends of the fingers and toes and on the 
head (see diagram c ). 

Important among the special bandages is the 
spica, which is based on the figure 8. This is a 
bandage which passes successive turns and 
crosses from an extremity to the trunk, as 
shown in diagram /. It receives its name from 
its resemblance to a spike of barley. The 
four-tailed is a special bandage extremely use¬ 
ful in keeping poultices in place; diagram g 
shows such a bandage applied to the head. 
This consists of a piece of cloth eight inches 
wide, and long enough to go over the scalp and 
tie beneath the chin. It is cut in the middle 
from each end to within four or five inches of 
the center, two ends being tied under the chin 
and two behind the neck. 

The soldiers of the German army are pro¬ 
vided with packets containing large hand¬ 
kerchiefs which are used in cases of emergency 
as triangular bandages or slings, and also as 
short spiral bandages when folded lengthwise. 
These are also carried by members of ambu¬ 
lance corps and “first-aid-to-the-injured” so¬ 
cieties. B.M.W. 



BANDICOOT, ban'dikoot, a curious animal 
common in Australia, combining some of the 
characteristics of 
the kangaroo, 
rabbit and rat. 

It has ears like a 
rabbit, tail like a 
rat and, like the 
kangaroo, the fe¬ 
male has a pouch 
in which the 
young are carried. 

It feeds on vege¬ 
tables and insects BANDICOOT 


and does great damage to gardens and growing 
crops. In some parts of Australia it is called 
the native rabbit. 

Bandicoot Rat. This is the largest known 
species of rat, often exceeding a foot in length, 
It is a native of India and Ceylon, in which 
countries its flesh is considered a great delicacy. 
When roasted, it resembles young pork. The 
bandicoot rat does not hibernate, but consid¬ 
erable stores of rice and other grain have been 
found in its burrows. Feeding only at night, it 
lives on vegetables, grains and roots, and is 
very destructive to gardens. 

BANDIT, or BRIGAND, brig' and, one of a 
band of robbers or highwaymen living in 
secluded spots or in mountains, around some of 
whom many thrilling tales have been woven. 
Because of the violent, plundering ways of the 
hired soldiers who held the city of Paris in 1358, 
during the imprisonment of King John, the 
name was first applied to them. 

Robin Hood, the gallant, liberal, reverent 
outlaw of song and story is the most celebrated 
brigand in British history. Later came Dick 
Turpin, the cattle thief. For years, in Ger¬ 
many, the so-called robber barons held the 
southern part of the country at their mercy. 
Spain has always been a particularly favorable 
field for bandits. Don Jose Maria, a prin¬ 
cipal character in Merimee’s Carmen, is prob¬ 
ably the most famous. In Italy, Fra Diavolo, 
the cruel bandit monk, practiced his profession. 
In recent times brigandage has taken the form 
of kidnaping and holding for ransom. In 1901 
Miss Ellen Stone and her companion were kid¬ 
naped in Macedonia; the United States paid 
the ransom for their release. It is now plain 
that these brigands were the close allies, if not 
the paid agents, of the famous Macedonian 
committee, which is seeking to secure the inde¬ 
pendence of the country, and used this method 
of securing funds. 

In the United States and Canada brigandage 
has taken the form chiefly of train and stage 
coach robberies, especially in the passes of the 
Rocky Mountains. The most famous of all 
American brigands was Jesse s James, the dar¬ 
ing central figure of many stories for boys. See 
Robin Hood. 

BANFF, banf, Alta., one of the most famous 
summer and winter resorts in America. It lies 
at an altitude of 4,500 feet, at the southeastern 
end of Rocky Mountains Park, and is visited 
each year by thousands of tourists who come to 
see the Canadian Rockies. The scenery in the 
vicinity of Banff is declared by many critics 


BANGALORE 


572 


BANGOR 


to be superior to that of Switzerland; the many 
points of interest are described in the article 
Rocky Mountains Park (which see). Banff 
itself exists only for the entertainment and 
comfort of tourists. It is unique among Cana¬ 
dian towns in that it has no mayor or aldermen, 
all control being in the hands of the park 
superintendent appointed by the Dominion 
government. All land is owned by the Domin¬ 
ion and is occupied under leaseholds, and all 
utilities, including water and electric light, are 
supplied by the government. 

Banff was settled in 1893, and was named for 
the Scotch town from which Baron Mount 
Stephen came. It is eighty-two miles west of 
Calgary, on the Canadian Pacific Railway, 
about 600 miles east of Vancouver, and about 
fifteen miles east of the boundary between 
British Columbia and Alberta. Population in 
1911, 937. The population in 1916 cannot be 
stated definitely, as about 300 men, nearly one- 
third of the permanent population, volunteered 
for service in the War of the Nations. e.e. 

BANGALORE, bang ga lohr ', a fortified town 
of Southern India, capital of the state of 
the same name. It stands on a plateau 3,000 
feet above sea level and is one of the most 
pleasant and healthful stations in British India. 
The modern portion of the town is well 
planned, with wide, clean streets and hand¬ 
some buildings. The palace of the maharaja, 
the nominal ruler of the state, is a structure 
of great beauty. There are numerous native 
and European educational institutions, all 
well supported. The chief manufactures are 
silks, cotton cloth, woolens, carpets and gold 
and silver lace. In the old town stands the 
fort reconstructed in 1761 and stormed by 
Lord Cornwallis in 1791. Population in 1911, 
including the British garrison, 189,485. 

BANGKOK, bang kok ', a city of islands, 
canals and floating houses, the capital of the 
kingdom of Siam. It is situated on both 
banks of the river Menam, and on islands 
formed by its numerous branches. There is a 
regular communication by steamer with Saigon, 
Hongkong, Shanghai and Singapore. A sea 
voyage from San Francisco to Bangkok would 
cover a distance of more than 12,000 miles. It 
would be necessary to sail first to Honolulu, 
thence to Hongkong or Singapore, at either 
of which ports passage may be booked to 
Bangkok. 

A large portion of the population live in 
floating houses moored in the river, and many 
houses are built on piles to escape the floods 


due to the extremely low surface of the land. 
Bangkok has extensive commerce, but nearly 
the whole of its domestic and retail business is 
carried on by Chinese. The exports consist 
chiefly of rice, sugar, silk, cotton, tobacco, 
pepper, sesame, ivory, hides and teak. The 
modern portion of the city has an electric rail¬ 
way system and is illuminated by electric 
light. Population in 1910, 628,675. 

BANGOR, ban' gawr, Maine, the county seat 
of Penobscot County, is an important com¬ 
mercial and manufacturing center, 138 miles 
northeast of Portland. It is in the south 
central part of the state, sixty miles from the 
ocean, at the head of navigation on the Penob¬ 
scot River. The Kenduskeag Stream flows 
through the city and empties into the Penob¬ 
scot. Bridges cross both streams; one which 
is 1,300 feet long and is built over the Penob¬ 
scot connects Bangor with Brewer. The tide 
rises seventeen feet in the Penobscot River at 
this point; there is always sufficient depth for 
the largest steamers. Bangor is served by the 
Boston and Bangor division of the Eastern 
Steamship Line and by the Maine Central and 
the Bangor & Aroostook railroads, and electric 
interurban lines. The population in 1910 was 
24,803; it increased to 26,061 in 1914. The 
area exceeds thirty-two square miles. 

The business section of the city extends 
along the banks of the Kenduskeag and the 
west bank of the Penobscot; the residence sec¬ 
tion occupies higher ground back from the 
rivers. Among the prominent buildings are 
the fine granite custom house and post office, 
county courthouse, city hall, the Hersey 
Memorial building, public library, opera house, 
high school and auditorium (in which is held 
the annual eastern Maine musical festival). 
The important institutions of the city are the 
Bangor Theological Seminary (Congrega¬ 
tional), the University of Maine Law School 
(the state university is located at Orono, nine 
miles distant), the Bangor State Insane Hos¬ 
pital and the Eastern Maine General Hos¬ 
pital. 

Bangor is one of the largest lumber markets 
in the United States, ships large quantities of 
ice and has extensive wood-working plants, 
trunk factories, pulp and paper mills, shoe 
factories, foundries, machine shops and manu¬ 
factories of stoves, canoes and moccasins. 
Bangor has an important foreign trade, the 
value of which exceeds $4,000,000 a year, and 
is the jobbing and distributing center for a large 
part of the state. It is the outfitting point for 


BANGS 573 BANK OF ENGLAND 


sportsmen who yearly visit Northern and 
Eastern Maine. 

In his search for the mythical city of Norum- 
bega, whose site Bangor is supposed to occupy, 
Champlain visited the place in 1604. The first 
permanent settlement, made in 1769, was called 
Conduskeag, and was locally known as Sun- 
bury. The name was changed to Bangor, and 
the town was incorporated in 1791. It became 
a city in 1834. The first railway in the state, 
completed in 1836, extended from Bangor to 
Old Town, and one of the first iron steamships 
built in the United States ran between this 
port and Boston. m.w. 

BANGS, John Kendrick (1862- ), a pop¬ 

ular American novelist whose stories are 
widely read and greatly enjoyed because of 
their original and delightful humor. He was 
born at Yonkers, N. Y. After his graduation 
from Columbia University in 1883, he studied 
law in his father’s office for a year and a half, 
and then took an editorial position in connec¬ 
tion with the comic periodical, Life. Later he 
was associated with Harper’s Magazine, Litera¬ 
ture, Harper’s Weekly, Metropolitan Magazine, 
and Puck. Stories have come very rapidly 
from his pen since the first one was published 
in 1886, all of which are characterized by breezy 
humor and contain many laughable situations, 
yet show the author’s insight into human 
nature. 

Coffee and Repartee is a collection of 
stories that have been described as “a mixture 
of Oliver Wendell Holmes and Bill Nye.” 
Other well-known titles are The Idiot, Mr. 
Bonaparte of Corsica, A House Boat on the 
Styx, Mollie arid the Unwise Man Abroad and 
A Line O’ Cheer for Each Day of the Year. 
Tiddledywinks Tales was the first of a series 
of stories for children. He has also written the 
musical plays entitled The Worsted Man, Lady 
Teazle and Tomorrowland. Since 1910 Mr. 
Bangs has been in demand as a lecturer. 

BAN'JO, a stringed musical instrument hav¬ 
ing a long neck and a body which consists of 



a circular frame like the head of a drum, over 
which is stretched a covering of parchment. 
The strings, made of catgut, are generally five 
in number, but sometimes nine. It is played 


by pressing the strings with the fingers of the 
left hand and twitching or striking them with 
the right hand fingers. For instrumental solos, 
duets, and in other combinations the banjo is 
in demand wherever quick and lively music 
is desired. It is popular among all classes, 
but has always been a special favorite among 
the negroes. In Notes on Virginia, Thomas 
Jefferson referred to the banjo as an instru¬ 
ment “proper to the blacks, which they brought 
hither from Africa, and which is the original 
of the guitar, the chords being precisely the 
four lower chords of the guitar.” In Guinea 
the African negro still uses the bania, a form 
of banjo having grass strings. 

BANK OF ENGLAND, the most powerful 
financial institution in the world. It was 
founded in 1694, a charter constituting practi¬ 
cally a monopoly of banking being granted to 



certain persons who loaned £1,200,000 ($6,000,- 
000) to the government for use in the war 
then being waged against France. From that 
date the Bank of England has been the bank 
of the government and has entire management 
of the national debt. For this service it re¬ 
ceives payment at the rate of $1,500 per mil¬ 
lion on the first $30,000,000 of the debt and 
$450 per million on all above that sum. In 
addition to this, the bank is allowed to profit 
by all transactions in the field of legitimate 
banking. 

Many banking corporations in the United 
States and in European and English cities have 
far larger capital and deposits than the Bank 
of England, but the latter derives its great 
influence not from the money it actually 
handles, but because it is the accredited finan¬ 
cial representative of the British government 
and people. This influence is far more power- 






































































BANK OF THE UNITED STATES 574 BANK OF THE UNITED STATES 


ful than vast aggregations of capital. The 
original capital, consisting chiefly of the loan 
made to the English government, has been 
increased many times, until the authorized 
capital at the present time is £14,553,000 
($72,765,000). The bank issues notes to the 
value of £17,775,000 ($88,875,000), without hav¬ 
ing gold in reserve to pay on demand; for all 
notes issued in excess of the sum mentioned 
gold must be held. The notes are of the 
denomination of £5 and upwards to £1,000. 

The building occupied by the bank is sit¬ 
uated in the center of the busiest part of Lon¬ 
don, almost directly opposite the Mansion 
House, at the corner of Threadneedle Street, 
hence it is frequently alluded to as the “Little 
Old Lady of Threadneedle Street”—a term of 
respect rather than of ridicule. There is noth¬ 
ing romantic or architecturally beautiful to dis¬ 
tinguish it from any other building, except that 
it is perhaps a little more somber than its 
surroundings. The bank is managed by a gov¬ 
ernor, deputy governor and twenty-foui direc¬ 
tors. The board of directors meets weekly, 
when a statement is issued showing the finan¬ 
cial status of the bank, in accordance with a 
-law passed in 1844. g.h.l. 

BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. In 1789, 
when the Constitution of the United States 
went into effect, there were only three banks 
in the country. They had a small note circula¬ 
tion in the cities in which they were situated, 
but most of the people in the states had never 
seen a bank note. Alexander Hamilton, Sec¬ 
retary of the Treasury, proposed that the gov¬ 
ernment charter a bank which would issue a 
national paper currency and would be the 
financial agent of the United States. 

There was much opposition to Hamilton’s 
plan. Some critics declared that the bank 
would merely enrich a few capitalists at the 
general expense; others said that it would be an 
“aristocratic institution intended to pave the 
way to a monarchy.” The most serious objec¬ 
tions came from the followers of James Mad¬ 
ison and Thomas Jefferson, who argued that 
the Constitution did not especially give Con¬ 
gress the right to charter any corporation. 
Washington, who was then President, asked 
Hamilton and Jefferson to prepare written 
statements of their views, and these papers are 
among the great documents of American his¬ 
tory. In them were clearly outlined the doc¬ 
trines of “strict” and “broad” construction of 
the Constitution, the doctrines which were to 
form later the basis of political parties. 


The First Charter. Congress and the Pres¬ 
ident adopted Hamilton’s view, and on Feb¬ 
ruary 25, 1791, the Bank of the United States 
was chartered for twenty years. Its main office 
was fixed at Philadelphia. The capital was 
$10,000,000, of which the government took 
$2,000,000. The paper money issued by the 
bank was legal tender for all debts due to the 
national government. Its large capital and its 
branches in New York, Boston and other cities 
gave it a great advantage over the state banks 
and it easily dominated the banking system 
much as the Bank of England still does in 
Great Britain. The government sold its stock 
after a few years, and when the charter expired 
in 1811 the national government had no vital 
interest in the bank. The opposition of the 
state banks was strong enough to prevent the 
renewal of the charter, and the bank wound up 
its affairs. 

The Second Charter. During the War of 
1812 most of the state banks suspended specie 
payments, with the result that the paper cur¬ 
rency of the country was in a terribly dis¬ 
ordered condition. Some bank notes were 
worthless, some were worth perhaps ten cents 
on the dollar, a few were worth fifty cents or 
thereabouts on the dollar, and probably none 
could be exchanged at par. 

Under the circumstances there arose a de¬ 
mand for a new Bank of the United States. 
The second Bank was chartered on April 3, 
1816, with a capital of $35,000,000, of which the 
government subscribed for one-fifth. The bank 
was the official depository for government 
money, and it was the agent for the national 
and state governments. It prospered, and in 
a few years seemed hs firmly established as the 
government itself. It had large deposits, and 
its notes were as good as gold, not only in the 
United States but in European countries. 

The bank’s power had made some enemies, 
but there was no organized opposition to it 
until Jackson became President. Two of Jack¬ 
son’s supporters in New Hampshire complained 
that the Portsmouth (N. H.) branch of the 
Bank was being mismanaged. In charge of the 
branch was one Jeremiah Mason, one of Jack¬ 
son’s bitterest opponents, and chiefly for polit¬ 
ical reasons the bank was doomed. Mason was 
defended by the Bank’s officers, while Jackson, 
disregarding the Mason episode, charged that 
“both the constitutionality and the expediency 
of the law creating this Bank are well ques¬ 
tioned by a large portion of our fellow-citizens.” 
Practically the whole of Jackson’s first term 




BANKRUPT 


575 


BANKRUPT 


was taken up with the fight against the Bank. 
Jackson finally vetoed a bill to extend its 
charter, and after his reelection ordered the 
withdrawal of the government’s deposits. The 
Bank was compelled to wind up its affairs, as 
practically the whole of its deposits were funds 
belonging to the United States. w.f.z. 

For political details of the fight against the 
Bank, see Jackson, Andrew, subhead The Ad¬ 
ministration. See, also, Banks and Banking, 
subhead United States. 

BANKRUPT, a person who is recognized by 
law as unable to pay his debts. The property 
of a bankrupt may be seized by his creditors, 
acting under the orders of the court, and may 
be divided among them in proportion to the 
amounts' due them. The word bankrupt is 
derived from the Italian; it really means bank 
and broken, and refers to the old Italian cus¬ 
tom of breaking the benches used by money¬ 
lenders and bankers when they failed. In 
modern times the property of a bankrupt is 
not destroyed, but merely taken from him. 

Originally, in English law, there was a dis¬ 
tinction between bankruptcy and insolvency, 
and this distinction is still kept in most coun¬ 
tries. A bankrupt must have been a person 
engaged in business, and only his creditors 
could petition against him. Persons not en¬ 
gaged in business could become insolvent, but 
only on their own petition. Modern English 
and American law no longer recognize this 
distinction, but divide bankruptcy into two 
parts, voluntary and involuntary. A debtor 
himself may petition for relief from his debts 
by bankruptcy; this is voluntary bankruptcy. 
If his creditors petition, it is called involuntary 
(not voluntary) bankruptcy, even though he 
offers no protest. A corporation cannot file a 
voluntary petition, even if it desires to do so; 
it must always be petitioned against. 

In Canada. Under the British North Amer¬ 
ica Act of 1867 the Dominion Parliament has 
sole control of bankruptcy, but there is no 
Dominion law now in force. A Dominion 
Insolvency Act was passed in 1875, but was 
repealed in 1880. Its failure was due chiefly to 
the differences in the provincial laws which 
were in effect before 1867. A Winding-Up Act, 
which applies only to banks, insurance and loan 
companies, was passed in 1882, but in all other 
respects it has been the policy of the Dominion 
government to leave the regulation of bank¬ 
ruptcy to the prbvinces. In Quebec, where the 
French civil code is still effective, a debtor 
may “abandon” his property for the benefit 


of his creditors on one of three conditions: 
(1) if he has been arrested on a writ of capias 
(which see); (2) if he is in business and is 
unable to pay his bills; (3) if any creditor, to 
whom he owes at least $200, demands aban¬ 
donment. The abandonment only discharges 
the debts to the amount which the creditors 
receive from the estate. 

In none of the other provinces is there any 
law by which a creditor can compel a debtor 
to make an assignment of his property. In all 
of the other provinces, however, the law pro¬ 
vides that a debtor may voluntarily assign his 
property for the benefit of creditors, who may 
divide it pro rata. Such an assignment does 
not relieve the debtor from the payment of any 
unpaid balance. If a debtor refuses to make 
an assignment, the creditors may secure judg¬ 
ments, which are then paid in order of priority. 

In the United States. By the terms of the 
Constitution Congress has power to establish 
“uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies 
throughout the United States.” The individual 
states are allowed to legislate on the subject, 
provided the state law conforms to the national 
statute. The present national act was passed 
in 1898, and has been several times amended. 
Petitions in bankruptcy, whether voluntary or 
involuntary, must be presented to the Federal 
district court in whose district the alleged bank¬ 
rupt lives. The judge may hear the petition, 
or he may refer it to a referee in bankruptcy 
or a master in chancery, to take testimony. 
Final decisions, however, rest with the court. 
The petition states that the petitioner is un¬ 
able to pay his debts and is willing to surrender 
his property for the benefit of his creditors. 

The Five Acts of Bankruptcy. The law 
specifies five classes of acts which justify the 
court in declaring a person or corporation bank¬ 
rupt. Even if a person has committed any of 
these acts he may prevent a decree against him 
if he can convince a jury that his property is 
sufficiently valuable to pay his debts. The 
five acts are as follows: 

(1) If the debtor conveys or removes, or 
allows to be removed, any of his property with 
the intention of defrauding any of his creditors. 
In the United States any transfer of property 
during the four months preceding the filing of 
a petition in bankruptcy is void, and the prop¬ 
erty may be recovered by the creditors. In 
England the similar period is three months. 

(2) If he transfers any of his property with 
the intention of preferring any of his creditors. 

(3) If, being already insolvent, that is, un¬ 
able to pay his debts, he allows any creditor to 
obtain a preferred claim through process of law, 


BANKS AND BANKING 


676 


BANKS AND BANKING 


(4) If he makes a general assignment of his 
property for the benefit of his creditors; or if 
he is already insolvent when a receiver is 
appointed for his property. 

(5) If he admits in writing that he is unable 
to pay his debts and is willing to be legally 
bankrupt. 

The Settlement. The court or the referee 
usually fixes a date for a hearing of the peti¬ 
tion. At this hearing the creditors may present 
their claims, and either the creditors or the 
debtor may show cause for not decreeing bank¬ 
ruptcy. If the debtor is declared bankrupt 
his property by order of the court is placed 
in the possession of a trustee. If the bankrupt 
owns a business, the trustee usually continues 
it, at least for a time, in order to preserve as 
far as possible the good will and other assets 
of the firm. Eventually the property will be 


sold, and the proceeds divided among the cred¬ 
itors. After this has been done the debtor is 
discharged from bankruptcy. Any debts un¬ 
paid are cancelled by this discharge, unless 
they are based on fraud. A bankrupt, more¬ 
over, may be criminally liable for violation of 
certain clauses of the law, and a discharge may 
be refused if he has been bankrupt within six 
years previous to the petition. 

Political Disqualification. In the United 
States a bankrupt is not disqualified from 
voting or holding public office. Under the 
English law, however, a bankrupt is not al¬ 
lowed to sit in either House of Parliament, nor 
may he vote for members of Parliament. There 
are a number of other specified offices from 
which he is disqualified. As soon ras he is 
discharged this disqualification ends. w.F.z. 


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fe-— P 


THE STORY OF BANKING f 




ANKS AND BANKING. Banks are 
considered by the great majority of people 
principally as safe places in which to keep such 
money as they do not need for immediate uses. 
The worker in a factory possibly does not 
understand that the bank in his community 
may be a very important factor in promoting 
the business of his employer; his interest in it 
centers in the gradually accumulating deposit 
which he is laying up for himself and family. 
Even if banks had no other function more 
important than this, there would be the very 
best of reasons for their existence; yet they 
could not exist unless they were permitted to 
be lenders as well as custodians of the funds 
of others. 

The integrity of a good bank and the value 
of its services to depositors is well illustrated, 
though possibly by a somewhat extreme case, 
in the following incident. 

In the year I860, Joseph Robbins, age thirty, 
first mate of a sailing vessel, carried to a bank 
in New York City SI,000, to be held for him 
for safekeeping. He was given a pass book 
showing this deposit, and next morning started 
on a long voyage around Cape Horn into the 
Pacific Ocean. After rounding the Horn the 


vessel was wrecked, and four men, including 
Robbins, eventually reached an uninviting 
island shore, where they were forced to live a 
number of j^ears, during which time two died. 
In the course of time they were rescued by a 
vessel which had been blown rilany miles off 
its course, and in few weeks they landed in 
Australia. It answers our purpose only to 
know that thirty years after Robbins had set 
sail from New York, he was again in that city. 
He remembered his deposit, but had no evi¬ 
dence to prove its existence, for his pass-book 
had been lost. 

“I want to see the president of this bank,” 
said an old man of sixty years, “upon an 
important personal matter.” He finally was 
introduced to one of the vice-presidents. 

‘‘Have you a sum of money on deposit to 
the credit of Joseph Robbins?” he asked. 

Investigation proved that such was the case, 
but why should this weather-beaten stranger 
be offered this information? 

“I am Joseph Robbins, and I deposited with 
you $1,000 the day before my last sailing from 
this port thirty years ago. This is my first 
return visit. My pass-book was lost when my 
boat went down, and I know no man in the 



































































































BANKS AND BANKING 


577 


BANKS AND BANKING 


city to-day who can identify me. What do by little the Robbins story was substantiated, 
you advise me to do?” and when the bank was assured of his identity, 

The banker learned that the boat Robbins the man who had left $1,000 for safekeeping in 

named actually did sail on the date claimed; the hands of an institution he felt he could 

that Robbins was first mate; that the vessel trust was handed more than double that 
was never again heard from, except that wreck- amount in cash, the original principal sum and 

age was later reported by other vessels. Little its accrued interest. 


The Business 

A bank has two principal functions, that of 
receiving from the people their money on 
deposit, and the loaning of money at interest, 
safeguarded by good security. The money 
which it receives on deposit is in turn lent to 
other customers. A bank, therefore, is a mid¬ 
dleman between those who have money to 
lend and those who want to borrow. 

Functions of a Bank. The functions of. a 
modern bank may be treated under two head¬ 
ings, banks as borrowers and banks as lenders. 
The term borrow, however, is not used here in 
a technical sense. Banks are custodians, keep¬ 
ing funds available for demand at any time, 
and the deposits of their customers cannot, 
in the real sense, be called loans. On the 
other hand, the moneys in their keeping are 
invested and made to produce, and are repaid 
to the depositors; thus the banks in effect act 
as borrowers. It is not necessarily money that 
is lent and borrowed; frequently the loan con¬ 
sists of the important thing called credit, with¬ 
out which modern business organizations would 
come to a standstill. 

Banks as Borrowers. The man who intrusts 
his money to a bank does not, as a rule, think 
of his deposit as a loan; in fact, he usually 
puts his money in a bank for safekeeping or 
for convenience, but the bank uses the money 
to lend to those who need it. This is the 
greatest service which a banker performs for 
the community. He collects small amounts 
which would lie idle and unproductive, and 
he is then in position to lend larger amounts 
for productive enterprise. 

The money which a bank receives on de¬ 
posit is usually subject to call. It may be 
drawn out by the depositor in person, or on 
his written order. Such an order is a check, or 
cheque. The depositor pays his debts by 
ordering the bank to pay money from his 
account to a third person. He need not carry 
on his person large sums for which he has no 
immediate use, and he has a further advantage 
in that the check, when endorsed and paid, is 
a receipt for the payment he has made. 


of Banking 

The bank renders another important service 
to the depositor. A large commercial bank 
each day receives hundreds of checks which it 
credits to the accounts of its depositors. These 
checks may be drawn on as many hundred 
different banks, but the bank in which they 
are deposited collects them all. If a check 
is drawn on a distant city, a small charge, called 
exchange, is usually made for the service. If 
the check is drawn by one depositor in favor 
of another depositor in the same bank, pay¬ 
ment of the check is merely a matter of making 
proper entries in the books of the bank. If 
the check is deposited for collection at another 
bank than that on which it is drawn, the pay¬ 
ment is seldom made by the transfer of cash 
but usually through the clearing house (which 
see). Besides collecting checks, a bank will 
collect money due on notes, bond coupons and 
other commercial paper for its customers. 

If money deposited in a bank is regarded 
strictly as a loan, the depositor is entitled to 
interest. The many services which a commer¬ 
cial bank renders to its customers, however, 
are usually considered to outweigh this right. 
On small checking accounts a bank almost al¬ 
ways loses money, the expenses of keeping 
them being practically as much as in the case 
of large accounts. It takes as much clerical 
work to record a deposit of $10 as one of $1,000. 
For this reason most banks fix a minimum 
balance which a depositor is expected to keep 
if he wishes to draw checks against it. This 
minimum may range from $50 in a small-town 
bank to several hundred dollars in a large city. 

For people who want interest on their de¬ 
posits a savings account is the best plan. 
Most large banks now have savings depart¬ 
ments, and there are also many special savings 
banks. These usually pay interest at the rate 
of three per cent a year. Under normal condi¬ 
tions a savings bank will pay its depositors on 
demand, but it reserves the right to ask previous 
notice, usually of sixty days, to prevent de¬ 
mands which might occasion embarrassment 
if a good portion of its funds were out on 


BANKS AND BANKING 


578 


BANKS AND BANKING 


time loans. A modern savings bank, viewed 
as a borrower, has practically the same func¬ 
tions as the earliest banks in Europe. It re¬ 
ceives money on deposit, and issues a receipt, 
in the form of a pass-book or bank-book, which 
is merely a convenient way of keeping a num¬ 
ber of receipts together. If the depositor wants 
to draw all or part of his money, he must take 
his pass-book to the bank, where the proper 
deduction is entered on his account (see Sav¬ 
ings Bank, with subtitles Postal Savings Bank; 
School Savings Bank). 

In large cities the banks sometimes become 
borrowers in a technical sense, borrowing sums 
of money at fixed rates of interest and promis¬ 
ing payment on or after specified dates. In 
such cases certificates of deposit are issued as 
evidence of the banks’ obligations. Such sums 
are really lent, and they are not subject to 
withdrawal by check. It should be noted that 
the aggregate of certificates of deposit of all 
the banks in the United States, both state and 
national, would represent but a very small 
percentage of the total deposits of all the 
banks. 

Banks as Lenders. Loans by banks are either 
call loans or time loans. Call loans must be 
repaid on demand; time loans are made for a 
definite period. Banks usually lend money on 
commercial paper, or on personal notes secured 
by the deposit of collateral, usually stocks or 
bonds. In the majority of cases the borrower 
gets his loan in the form of a deposit credit, 
against which he may draw checks. In cities, 
where the check system is fully developed, this 
is sufficient; but in country districts, where 
checks are not accepted so freely, a substitute 
is sometimes needed. Country banks some¬ 
times issue certificates of deposit in lieu of 
notes accepted for discount, but this course is 
rather unusual and not altogether approved by 
the best banks. 

The money which a bank lends is either its 
capital or the deposits it has received. Its 
capital, incidentally, must be enough to inspire 
confidence in the public. The larger the bank’s 
capital, the more the bankers themselves have 
at stake, the greater the feeling among the 
depositors that the bank will be managed con¬ 
servatively. Practically the whole of the bank’s 
capital can be used in its business. Of its 
deposits, however, a varying portion must be 
held as a reserve. The bank’s customers are 
constantly adding to and drawing from their 
accounts, and the bank must keep enough 
pash on hand to meet ordinary demands. At 


certain periods, for example, in the harvest 
season, the banks are usually paying out larger 
amounts than they are taking in. Experienced 
bankers make allowances for such conditions. 
If the bank is unable to meet the demands 
made upon it for cash, it is said to suspend 
payment, and is usually forced to wind up its 
business. If the public has not lost confidence 
in the management, a reorganization, involving 
the addition of new capital, sometimes takes 
place. On the other hand, it is the business 
of the banker to anticipate demands and have 
currency ready, but if demands are unexpected 
and he has paper of value, he can always 
rediscount this paper with the banks in reserve 
cities, if not with the Federal Reserve Bank; 
thus he has the ability to supplement his cash 
with quick returns by the rediscount of paper 
of a certain character. 

Banks organized under charters from the 
Canadian and United States governments are 
required by law to keep their reserves at a 
point thought to be safe in normal times (see, 
below, Bank Reserves; Banking in Canada). 
In some states, however, there is no restriction 
on private bankers, who are thus allowed to 
keep any reserve they think adequate. The 
danger from this source has been often demon¬ 
strated, and the regulated banks, those under 
the supervision of the state or nation, are 
always using their influence to secure legisla¬ 
tion on the subject. But as yet there are many 
states in which nothing exists to prevent any¬ 
body from displaying a sign, “Bank,” and taking 
all the deposits he can get. If he proves to 
be reckless or dishonest the depositors may 
be able to have him imprisoned, but in such 
a case they are almost sure to lose their 
savings. 

Trust Companies. A trust company may or 
may not be a bank. In some of the Eastern 
United States the trust company has no gen¬ 
eral banking powers, but throughout the South 
and West it is more likely to be a general 
bank. As the name indicates, trust companies 
were originally chartered to perform the duties 
and assume the responsibilities of trustees of 
estates. The advantages of such organization 
are clear; the company is a corporation and 
it exists indefinitely, while an individual trustee 
may die the day after he is appointed. The 
care of estates naturally meant that such a 
company would have the money of estates to 
invest, and also investment propositions which 
needed money. Trust companies are chartered 
under state or provincial laws. 


BANKS AND BANKING 


579 


BANKS AND BANKING 


Origin of Banking. In its simplest form of 
money-changing, banking is as old as history. 
Ancient writers often referred to the money¬ 
changers, the men who bought foreign money 
and gave domestic coins in exchange. By the 
end of the fifth century of the Christian Era 
banking was a recognized business, and bankers 
not only exchanged actual money but dealt 
extensively in credit. The code of Justinian, 
which was compiled in a. d. 533, shows that 
there were many laws on the subj ect of banking. 

The beginning of modern banking, however, 
is usually assigned to the year 1587, when the 
Banco di Rialto was established at Venice. As 
we know from Shakespeare’s Merchant of 
Venice and other sources, private bankers had 
conducted business here at earlier dates. The 
Banco di Rialto, and its successor, the Banco 
del Giro, received deposits payable on demand, 
issued receipts for them, and allowed them to 
be transferred on written orders. The receipts 
were commonly used in Venice as money. The 
Bank of Amsterdam and the Bank of Hamburg 
were founded about the same time, and exer¬ 
cised the same functions. The receipts which 
they issued for deposits w T ere commonly called 
bank money, or current money. 

Banking in the United States. The history 
of banking in the United States properly began 
in 1782, with the chartering of the Bank of 
North America. In colonial days there were 
no banks in the sense in which the word is 
used to-day. There were a few organizations, 
called banks, which issued notes, but they did 
not receive deposits or carry on any other 
feature of a general banking business. So 
insignificant, indeed, were they, that the name 
bank was frequently given to the paper money 
issued by them and by the colonies. Most of 
the colonial governments at one time or an¬ 
other issued notes as loans to private individ¬ 
uals, who offered mortgages, silverware, horses 
and other property as security. 

All this confusion came to an end in 1789, 
for the individual states, under the terms of 
the Constitution, were not allowed to issue 
notes. The Congress of the Confederation had 
alread}^ chartered three banks, the Bank of 
North America at Philadelphia, the Bank of 
New York at New York City, and the Bank of 
Massachusetts at Boston. Then, in 1791, Con¬ 
gress chartered a new bank, larger than any 
of the others and more closely connected with 
the Federal government—the Bank of the 
United States (which see). For twenty years 
the Bank of the United States dominated the 


banking system of the country. There were a 
number of state banks, however, whose com¬ 
bined influence was strong enough to prevent 
a renewal of the Bank’s charter in 1811. 

Then followed a five-year period of hopeless 
confusion and depression, during which most 
of the state banks suspended specie payments. 
At the close of the War of 1812 the demand 
for the “old regulator” grew strong, and in 
1816 Congress issued a charter for the second 
Bank of the United States. This Bank, like 
the first, prospered, but through no fault of its 
own the renewal of its charter became a politi¬ 
cal, not a financial, question. The Bank in¬ 
curred the enmity of President Jackson, whose 
efforts were chiefly responsible for its end. 

The next twenty-five years included two 
periods of great expansion among state banks, 
and two periods of depression and general sus¬ 
pension of specie payments. Previous to the 
financial crises of 1837 and 1857, there was a 
rapid growth in the number of state banks and 
their deposits and loans. But the banking 
expansion was merely one phase of the mush¬ 
room development of the country. The craze 
for “internal improvements” meant plenty of 
money and large paper profits for banks, and 
many banks did a flourishing business on little 
or no capital. When the crash came in 1837 
practically every bank in the country sus¬ 
pended specie payments. During the whole 
of this quarter-century bank notes were con¬ 
stantly changing in value, and weekly guides 
w r ere published showing the current values and 
discounts. When 800 or 900 banks w’ere each 
issuing five or six different kinds of notes it 
required more than memory to know which 
ones were safe. Added to the large number 
of good notes were hundreds of counterfeits 
and countless pieces of paper labeled “notes” 
and issued by banks which never existed. See 
Wildcat Banks. 

In 1846 Congress attempted to end all con¬ 
nection between the banks of the country and 
the government treasury by establishing a sys¬ 
tem of treasury branches in the large cities. 
This system, though considerably modified, is 
still the basis of banking in the United States. 
The first change came soon after the outbreak 
of the War of Secession. 

National Banks. The beginning of war made 
large demands on the credit of the national 
government. One of the duties presented to 
Congress was the devising of some new plan 
of banking. Instead of a confused and unstable 
system which had prevailed for twenty-five 


BANKS AND BANKING 


580 


BANKS AND BANKING 


years, the government needed a unified and 
absolutely safe system, one that would operate 
in every part of the country. After much dis¬ 
cussion a new law was drafted and passed in 
February, 1863. This law was faulty in a few 
minor respects, and was replaced by one of 
June 3, 1864. 

The new system provided for the establish¬ 
ment of national banks , and these were placed 
under the supervision of an officer in the 
Treasury Department, the Comptroller of the 
Currency. Each national bank was allowed 
to issue notes on the basis of bonds purchased 
by it from the government. At least thirty 
per cent of a bank’s capital was to be invested 
in United States bonds, which were then to be 
deposited with the Treasurer of the United 
States, and the bank was allowed to issue notes 
up to ninety per cent of the par value of the 
bonds. These notes were made legal tender 
for all debts except customs duties. The mini¬ 
mum capital for a national bank in a city of 
more than 6,000 people was fixed at $100,000; 
the minimum in smaller communities was fixed 
at $50,000. The currency law of 1900 contained 
an amendment which fixed $25,000 as the mini¬ 
mum capital for a bank in a town of less than 
3,000. 

The system as adopted included a number 
of notable improvements over the old con¬ 
fusion. In the first place, the bank notes were 
printed under the direction of the government. 
They were uniform in design, and as the banks 
were required to keep adequate reserves, they 
were uniform in value throughout the country. 
The note of a Chicago bank was then worth 
as much in New York as in New Orleans. 
The holders of these notes were protected by 
the bonds which formed the basis for the note 
issue. The depositors in national banks were 
given good security for their money, for the 
law made the stockholders liable for the bank’s 
debts to double the amount of their holdings 
of stock. More important still, national banks 
are required to keep their accounts in a uni¬ 
form manner and must submit them on demand 
to inspection by government examiners. 

The state banks were slow to see the ad¬ 
vantages of the new system, and at the begin¬ 
ning of 1865 there were only 638 national banks. 
It seemed as if one of the primary objects of 
the law, to secure a market for government 
bonds, had failed. To hasten the reorganiza¬ 
tion of state banks, Congress passed a law 
placing a tax of ten per cent on their note 
circulation. By the time this tax went into 


effect, on July 1, 1866, 1,000 more banks had 
received national charters. The number of 
national banks increased gradually, until in 
1900 it was about 3,600. Largely because the 
act of 1900 reduced the minimum capital from 
$50,000 to $25,000, the number of banks in¬ 
creased to 7,045 in 1910 and to 7,500 in 1915. 

Banking Reform. The inflexibility of the 
national banking system was plainly evident in 
1903 and during the financial panic of 1907. 
In the latter year the Aldrich-Vreeland Bill, 
providing for the issuance of emergency cur¬ 
rency, was passed, but no bank ever cared to 
take advantage of the law lest such action be 
regarded as evidence of extreme weakness. 
The need for new monetary legislation became 
more and more evident, and in 1910 the Senate 
of the United States appointed a National 
Monetary Commission, under the chairmanship 
of Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, to investigate 
the whole question of banking reform. The 
Aldrich plan, as proposed in a report issued in 
1911, called for a National Reserve xAssociation, 
which was practically a central bank. 

It was soon evident, however, that the report 
of the Commission would carry no weight, and 
that the public w 7 as fearful of a central bank. 
Accordingly the National Citizens’ League was 
organized to create a public sentiment in favor 
of some banking system, and this organization 
put out a platform which, for three years, was 
pressed home to the public by publicity meth¬ 
ods and by addresses, until the country was 
ready, in 1911, to support Congress in the 
framing of a new monetary measure. The 
work of the National Citizens’ League ran for 
a period of about three years and cost between 
$500,000 and $600,000, but it was so effective 
•that when the Banking and Currency Commit¬ 
tee of the House took up the question of form¬ 
ing a banking bill they had the country behind 
them with an almost unanimous insistence that 
the work be speedily done. The system created 
by the law of 1913, the present Federal Reserve 
system, differs from the plan of the Aldrich 
Commission chiefly in that the function of 
issue lies with the Federal Reserve Board, and 
the concentration is in twelve centers instead 
of one. A feature of the Aldrich plan, which 
did survive, was a provision for district asso¬ 
ciations and for branches of the district asso¬ 
ciations. These latter have never been put 
into operation. 

Federal Reserve Banks. The locations of 
the twelve Federal Reserve Banks created by 
the act of 1913, and the districts which they 


BANKS AND BANKING 


581 


BANKS AND BANKING 


FEDERAL RESERVE DISTRICTS 
The twelve districts and location of the Reserve Bank in each. 



serve, are shown on the accompanying map. 
Every national bank in the United States must 
subscribe six per cent of its capital and surplus 
to the stock of the reserve bank in its district. 
State banks may subscribe, but are not re¬ 
quired to do so. As the capital and surplus 
of individual banks vary from year to year, 
the capital of the reserve bank varies, but the 
minimum capital is $4,000,000. 

Each reserve bank is under the direction of 
a board of nine directors, three of whom are 
bankers named by the member-banks of the 
district, three of whom are citizens, not bank¬ 
ers, but named by the banks, and three of 
whom are appointed by the Federal Reserve 
Board at Washington. The Federal Reserve 
Board is in supreme control of the entire sys¬ 
tem. It is composed of the Secretary of the 
Treasury and the Comptroller of the Currency, 
who are members ex officio, and five other 
members appointed by the President for a 
term of ten years at a yearly salary of $12,000. 
Two of these five members must be experienced 
bankers, but must have no connection with any 
bank during their term of office. 

The primary function of a Federal Reserve 
Bank is to rediscount commercial paper. A 


national bank, for example, presents to the 
reserve bank notes which it has discounted for 
its own customers. The reserve bank redis¬ 
counts the notes, thus releasing the funds of 
the national bank. In ordinary times the 
reserve bank will pay for such commercial 
paper out of its current funds, but if there is 
a great demand for money, and if much paper 
is being presented, it will pay for them in 
Federal Reserve or treasury notes. These notes 
are issued in denominations of $5, $10, $20, $50 
and $100. If the demand increases the supply 
automatically keeps pace. A reserve bank is 
not allowed to pay out the notes of another, 
except on the payment of a ten per cent tax. 
This tax is prohibitive, and hastens the retire¬ 
ment of notes as soon as they have served 
their immediate purpose. The United States 
Treasury will redeem in gold all Federal Re¬ 
serve notes presented to it, and the reserve 
banks keep in the Treasury a redemption fund 
for this purpose. 

One of the three directors of each bank, 
appointed by the President, is designated Fed¬ 
eral Reserve Agent, and the notes are in his 
custody until they are needed. To secure the 
notes the reserve bank must deposit with this 












BANKS AND BANKING 


582 


BANKS AND BANKING 


agent the commercial paper which it is buying. 
As an additional security it must maintain a 
gold reserve of forty per cent of the face value 
of the notes. 

Besides making the currency more flexible, 
the law of 1913 extends the privileges of 
national banks. With the approval of the Fed¬ 
eral Reserve Board any national bank whose 
capital and surplus total $1,000,000 may estab¬ 
lish branches in foreign countries. Any reserve 
bank may also buy and sell in the open market, 
either at home or abroad, various kinds of com¬ 
mercial paper. Another notable feature is 
that the banks in the United States are for the 
first time allowed to recognize the peculiar 
needs of agriculture. A Federal Reserve Bank 
may discount ordinary commercial paper for 
ninety days, but it may discount for six months 
any paper issued for agricultural purposes. 
National banks everywhere, except in New 
York, Chicago and Saint Louis, may make 
loans on farm mortgages for a period not 
exceeding five years. Such loans must not 
exceed twenty-five per cent of the bank’s cap¬ 
ital and surplus and fifty per cent of the value 
of the farms mortgaged. 

Bank Reserves. Under the old law of 1864 
there were three cities, New York, Chicago and 
Saint Louis, which were “central reserve cities”; 
besides, there were a number of “reserve cities.” 
The law of 1913 keeps this distinction. In the 
three cities named each national bank must 
keep a cash reserve of eighteen per cent of 
its demand deposits and five per cent of its 
time deposits. In the other nine reserve cities, 
only fifteen per cent of the demand liabilities 
must be kept in reserve, and in all other cities 
only twelve per cent is required. In every 
bank, however, five per cent of its time lia¬ 
bilities is the minimum reserve. Only a part 
of the reserves, however, need be held in the 
bank’s own vaults; the remainder must be 
placed on deposit with the Federal Reserve 
Bank of the district. This bank, in turn, must 
keep a cash reserve of thirty-five per cent of 
its total deposits. 

Summary of Banking in the United States. 

There were in the United States at the end 
of June 1915, 19,460 banks, the total paid-in 
capital stock of which amounted to $1,094,297,- 
274.93. The surplus fund amounted to $1,010,- 
908,917.30. The number of banks included 
14,605 state banks, 630 mutual savings banks, 
1,529 stock savings banks, 1,660 loan and trust 
companies and 1,036 private banks. The total 
resources of all banks totaled $16,010,061,699.58. 


Banking in Canada. The first attempt to 
organize a bank in Canada was made in 1792, 
when the Canada Banking Company of Mont¬ 
real applied for a charter. In the next twenty 
years several others attempted to secure char¬ 
ters from the government; all failed. Finally, 
in 1817, a number of citizens organized the 
“Montreal Bank,” a private institution. It 
was later chartered by the government, and 
is still world-famous as the “Bank of Montreal.” 

For fifty years, banking in Canada, then a 
group of separate colonies, made steady but not 
sensational progress. In 1867, by the British 
North America Act creating the Dominion of 
Canada, it was placed under the control of the 
Dominion government. The acts of Parlia¬ 
ment on which the present system is based were 
passed in May, 1870, and April, 1871. Banks 
are chartered for ten-year periods, and there is 
a provision that the banking laws shall be 
revised every ten years. In 1910, however, no 
revision was attempted because of disturbed 
conditions, and the next banking act was passed 
in 1913, to be effective until 1923. 

These decennial revisions have added to the 
safety of the Canadian system, but have not 
altered its principles. The law of 1890, for 
example, created a redemption fund for bank 
notes, each bank being required to deposit with 
the government a cash payment of five per cent 
of its maximum circulation. If any bank’s 
assets are not enough to pay its outstanding 
notes, the difference is made up from this fund. 
In this way all the banks become responsible 
for the payment of the notes of each individual 
bank. In 1900 the law provided for the or¬ 
ganization of the Canadian Bankers’ Associa¬ 
tion, which exercises a general supervision over 
all banks. The act of 1913 made a few new 
regulations for the protection of the stock¬ 
holder and the depositor. An interesting inno¬ 
vation was the permission given to the banks 
to lend money on farm stock and on grain in 
storage. The act also creates a central gold 
reserve, under the control of a board of trus¬ 
tees. A bank may issue notes, dollar for dol¬ 
lar, for all gold or Dominion notes deposited by 
it in this reserve fund. 

To secure a government charter, a bank must 
have a capital of $500,000, one-half of which 
must be paid in before the charter is granted. 
While the organization is being perfected, this 
sum of $250,000 is in the custody of the govern¬ 
ment. The laws of the Dominion fix the de¬ 
tails of the process of organization. A director 
of the bank is required to own at least three 


BANKS AND BANKING 


583 


BANKS AND BANKING 


OUTLINE AND QUESTIONS ON BANKS AND 

BANKING 


Outline 


I. Functions of the Bank 

(1) As borrowers or custodians of funds 

(a) Safekeeping of funds 

(b) Use of the check 

(c) Collection of checks on different 
banks 

(d) Checking accounts 

(e) Savings accounts 

(f) Actual borrowing of banks 
(2 ) As lenders 

(a) Call loans 

(b) Time loans 

(c) Collateral 

(d) Form of loan 

1. Deposit credit 

2. Certificates of deposit 

(e) Loaning of capital 

(f) Loaning of deposits 

1. Necessity for reserve 

2. Dangers of unrestricted pri¬ 
vate banks 

( 3 ) Trust companies 

(a) May or may not be bank 

(b) Advantage over individual trus¬ 
tees 

(4) Savings banks 

(a) Postal savings banks 

(b) School savings banks 


II. History of Banking 

(1) Origin 

(2) Beginnings of modern banking 

(3) Banking in the United States 
. (a) In the colonies 

(b) The Bank of the United States, 
1791 

( c) State banks 

(d) Second Bank of the United 
States, 1816 

(e) Growth of state banks 

(f) Wildcat banks 

(g) National banks 

1. Government supervision 

2. Minimum capital 

(h) Banking reform 

1. Aldrich plan 

2. Federal Reserve Banks 

3. Banking x-eserves 

(4) Banking in Canada 

(a) In colonial times 

(b) Governmental control 

(c) Recent laws 

(d) Method of organization 

(e) The reserve question 


Questions 

What is the greatest service which a bank performs for a community? 

What are the two great advantages of a check? 

What play of Shakespeare’s tells something of banking methods in early mod¬ 
ern times? 

What did the National Citizens’ League accomplish? 

How large a capital must a Canadian bank have to secure a government charter? 

Under what circumstances may the depositors of a savings bank not receive 
their deposits on demand? 

What was the popular name for the Bank of the United States in its early days? 

Under what conditions may one reserve bank pay out the notes of another? 

Why cannot a bank be run without capital, solely with the funds of its depos¬ 
itors? 

How did the War of Secession affect banking in the United States? 

What is the difference between a “central reserve city” and a “reserve city”? 

If a depositor in a bank draws a check in favor of another depositor in the same 
bank, how is the matter adjusted? 

What different meanings attached to the word “banks” in colonial times in 
America? 
















BANKS AND BANKING 


584 


BANKS AND BANKING 



Outline and Questiovis on Banks and Banking—Continued 

How many Federal Reserve Banks are there? 

How much must each national bank subscribe to the reserve bank of its district? 

How does Canada deal with the question of bank reserve? 

Why is it absolutely necessary that banks be lenders as well as custodians of 
funds? 

What is the difference between a call loan and a time loan? 

Has the establishment of Federal Reserve Banks given to the national banks 
any new privileges? 

What is the advantage of a trust companj r over an individual trustee? 

Give briefly statistics showing the increase in the number of national banks in 
the United States. 

What is the oldest bank in Canada, and what is its present status? 

Why is no interest usually paid on checking accounts? 

When was the first Bank of the United States chartered, and how long did it 
exist ? 

How many directors has a Federal Reserve Bank, and how do they obtain 
their office? 

Why cannot small independent banks exist in all the cities of Canada? What 
makes up for this lack? 

What was the Aldrich-Vreeland Bill, and why did it have no effect on the bank¬ 
ing conditions of the country? 

How are matters arranged in Canada so that all the banks are responsible for 
the payment of the notes of each bank? 

Why is it not safe to deposit money in a private bank, that is, one not under 
government supervision? 

What were the advantages of the banking system established in the United 
States in 1864 over that previously in force? 

About what is the total capital stock of the banks of the United States? What 
are their combined resources? 

What are certificates of deposit? 

Why was it necessary at one time to issue weekly statements as to the value 
of bank notes? 

What are the duties of a Federal Reserve agent? 

What is meant by the “double liability” of stockholders? Is it in force both 
in the United States and in Canada? 

May a bank safely loan all of its capital? All of its deposits? Why? 

What are the functions of a clearing house? 

Why was the establishment of special “savings” banks considered necessary? 

Where are the Federal Reserve Banks located? 

About what is the total capital of the chartered banks of Canada? 

What is meant by collateral , and of what does it usually consist? 

What is the smallest sum that may be deposited in a postal savings bank? 

How large a sum may one depositor have to his credit? 

What restrictions as to farm mortgages are placed on the banks of Chicago, 
New York and Saint Louis? 

What provision is made in Canada for the revision of banking laws? 

What is the object of school savings banks, and how have they accomplished 
their purpose? 

What were “Wildcat” banks? 

















BANKS 


585 


BANNS OF MARRIAGE 


per cent of its stock; if its capital is $1,000,000, 
he must invest $30,000. The par value of all 
bank shares is $100. As in the United States, 
stockholders have a “double liability”; in other 
words, if the bank fails and its assets are not 
enough to pay its debts, a stockholder is liable 
for an additional $100 for every $100 share he 
owns. 

In the United States, national banks, as 
explained above, are required to keep a fixed 
percentage of their deposits as reserve. In 
Canada there is no fixed reserve, 'the only 
requirement being that forty per cent of what¬ 
ever reserve a bank does keep must be in legal 
tender. A restraining influence on reckless 
financiering is exerted by the Canadian Bank¬ 
ers’ Association and by the fact that a detailed 
statement of the bank’s accounts must be sent 
to the government each month. This state¬ 
ment is published in the Canada Gazette. 

The large capital required before a Dominion 
charter may be issued makes it impossible to 
establish independent banks in all the cities 
which need banking facilities. Canadian char¬ 
tered banks, however, establish branches 
throughout the Dominion, and there is no 
town of consequence without one or more 
branches. Each branch has its own local man¬ 
ager, its own depositors and its own accounts, 
but the manager is responsible to the home 
office. There are now about twenty-two char¬ 
tered banks in the Dominion, and over 3,000 
branch banks. The authorized capital of these 
chartered banks amounts to nearly $189,000,000, 
and the reserve fund is over $113,000,000. h.w. 

Consult Muhleman’s Government Supervision 
of Banking Throughout the World; Dunbar’s 
Theory and History of Banking. 

BANK, Savings. See Savings Bank. 

BANKS, Nathaniel Prentiss (1816-1894), 
an American soldier, born at Waltham, Mass., 
and popularly known as “the bobbin boy,” be¬ 
cause as a child he worked in a factory. He 
studied law, was admitted to the bar, and after 
serving in the state legislature was elected in 
1853 to Congress, where he was made Speaker 
of the House of Representatives. In 1857 he 
became governor of Massachusetts, and on the 
breaking out of the War of Secession joined the 
Union army. His first achievement of note was 
the defeat of “Stonewall” Jackson at Win¬ 
chester in 1862. Later in the year, after hold¬ 
ing the command of the defenses at Washing¬ 
ton, he was placed in charge of an expedition 
to New Orleans, and on his arrival in that city 
succeeded Butler as commander of the Depart¬ 


ment of the Gulf. He was successful in com¬ 
pelling the surrender of Port Hudson, but 
failed, in 1864, in an expedition up the Red 
River and was relieved of his command. Re¬ 
signing his commission, he returned to Massa¬ 
chusetts and was again elected to Congress, 
where he served for five terms, much of that 
time as chairman of the committee on foreign 
relations. In 1888 he was again elected to Con¬ 
gress but two j^ears later retired from public 
life. 

BANNOCKBURN, ban' uk burn, a village in 
Scotland where Robert Bruce, in 1314, won 
independence for his country by his victory 
over Edward II of England, and secured for 
himself the throne of Scotland. The English 
had the advantage in numbers, the Scotch in 
position, and the latter further aided their 
cause by digging a number of military pits 
along the line of the enemy’s advance. The 
English were totally routed, losing 10,000 foot 
soldiers and 200 knights out of their army of 
60,000. The Scotch army, 40,000 in number, 
suffered a loss of 4,000. The ringing lines of 
Burns’s Bannockburn, the first stanza of which 
follows, contain the words that the poet fancied 
Bruce addressed to his soldiers just before the 
fight: 

Scots, wha hae wi’ Wallace bled; 

Scots, wham Bruce has aften led ; 

Welcome to your gory bed, 

Or to glorious victorie! 

The village of Bannockburn is about three 
miles southeast of Stirling, on the Bannock 
rivulet. Though its population is less than 
3,000, it has important manufactures of tweeds, 
carpets, tartans and leather. An object of 
interest in the town is the stone in which 
Bruce set his flagstaff before the famous battle. 

BANNS OF MARRIAGE, the public an¬ 
nouncement, usually read in a church, of the 
intention of a man and a woman to be joined 
in marriage. The custom of publishing mar¬ 
riage banns originated in the desire of the 
Church to protect its children from harmful 
or unsuitable unions, for anyone who hears the 
banns read is privileged to object to the 
approaching marriage if he knows of any reason 
why it should not take place. The great Cath¬ 
olic Council of Lateran, held in 1215, ordered 
banns to be published before the marriage 
ceremony in every Christian country. The 
custom is still generally practiced in Roman 
Catholic countries and in England, and also 
prevails among the Roman Catholics of Canada 
and the United States. 


BANTU 


586 


BAPTISM 


BANTU, ban too', the name applied to a 
large group of native tribes of Central and 
South Africa, varying in many respects physi¬ 
cally and racially, but all speaking languages 
derived from one original tongue. Of all the 
Bantu tribes the most powerful are the Zulus, 
who regard themselves as far superior to all 
other African natives, whom they class as 
“dogs.” The Basutos, an offspring of the Zulu 
nations by emigration and intermarriage with 
Kaffir tribes, the Matabele, the Swahili and the 
Bechuanas, are also important branches of the 
Bantu nations. With the exception of the 
Hereros, the Bantus are all agriculturists and 
understand the arts of pottery making, weav¬ 
ing and iron smelting. Until recent years, 
however, their principal occupation was war, 
only women performing the useful tasks of hus¬ 
bandry and cattle raising. 


on the island of Ceylon, which has 350 great 
trunks and over 3,000 smaller ones. A certain 
banyan, famed in history, was so huge that 
7,000 men camped under it. Banyan wood is 
soft and porous, and from its white, sticky juice 
bird-lime is sometimes prepared. 

BAPTISM, bap' tis’m, a Christian ceremon} 7 
or rite by which a person seals his vows to God 
and the Church. While on earth, Christ com¬ 
manded his disciples, “Go and teach all nations, 
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and 
of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.” Before 
Christ gave this commission to the disciples, 
John the Baptist had preached repentance, and 
had baptized many, and Christ came to him 
to be baptized in the Jordan. 

Baptism was established as a requirement 
for admission to the Church of Christ from the 
beginning. On the day of Pentecost, “Peter 



THE BANYAN TREE 

At the left, the largest banyan tree in the world, described in the text; at the right, a small 
tree, showing how the larger ones develop. 


BAN'YAN, or BANIAN, a remarkable tree 
of India, which may in itself reach the size of 
a grove or small forest. The peculiar feature 
of this tree is its method of growth. In the 
first place, it does not usually begin on the 
ground. Seeds are dropped by birds in the 
tops of palm trees, where they speedily germi¬ 
nate, sending down roots to the soil, and, in 
time, killing the tree on which they grow. 
Then, as branches develop, these throw down 
supports, which take root as soon as they touch 
the ground, enlarge into trunks and extend 
branches in their turn, eventually covering a 
wide extent of ground. 

As the Hindu word for trader is banian, it 
is probable that the tree is named because the 
Hindu merchants frequently spread their goods 
in the shade of these tree-forests. One of the 
most famous of the banyan trees is that in the 
Botanic Garden at Calcutta, with its main trunk 
of thirty feet circumference and its 230 smaller 
trunks. The largest banyan tree known is 


said unto them, Repent and be baptized every¬ 
one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the 
remission of your sins, and ye shall receive the 
gift of the Holy Ghost. Then they that gladly 
received his word were baptized.” Wherever 
churches were established converts w 7 ere bap¬ 
tized. The baptism of John signified repent¬ 
ance for sin; that ordained by Christ, the 
reception of the Holy Spirit. 

At first all baptism was by immersion, and 
some denominations, particularly the Baptist, 
still hold to that mode, but the method of 
sprinkling or pouring is now in use in most 
Protestant churches. The ceremony varies in 
minor particulars in different denominations, 
but the significance of the rite is the same 
in all. 

Infant Baptism. The Roman Catholic and 
Greek Reformed churches baptize infants, as do 
most of the Protestant denominations. When 
the infant is baptized he is dedicated to Christ 
and the Church, but the conditions upon which 































































BAPTISTS 


587 


BARBARA FRIETCHIE 


the child may in after years be admitted into 
full membership in the Church vary widely 
among the different denominations. 

BAP'TISTS, a Protestant denomination 
which holds that the only acceptable mode of 
baptism is by immersion (see Baptism). The 
name was first applied in 1644 to English con¬ 
gregations holding this opinion. The first Bap¬ 
tist church in America was founded by Roger 
Williams at Providence, Rhode Island, in 1639. 
There are twelve different branches of Baptists 
in the United States. They have about 43,000 
ministers, over 57,000 churches and over 6,000,- 
000 members. The Church in Canada has 
about 390,000 members. 

Baptist Young People’s Union. On July 7 
and 8, 1891, all the organizations of young 
people of the Baptist churches in America 
united in a federation to which they gave the 
name, The Baptist Young People’s Union of 
America. The organization has branch societies 
in every state in the Union and every province 
of Canada. The main purpose of the society 
is to so organize the young people of the 
denomination that they will assist in the most 
efficient manner in carrying on the activities of 
the Church. 

Free Baptists, one of the largest branches of 
the Baptist Church, founded in 1780 in New 
Hampshire by Benjamin Randall, which differs 
from the main body of the Church by having 
open communion. After 1820 the Church made 
great progress in New England and the Middle 
West. At present its membership in America 
averages about 150,000. 

BARABBAS, ba rab ' as, the murderer whom 
Pilate released to the Jews when he delivered 
Jesus to be crucified. Pilate was the Roman 
governor of Judea, and according to the New 
Testament account, it was customary to par¬ 
don one or more prisoners during the feast of 
the Passover. Desiring to pacify the Jews 
and at the same time escape the responsibility 
of sentencing Jesus to be executed, he said to 
the Jews: “Whether of the twain will ye that 
I release unto you? They said Barabbas.” 

BARBADOS, bahrba' doze, the most east¬ 
erly of the West India Islands, and the most 
densely populated island in the world, aver¬ 
aging 1,120 people per square mile. It is of 
coral formation and is probably founded on a 
volcanic base, as it is subject to earthquakes. 
The climate is mild and healthful. In 1752 
George Washington undertook the one foreign 
journey of his life, accompanying his invalid 
brother Lawrence to Barbados, 


The soil in the lowlands is very fertile, and 
large crops of sugar cane are raised. Other 
important products are cotton, coffee, tobacco, 
indigo and arrowroot. The leading industries 
are the manufacture of sugar and rum, but the 
island has considerable commerce and im¬ 
portant fisheries. Barbados is the headquarters 
for the English forces in the West Indies. The 
capital is Bridgetown, on the only good harbor 
the island possesses. The island was discovered 
in 1518, was occupied by the British in 1625, 
and has always been a British possession. It is 
administered by a governor, assisted by an ex¬ 
ecutive committee and a legislative council, all 
appointed by the British government, and a 
house of assembly elected by the people. Pop¬ 
ulation in 1911, 171,982. 

BAR'BARA, Saint, a saint of the Roman 
Catholic Church who, according to legend, was 
beheaded by her father for accepting Chris¬ 
tianity. No sooner had he killed her than 
he himself was struck dead by lightning, and so 
Saint Barbara is prayed to in time of storm, 
and is considered the guardian saint of artil¬ 
lery. The powder room in a French ship of 
war is named Sainte-Barbe. Saint Barbara’s 
day is the fourth of December. She is sup¬ 
posed to have lived in the third century and 
to have suffered martyrdom at Nicomedia, in 
Asia Minor. 

BAR'BARA FRIETCHIE, f re'chi, the aged 
heroine of Whittier’s poem of that name, who 
risked her life to save her country’s flag from 
dishonor. The poem is based on a story that 
sprang up during the War of Secession, and 
was first published in the Atlantic Monthly in 
1863. According to the story, the men of 
Frederick, Md., hauled down the American 
flag on the approach of the Confederate troops 
under Stonewall Jackson. Old Barbara Friet- 
chie, “bowed with her fourscore years and ten,” 
loyally set the flagstaff in her attic window, 
and when the Confederates, at the word of 
command, rent the banner with a blast from 
their rifles, she dauntlessly seized the flag and, 
in the words of the poem— 

She heaved far out on the window-sill 
And shook it forth with a royal will. 

“Shoot, if you must, this gray old head, 

But spare your country’s flag,” she said. 

Stonewall Jackson was moved by her ap¬ 
peal, for— 

A shade of sadness, a blush of shame 
Over the face of the leader came; 

“Who touches a hair of yon gray head 
Dies like a dog! March on!” he said. 


BARBARIAN 


588 


BARBARY STATES 


Barbara Frietchie is one of the best of Whit¬ 
tier’s shorter narrative poems, and its martial 
ring, interesting story and pleasing rhythm 
make it a great favorite with children. 

BARBAR'IAN, a name given by the Greeks 
to everyone who spoke any language but 
Greek. Thus when Saint Paul, in his Epistle 
to the Romans, said “I am debtor both to the 
Greeks and to the barbarians,” he meant not 
uncivilized people, but simply non-Greeks. 
Originally the word had no unpleasant mean¬ 
ing, but naturally, because the Greeks thought 
themselves superior intellectually to any other 
people, it soon took on something of the mod¬ 
ern meaning—rude, uncivilized and illiterate. 


The Greeks applied the term to the Romans, 
who in turn made use of it to describe all who 
spoke neither Latin nor Greek. The origin of 
the word is uncertain, but it probably was an 
imitation of some of the senseless sounds of 
which, to the Greek ear, all other languages 
seemed to be made up. 

BARBAROSSA, barbaliros' a, a surname 
given to Frederick I of Germany (which see). 
It means Redbeard. 

BARBARY, bahr’ bari, STATES, those 
countries in North Africa that lie along the 
southern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, the 
modern names of which are Morocco, Algeria, 
Tunis and Libya (until 1912, Tripoli and Bar¬ 
ca). They are inhabited by settled, and also 
by wandering, Arabs, Moors, Jews, Turks, ne¬ 
groes, a few Europeans and by the Berbers, 
the original inhabitants, from whom the region 
takes its name. 

Historically, the Barbary states are of great 
interest. Along the coast in ancient times the 
Phoenicians established thriving colonies and 


cities, the most famous of these being Carthage, 
renowned for its wealth and splendor. It was 
envied by the Romans, who sacked and de¬ 
stroyed it in 146 b. c. In the time of Emperor 
Constantine the Romans held sway over nine 
provinces in North Africa, and the ruins of 
the great towns they built are to-day an inter¬ 
esting feature of the country. The Moors, 
driven out of Spain by the Christians in the 
fifteenth century, settled in North Africa and 
began a career of piracy that made them the 
terror of Mediterranean seamen for years, and 
the European nations secured protection for 
their commerce only by the payment of tribute. 

The United States, in the early years of its 


history as a nation, took the initiative in put¬ 
ting a stop to these outrages. In a war with 
Tripoli (1801-1804), in which the Americans 
distinguished themselves in many daring ex¬ 
ploits, the ruler of Tripoli was forced to respect 
the sea rights of others. There was further 
trouble during the War of 1812, but in 1815 
Algiers, Tripoli and Tunis were glad to sign 
peace treaties with the United States when a 
fleet commanded by Stephen Decatur sailed 
into the harbors of their chief ports. Since 
then the Barbary pirates have given no trouble. 

Turkey, once the dominant power in North 
Africa, has no authority in the Barbary states 
at the present time. Algiers is a French colony, 
Morocco and Tunis are French protectorates, 
and Tripoli, including Barca, was wrested from 
Turkey by Italy in 1912, and the name changed 
to Libya. See Morocco; Algiers; Tunis; 
Tripoli. 

Consult Pool and Kelly’s The Story of the 
Barbary Corsairs; Allen’s Our Navy and, the 
Barb ary Corsairs. 
















BARBECUE 


589 BARBI20N PAINTERS 


BARBECUE, bahr' be ku, a word of doubt¬ 
ful origin. It first signified the practice of 
roasting a hog, ox, or other large animal entire, 
on a rude gridiron of stakes placed in an open 
field. From this the meaning of the word has 
been extended to apply to any open air cele¬ 
bration where animals roasted whole, and large 
quantities of other food and drink are the lead¬ 
ing feature of entertainment. Barbecues, espe¬ 
cially in the West and South, were formerly 
often given in connection with open air public 
meetings, but they have lost much of their 
popular character, and have been abandoned 
completely in most parts of the country. 

BARBER, a word derived from the Latin 
barba, meaning a beard, and applied to one 
whose occupation is to shave or trim the beard 
and cut and dress the hair. In early days bar¬ 
bers also practiced surgery, but the two pro¬ 
fessions were made distinct by an act passed 
during the reign of Henry VIII by which the 
barber-surgeons were forbidden to perform any 
surgical operation but blood-letting and tooth 
drawing, and the surgeons were not to practice 
“barbery,” or shaving. This continued till the 
time of George II. 

The sign of the old profession—the pole with 
its stripes representing the bandage with wh-ich 
the barber wrapped the patient after blood¬ 
letting—is still retained by barbers. In the 
United States barbers are organized in a power¬ 
ful trade union which regulates wages, hours of 
work and charges to be made. Women have 
entered the profession in large cities, where 
they feel public opinion will not frown too 
heavily upon them. There are barbers’ schools 
in which young men may learn the trade in a 
fairly scientific way, but most barbers begin 
their career in this trade as boys-of-all-work in 
the shop and gradually learn the details. 

Barbers Itch. This is an irritating, unsightly 
and infectious rash, appearing on the face and 
neck, so-called because it is usually conveyed 
by the use of unclean barbers’ instruments. If 
not carefully treated, the rash develops into 
large sores which discharge yellowish matter or 
pus. The trouble is caused by a parasitic 
fungus which finds its way into the hair cavi¬ 
ties; it can be cured only by the complete 
destruction of the parasite. This can be ac¬ 
complished by use of antiseptic washes, but it 
is always advisable to obtain a physician’s 
advice. 

In many states barbers are required to keep 
their various instruments in an antiseptic con¬ 
dition. Their shops are regularly inspected by 


an expert working under the authority of the 
state. 

BAR'BERRY, an ornamental shrub con¬ 
sisting of about 100 species, which grow in the 
temperate regions of both the eastern and 
western hemispheres. The common barberry, 
found in Eastern New England and in the 
Upper Mississippi valley, is a spiny shrub 
from four to six feet high, bearing oblong 
leaves with saw-toothed edges, pale yellow 
flowers and scarlet or orange-scarlet berries. 
The latter are extremely sour, and are used 
in making a jelly of beautiful color and at¬ 
tractive flavor. The stamens of the barberry 
blossoms are interesting to study, for they are 
held away from the pistils by a fold in the 
corolla, and are released only by the breath 
of the wind, a touch of the hand or a passing 
insect. The barberry is a favorite shrub for 
hedge fences, but should not be planted in 
wheat-growing districts, as a yellow fungus, 
very destructive to the grain, is often found on 
the under side of the leaves. The root of some 
species of barberry produces a yellow dye used 
in coloring wool, and the bark of some is used 
in tanning. India produces a barberry that has 
medicinal properties, the extract obtained from 
it being used in treating inflammation of the 
eye. 

BARBERTON, Ohio, a city in Summit 
County, in the northeastern part of the state, 
known locally as the Magic City, because of its 
rapid growth. It was settled in 1815, but its 
growth began in 1892, when it was incorpo¬ 
rated; in that year O. C. Barber, president of 
the Diamond Match Company, centered his 
interests here. In 1910 the population was 
9,410; in 1914 there was an increase to 12,092. 
The city is seven miles southwest of Akron and 
thirty miles south of Cleveland, on the Erie, 
the Baltimore & Ohio and Pennsylvania rail¬ 
roads; an electric line extends west to Wads¬ 
worth. The area exceeds two square miles. 

The chief industry of Barberton is that of 
making matches and match-machinery. Sew T er- 
pipes, boilers, chemicals, valves, rubber, straw- 
board, pottery, porcelain, salt and paint are 
among other important manufactures. Barber¬ 
ton was originally known as New Portage. 

BARBIZON, bahr be zon' , PAINTERS, one 
of the most important groups of nature paint¬ 
ers in all the history of art. They lived and 
worked in the Barbizon region in France, near 
the forest of Fontainebleau, and were not a 
“school” of painters any more than the Lake 
poets of England were a “school” of poets. 


BARBOUR 


590 


BAR HARBOR 


They had certain very definite ideas in com¬ 
mon, however, and these ideas they succeeded 
in making central in much of modern art. 
First of all, they insisted that every picture, 
whether it represented a landscape, a scene 
from peasant life, or a group of cattle, must be 
painted directly from nature; and second, they 
believed that every picture must express the 
artist’s mood. 

Some of the greatest of French artists were 
Barbizon painters, for Rousseau, Corot, Dau¬ 
bigny, Troy on and Millet were numbered 
among them. Millet’s peasant-life paintings 
stand as models of what that sort of art can 
accomplish; Troy on’s cattle pictures have 
never been surpassed; and Corot’s misty land¬ 
scapes still hold their charm for artists and the 
public. American artists were especially influ¬ 
enced by the Barbizon principles, and Inness, 
the foremost landscape painter of the United 
States, is almost as typical a Barbizon painter 
as if he had belonged to the group. See Paint¬ 
ing. 

BARBOUR, Ralph Henry (1870- ), a 

popular American author of bright and enter¬ 
taining stories for boys. He was born in Cam¬ 
bridge, Mass., and began his education for the 
writing profession at the age of nineteen, as a 
reporter for a Boston paper. Later he was 
associated with a paper in Denver, Colo. Bar¬ 
bour has written short stories and poems for 
magazines under the pen name of “Richard 
Stillman Powell,” but is best known through his 
narratives for boys and about boys, published 
under his own name. Most of these deal with 
school life and sports, as suggested by the titles 
The Halfback, Captain of the Crew, On Your 
Mark, Winning His Y, The Junior Trophy, etc. 
His stories are full of life and action, are writ¬ 
ten in a clear and popular style, and are clean 
and wholesome reading for young people. 

BARCELONA, bahrselo'na, the most im¬ 
portant commercial center and a seaport of 
Spain, is situated on the Mediterranean coast. 
It is the capital of the province of the same 
name, and after Madrid is the finest city in the 
kingdom. Barcelona is divided into the upper 
and lower town; the former is modern and 
attractive, many of the houses being built of 
hewn stone; the latter is old, irregular and 
brick-built. On a hill in the center of the old 
town stands the imposing cathedral, dating 
from the sixteenth century and one of the finest 
examples of Gothic architecture. The principal 
manufactures are cottons, silks, woolens, ma¬ 
chinery, paper, chemicals, stoneware and soap. 


Manufactured products such as cotton, wine, 
brandy, fruit and oil are the principal exports, 
and coal, textile fabrics, machinery, cotton, fish, 
hides, silks and timber are among the chief 
imports. 

Barcelona was governed by its own count 
until the twelfth century, but was united with 
Aragon in 1151. In 1640, with the rest of Cata¬ 
lonia—of which it was formerly the capital—it 
placed itself under the French crown, and 
twelve years later it submitted again to the 
Spanish government. In 1697 it was taken by 
the French, but was restored to Spain by the 
terms of the Peace of Ryswick, in 1714. Pop¬ 
ulation in 1910, including suburbs, 587,219. 

BARD, one of the poet singers who held so 
important a place among the ancient Celtic 
peoples, especially the Welsh and the Irish. 
All through the Middle Ages, from the sixth 
century, at least, the bards of Wales and of 
Ireland had a large part not only in the liter¬ 
al life of their countries, but in their history. 
They composed verses in honor of the heroic 
deeds of princes or brave men, and these they 
sang at court or at special festivals, generally 
to the accompaniment of the harp. Naturally, 
they acquired an immense hold on the people, 
whom they could sway to peace or to war, 
almost as they chose, and the kings of England 
therefore looked upon them with great dis¬ 
favor. In the thirteenth century Edward I, 
anxious to make absolute the English rule in 
Wales, decreed that all the Welsh bards were 
to be hanged, and it is on this event that Gray 
based his poem, The Bard. The Cambrian 
Society, formed in Wales in 1818, has as its 
purpose the preservation of the order of the 
bards established centuries ago. 

The term is often used poetically to describe 
any poet, as “Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon.” 

BAREBONES PARLIAMENT, pahr'liment, 
the name that was scornfully applied to the 
“Little Parliament” summoned by Cromwell 
in 1653, one of the most energetic members of 
which was a Baptist tanner who had the strange 
name of Praise-God Barebone. This parlia¬ 
ment, which was made up of 140 men of Crom¬ 
well’s type, sat in session from July 4 to Decem¬ 
ber 12, and, in spite of the ridicule it aroused, 
has to its credit the passage of several wise 
measures. Among these was the law providing 
for the civil marriage celebration before a jus¬ 
tice of the peace, and for civil marriage regis¬ 
tration. See Parliament. 

BAR HARBOR, Me., a popular summer re¬ 
sort on the east shore of Mount Desert, a large 



BARI 


591 


BARIC 


island off the coast of Maine, so named because 
of the sandy bar which connects Mount Desert 
with a neighboring island. Aside from its loca¬ 
tion on a beautiful harbor, the town is near 
many interesting points, including Green Moun¬ 
tain, Eagle Lake, Great and Schooner Heads, 
Thunder Cave and Eagle Cliff. It lies forty-six 
miles southeast of Bangor, Me. Bar Harbor* is 
one of the more exclusive of the Eastern sum¬ 
mer resorts for the well-to-do; so given to 
exclusiveness and quiet is the summer colony 
that it was not until the summer of 1915 that 
automobiles were permitted on the island. The 
permanent population is about 2,000. See 
Mount Desert, also full-page illustration in 
article Maine. 

BARI, bah' re, the capital of the province 
of Bari delle Puglie, and a seaport on the Adri¬ 
atic coast of Southern Italy, sixty-nine miles 
northwest of Brindisi. As early as the third 
century b. c. Bari was a place of importance; 
it has been three times destroyed and rebuilt. 
The present town has broad streets and numer¬ 
ous gardens and squares. The cathedral is a 
massive building with a tower 260 feet high, 
but in historic interest it is surpassed by the 
Church of Saint Nicholas, founded in 1087. 
Here are kept the bones of Saint Nicholas, from 
which, tradition says, a healing fluid flows. 
Thousands of pilgrims annually visit the tomb. 
In July, 1915, during the progress of the War 
of the Nations, and soon after Italy joined the 
allies, the town of Bari was heavily bombarded 
by the Austrian fleet, much damage being done 
to the docks and buildings. The city manu¬ 
factures cotton and linen goods, hats, soap, 
glass and liquors. A United States consul is 
stationed here. Population in 1911, 103,520. 

BARIUM, bay' rium, a silver-white to yel¬ 
low metallic element which is chemically 
obtained from barite, witherite and some other 
more complex minerals. The name is from the 
Greek and means heavy, referring to its den¬ 
sity. Barium was first obtained in 1808 by 
Davy, the celebrated English chemist. It is 
pliant and can be easily worked without break¬ 
ing. It oxidizes readily, decomposes water, and 
fuses at a low temperature. Barium forms a 
number of commercially important salts, and 
barium compounds are used for many purposes. 
The soluble and carbonate salts are poisonous. 

Barium Sulphate, one of the salts of barium, 
precipitates as a fine white powder. It is 
found as the mineral barite in many parts of 
America and Europe, and is used as a common 
adulterant of ordinary white paint, to increase 


the weight of paper, and was used by Wedg¬ 
wood in his jasper-ware. It is also used in the 
manufacture of artificial ivory, leather, wall¬ 
paper and asbestos cement. The value of the 
production in the United States amounts to 
about $250,000 annually, but the production is 
decreasing. Canada produces between $5,000 
and $10,000 worth each year. 

Barium Nitrate, another of the salts of bar¬ 
ium, is used extensively in the manufacture of 
fire-works, especially “green fire.” 

Barium Sulphide shines freely in the dark, 
after having been exposed to a bright light, 
and, on this account, is used in making lumin¬ 
ous paint. 

Barium Chromate is used as a pigment and 
as an ingredient of matches. 

Barium Dioxide or Peroxide is used in the 
manufacture of peroxide of hydrogen (which 
see), and as a bleaching agent in preparing 
oxygen. 

Barium Monoxide, or Baryta, a grayish-white, 
poisonous substance, is used in sugar refining. 
When added to molasses or sugar solutions it is 
insoluble. 

Barium Hydrate, uniting readily with lime, is 
used to soften water in boilers and thereb}^ 
prevents formation of lime deposits. e.d.f. 

BARK, the outer covering of stems, branches, 
trunks and roots of trees, most shrubs and 
some plants, as distinguished from wood. It is 
usually composed of three layers. The inner 
bark, or fibrous bark, lying next to the wood, 
carries food and water very much as arteries 
and veins of animals carry blood. This part 
is also called the bast. It is composed of long 
woody cells which, in some plants, form valu¬ 
able fibers. The middle bark, or green bark, is 
merely a tissue, but it contains the green color¬ 
ing matter (see Chlorophyll) which manu¬ 
factures starch here in the same way as it does 
in leaves. This part does not grow much, and 
in woody stems is later covered by the outer 
bark, or corky bark, which is generally heavy, 
rough or corky, and usually dead. It protects 
the living inner portions. It does not contain 
green coloring matter, but gives the stems and 
twigs their red, purple, brown or light gray 
color. 

In some trees like the birches, the sweet-gum 
and the cork-oak, the corky bark grows and 
forms new layers year by year, but the older 
bark dies and falls away until, on very old 
trunks, only the inner bark remains. That 
inner bark adds new layers each year, from 
within. The outer bark, not being able to stand 


BARKER’S MILL 


592 


BARLEY 


the strain of the enlargement due to inner 
growth, then stretches and tears. That strain, 
together with the action of sunshine and rain, 
causes the rough, tattered appearance of old 
tree trunks. 

When a tree is chopped down and cut 
straight across, a number of quite distinct rings 
will be seen in the wood, one within the other. 
These rings show the fresh yearly growths of 
the inner bark and by counting them the age 
of the tree can be ascertained. 

Early man used barks for most of the neces¬ 
sities of life. Some were made into clothing 
and shelter; others furnished fire. Some were 
made into weapons or canoes; others furnished 
valuable medicines. Many of these uses have 
been repeated from generation to generation 
until the present time. 

Some barks are valuable in commerce. Cork 
is gathered from the outer layer of the bark of 
certain oak trees. Tannic acid, the substance 
which is valuable in tanning leather, is obtained 
from the bark of hemlock and other trees. 
Quinine is made from Peruvian bark; cough 
mixtures from cherry bark. Bark is the source 
of the cinnamon of commerce, a popular flavor¬ 
ing ; and the bark fibers of hemp, flax and other 
plants are made into threads, ropes, mats and 
cloths. 

Injurious Insects. The rough bark of trees 
furnishes a home for insects, many of which are 
injurious to plant life. The insect enemies of 
the apple, alone, are estimated at over 300. 
These destructive insects are well represented 
by the San Jose scale, which attacks the inner 
bark. Elm trees are especially subject to 
attacks of injurious insect pests. In many 
localities folded burlap bands of cloth are put 
around parts of the trunks of these trees. Insect 
grubs crawl into the bands and can in that 
way be removed and destroyed in large num¬ 
bers. Another serious pest is the bark beetle, 
which burrows between the bark and wood or 
makes a tunnel through the w r ood. In these 
crevices the female deposits her eggs. Both 
mature and young insects are very destructive. 
See Insects; San Jose Scale; Apple, subhead 
Destructive Insects. m.s. 

BARKER’S MILL, a mechanical device in¬ 
vented near the end of the seventeenth cen¬ 
tury by a Dr. Barker, to illustrate the prin¬ 
ciple of reaction (see Dynamics). It consists 
of a vertical tube supported by an arm which 
attaches it to a vertical support. On the lower 
end of the vertical tube is a hollow block, from 
which short, curved arms extend. The outer 


openings of these arms all face in the same 
general direction. The contrivance is mounted 
on a frame so 
that it can rotate 
about the vertical 
axis. When 
water rushes into 
the vertical tube 
from the reser¬ 
voir, the reaction 
caused by the 
discharge of the 
water jet from 
the orifices in the 
arms causes each 
arm to move 
backward and 
thus makes the 
apparatus 
revolve. This de¬ 
vice is used ex¬ 
tensively in auto- 
m a t i c lawn 
sprinklers, auto¬ 
matic sprinkler 
systems for busi¬ 
ness buildings, 
and other forms 
of apparatus for 
throwing water. 

BARLEY, a grain fifth in importance 
among the world’s cereals, being greatly ex¬ 
ceeded by oats, wheat and corn, and slightly 
by rye. Barley does not differ greatly from 
wheat. It was known among all ancient peo¬ 
ples; in Deuteronomy we read that the Prom¬ 
ised Land was a “land of wheat and barley.” 
The sacred books of China mention that it was 
cultivated in that country twenty centuries 
before the beginning of the Christian Era. 

Barley is grown over a wider area than any 
other grain, for profitable cultivation is possible 
from the equator to 70° north latitude. A 
very high quality is grown in Canada, where 
the crop averages 45,000,000 bushels yearly. 
In the United States about 200,000,000 bushels 
are raised in a year; North Dakota, Minnesota, 
California, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Iowa 
lead in its production. In the United States it 
ranks fourth among the grains, and in Canada 
is third in importance. 

Cultivation. In the United States, Canada 
and most parts of Europe barley is usually 
sown in spring, after danger of severe frosts is 
over. But this grain is more suited to cold 
latitudes than any other. The coarser varieties, 









































BARLEY 


593 


BARN 


gome of which are mere grasses, are cultivated 
where no other cereal will survive. Winter 
crops are raised in warm regions. To obtain 
the best results, the soil on which barley is 
planted should be porous, well drained and fer¬ 
tile. The land should be thoroughly 
prepared for the seed by plowing 
the season before. Fertilizers con¬ 
taining large quantities of nitrogen 
should not be used. Barnyard ma¬ 
nure is the best fertilizer for barley. 

Two or three bushels of seed per 
acre are sown broadcast, or prefer¬ 
ably in drills. If barley follows a 
hoed crop, like corn, better yields 
are obtained. Thirty-five or forty 
bushels per acre is considered a good 
yield, but sixty bushels or more are 
obtained under very favorable con¬ 
ditions. 

As barley ripens before spring 
wheat, it is usually harvested just 
before that crop. The exact time, 
however, depends upon the soil and BARLEY 
climate conditions, and the use to which the 
grain is to be put. When the grain can be just 
dented with the nail, it is ready for harvesting, 
unless it is desired for brewing purposes. For 
that use it should be dead ripe. As soon as 
dry enough, the grain should be taken under 
cover, as rain or dampness discolors it and les¬ 
sens its value. 

Insect Enemies and Diseases. Although 
much less liable to disease than other cereals, 
it is attacked by smut and rust (see Rust; 
Smut). The Hessian fly (which see) also occa¬ 
sionally does damage to barley crops. In 
America, loose smut is the most serious of bar¬ 
ley diseases. It darkens the grain and scatters 
out in the form of black dust. The grain heads 
are then left empty. To prevent the disease, 
the seed before planting should be soaked in 
cold water for five hours, then in w T ater at a 
temperature of 125° F. for fifteen minutes. 
The seed should then be sown on clean land. 
When the grain is attacked by close smut, the 
seed should be soaked for ten minutes in a 
solution of bluestone, one pound to five gallons 
of water, or formalin, one pint to thirty gallons 
of water. 

Uses. Barley is used as a food for both man 
and beast and for malting purposes; as a food 
its use is decreasing among most nations, 
although it yet serves as a coarse bread for 
millions of the peasants of Europe. 

Pearled barley, which is the polished grain, 


is used with other ingredients in preparing food 
for babies and invalids. A drink prepared from 
it, called barley water, is given to infants with 
intestinal disorders. Scotch barley is the grain 
from which the husk has been removed at a 
mill. Barley is also used for thickening soups. 
When malted it is used as a preparation for 
spirits and beer. The percentage composition 
of barley, for feeding purposes, is starch, 69.8; 
ether extract, 1.8; water, 10.9; proteids, 12.4; 
ash, 2.4; crude fiber, 2.7. It is used in many 
parts of the United States and Canada as a 
forage crop, being sowed with peas and vetch. 
See Grains; Brewing. m.s. 

BARMECIDE’S, bcihr'mesidz, FEAST, a 
very common phrase, which had its origin in 
the Arabian Nights story of the barber’s sixth 
brother, and is used now to describe an imag¬ 
inary feast. In the story the barber’s poor and 
hungry brother is invited by a prince of the 
Barmecide family to a feast. Only empty 
dishes are put before him, but his host con¬ 
stantly asks him how he likes the food. The 
jolly beggar praises it all, especially the wine, 
which he declares is so heady that it intoxicates 
him. In this pretended intoxication he boxes 
the ear of the Barmecide, who laughs heartily 
at the joke and has a real feast set before him. 
See Arabian Nights Entertainment. 

BAR'MEN, one of the most prosperous 
cities of Germany, famous for the manufacture 
of ribbon, in which it is the leading city of the 
Continent. It is situated on the Wupper River, 
twenty-five miles northeast of Cologne. The 
town comprises several small villages extend¬ 
ing along the valley, and on the west it joins 
the town of Elberfeld. The river flows through 
the center of the town and is crossed by about 
twenty bridges. Among the important buildings 
are a beautiful and modern town hall and a 
municipal theater; there are also a number of 
institutions for higher education, a municipal 
hospital, a museum of natural history, a library 
and an art gallery. All public utilities includ¬ 
ing gas works, electric lighting and water works 
are municipally owned and are profitably con¬ 
ducted. 

Barmen manufactures cotton and woolen fab¬ 
rics, linens, silks, laces, soap, candles, machin¬ 
ery and musical instruments; the calico print¬ 
ing establishments here are noted for the 
superiority of the dye called Turkey red. 
Population in 1910, 169,214. 

BARN, the principal building of a farm, 
except the residence of the family, is, in the 
strict sense of the word, only a shelter for hay 



























BARN 


594 


BARNACLE 


and grain. But in America it is frequently 
also a stable for horses and cattle. 

The remarkable progress of the last few 
years in methods of agriculture is producing 
radical changes in type and construction of 
barns. Many farmers build everything just as 
their fathers and their grandfathers did, and 
it is sometimes difficult to convince them that 
any other way is better. Naturally the most 
extreme changes in barn architecture have 
been made by wealthy men for whom farming 
is a diversion rather than an occupation, who 
employ architects to design their buildings and 
who have little regard for expense. Many of 
the ideas which such men have developed have 
been found to be very practical, and, together 
with those improvements which the agricultural 
schools have devised, are worthy the study of 
any progressive farmer. 

The Cow Barn. On large estates this a 
separate structure but more commonly it is a 
section of a larger building. In the latter case 
it is advisable to have it in a wing, so that it 
may receive light from three directions. It 
should be on the south side, for the sake of 
winter sunshine and shelter from north winds. 
Cleanliness is essential. For this reason floors 
or interior walls of wood are very undesirable. 
A wooden building may be covered on the 
inside with metal lath and the lower four feet 
of each wall plastered with a rich Portland 
cement such as that with which floors are 
finished. The balance of the wall may be 
covered with hard plaster. All corners should 
be rounded, and no dust-collecting ledges or 
panels should be allowed in doors and windows. 
Cement floors are the most sanitary; they 
must be set in dry earth and sloped for drain¬ 
age. Where cattle walk the floor should be 
finished roughly, to prevent slipping. Hay and 
feed must be kept where their dust cannot 
reach the milking cows, and away from the 
stable fumes. Light is such a valuable puri¬ 
fying agent that there should be as many win¬ 
dows as possible, though in summer they may 
have to be covered with blinds to make the 
stable unattractive to flies. Cement walls make 
a room lighter than wooden walls, but their 
cool surfaces repel the flies. 

Ventilation is extremely important. In the 
system devised by Professor F. H. King of the 
University of Wisconsin, there are galvanized 
iron inlet pipes in the walls, which take air from 
near the ground at the outside and admit it to 
the stable near the ceiling. An outlet may be 
built like a chimney, reaching from very near 


the floor to a number of feet above the peak 
of the roof. It is covered over, but has plenty 
of side openings into the outer air. As a 
result of this system of ventilation the warmest 
outdoor air in winter is admitted to the ceiling 
and the heaviest gases of the stable are drawn 
off from the floor. For twenty cows the outlet 
should be two feet square. 

The old-fashioned, high-boarded stall pre¬ 
vents circulation of air, and the best stalls 
have just one iron bar at each side. Concrete 
is too cold for the floor of a stall, but a number 
of things are considered better than wood, 
among them cork bricks. 

The Horse Stable. Most of what has been 
said about cow barns applies also to those for 
horses, for whom cleanliness is as desirable if 
not as necessary as for the milk-producing 
animals. Windows in front of the horses should 
be at least six and a half feet above the floor, 
so that light will not shine in the animals’ 
eyes. Horses do not require as much warmth 
in winter as cattle, so ventilation may often be 
achieved with windows. 

The Hay Barn. In this structure few changes 
have been made from the old-fashioned, gam¬ 
brel-roof barn. The principal improvements 
have been additions in ventilation and altera¬ 
tions in framing so as to do away with beams 
and posts. There should be vents in the roof, 
under the eaves and at the ends of the barn, all 
covered with galvanized iron netting to keep 
out birds. In determining the size of a hay 
barn, allow space for two tons of hay for each 
animal. A ton of loose hay occupies 500 cubic 
feet; a ton of baled hay may be put into 150 
cubic feet. c.h.h. 

BARNABAS, bahr' nabas, a fellow worker 
with Paul, and, like Paul, ranked as an Apostle. 
Barnabas was the family name given to him, 
his first name being Joseph. Luke makes the 
name mean son of consolation. Barnabas was 
known for his sweet spirit; “He was a good 
man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith” 
(Acts XI, 24). He accompanied Paul on his 
first missionary journey, and they labored a 
year together in Antioch, where the Disciples 
were first called Christians. Little is known of 
his later life. 

BARNACLE, bahr'nak’l, a tiny salt-water 
shell-fish, related most nearly to the crab and 
the shrimp. The barnacle shell has five impor¬ 
tant valves and several smaller pieces, all 
joined by a membrane. A muscular stalk, long, 
flexible and fleshy, enables it to attach itself 
to a quite smooth surface, and all timbers or 



BARNARD 


595 


BARNARD 


piles beneath the water and the bottoms of 
wooden ships soon become covered with bar¬ 
nacles. 

The young barnacle just hatched from the 
egg is a little, six-legged, free-swimming animal, 
with a single eye. In its next stage it has six 
pairs of swimming feet, two compound eyes and 
two large feelers, and is still independent and 
free-swimming. In its third or adult stage, it 
attaches itself to a stone, pile or ship’s bottom, 
loses its eyes and feelers, develops a hard shell 
and loses all power of locomotion. Its swim¬ 
ming feet become clinging or grasping organs. 

At quite regular intervals ocean vessels must 


Columbia University), in New York City, a 
position he held twenty-four years. Barnard 
was United States commissioner to the Paris 
Exposition in 1867 and was also associated with 
the United States Coast Survey. At his death 
he left most of his property to Columbia Col¬ 
lege. He edited, in 1872, Johnson’s Universal 
Cyclopedia, and was the author of A Treatise 
on Arithmetic, Letters on Collegiate Govern¬ 
ment and Recent Progress in Science. 

BAR'NARD, George Grey (1863- ), one 

of the most distinguished of American sculp¬ 
tors, whose reputation is even greater abroad 
than at home. He is not what could be called 



VARIOUS FORMS OF BARNACLES 


enter drydock to have the accumulation of bar¬ 
nacles cleaned from their bottoms; this is par¬ 
ticularly true of wooden ships. All barnacles 
are salt-water animals, except one rare species 
which lives in brackish fresh waters. The salt¬ 
water species feed on small marine animals 
brought within their reach by the water and 
secured by their tentacles. Some of the larger 
species are edible. According to an old fable, 
these animals produced barnacle geese. 

Barnacle Goose. This name is applied to a 
wild goose common in Northern Europe, par¬ 
ticularly in the North Sea adjacent to the 
Scandinavian Peninsula. Its forehead and chest 
are white, and the upper body and neck black. 
The name is due to the ancient absurd belief 
above referred to. 

BAR'NARD, Frederick Augustus Porter 
(1809-1889), an American educator for whom 
Barnard College, an institution for women, 
connected with Columbia University, New 
York City, is named. He was born at Sheffield, 
Mass., and educated at Yale College. He began 
his career as a teacher of the deaf and dumb, 
but in 1848 became professor of natural phi¬ 
losophy and mathematics in the University of 
Alabama. In 1856 he was elected president of 
the University of Mississippi and in 1864 be¬ 
came president of Columbia College (now 


a popular artist, for his work is so original as 
well as idealistic that it does not always make 
an immediate appeal. Some of his productions, 
as the well-known Two Natures, marvelously 
executed as they are and from that standpoint 
entirely satisfying, are so mysterious in their 
symbolism that they do not disclose their 
meaning to the closest observer. In this great 
work, which is in the Metropolitan Museum 
of Art, in New York, and which the artist calls 
in full I Feel Two Natures Struggling Within 
Me, the struggle is indeed shown, and the vic¬ 
tor is clearly evident, but nothing in face or 
figure shows which nature—whether wrong or 
right—is triumphant. It is the sense of power, 
of irresistible force behind the Titanic figures, 
which, even more than the superb modeling, 
makes the work great. Others of Barnard’s 
works are a great group, Brotherly Love, for a 
tomb in Norway; The Boy; Maidenhood; 
The Urn of Life, which includes nineteen fig¬ 
ures in marble; the God Pan, in bronze, on the 
green of Columbia University, and the sculp¬ 
tures for the state capitol of Pennsylvania. 

Barnard was born at Bellefonte, Pa., studied 
at the Art Institute in Chicago and the School 
of Fine Arts in Paris, and before his return to 
the United States in 1895 had won a very favor¬ 
able reputation by sculptures exhibited in the 

















































BARNARD 


596 


BARNUM 


Paris Salon. He received gold medals at the 
Paris Exposition of 1900 and at the Pan-Amer¬ 
ican Exposition of 1901, and was professor of 



BARNARD'S TWO NATURES 


sculpture in the Art Students’ League. Of 
recent years he has built in upper New York a 
museum called “The Cloisters,” plain and barn¬ 
like without, but within a fit setting for one of 
the finest collections of sculptures in the United 
States. These, which are in large part of the 
French Gothic period, he discovered during his 
stay in France, excavating many of them him¬ 
self. 

BAR'NARD, Henry (1811-1900), an Amer¬ 
ican schoolman, the first United States Com¬ 
missioner of Education and the organizer of the 
Bureau of Education, whose work as an educa¬ 
tional reformer places him next in rank to 
Horace Mann. He was born in Hartford, 
Conn., was graduated at Yale, and began the 
practice of law in 1835. While a member of 
the Connecticut legislature he became inter¬ 
ested in school reform, and his work along this 
line attracted such attention that he was asked 
to examine the public schools of Rhode Island. 
After completely reorganizing the school sys¬ 
tem of that state, he returned to Connecticut 
to become superintendent of the state schools 
and principal of the state normal school at 
New Britain. 

From 1857 to 1859 he was president of the 
University of Wisconsin, and in 1865 he became 
the head of Saint John’s College, Annapolis, 
leaving the latter position in two years to 
become the first Commissioner of Education of 
the United States. Besides laying the founda¬ 


tion for the Bureau of Education, he issued a 
number of circulars of far-reaching influence. 
These treated of the educational land policy of 
the United States, the constitutional provisions 
for education in the several states, elementary 
education, secondary education, the establish¬ 
ing of high schools, of agricultural colleges and 
of professional schools, and the training of 
teachers. One series of these circulars com¬ 
pared the educational system of the United 
States with those of Switzerland and Prussia, 
and contained recommendations for the reor¬ 
ganization of the elementary schools in the 
United States on the graded plan. These 
recommendations contain the foundations of 
the public-school sj^stem of the several states 
as it exists to-day. 

BARNARD COLLEGE, a department of 
Columbia University, New York City, consti¬ 
tuting the university’s undergraduate school for 
women. President Barnard of Columbia, for 
whom the college is named, tried in vain to 
have Columbia made a coeducational institu¬ 
tion; the new college was established to sup¬ 
ply the need. There were no funds and no 
promise of them, but the hopeful founders felt 
certain that these would come when the school 
had proved its worthiness, and their faith and 
patience were justified. To-day Barnard has 
buildings and grounds valued at $3,000,000, and 
an endowment of $1,300,000, for most of which 
it is indebted to women. It has approximately 
900 students, to whom degrees are granted in 
the name of Columbia University. The presi¬ 
dent of Columbia is president ex officio of 
Barnard, but the latter has its own board of 
trustees and its own instructors. See Columbia 
University. 

BARNUM, Phineas Taylor (1810-1891), an 
American showman who made several fortunes 
through his belief 
that “the Amer¬ 
ican people like 
to be hum¬ 
bugged.” He was 
not dishonest; he 
frankly admitted 
the character of 
many things he 
exhibited, but he 
had early learned 
that an air of 
mystery thrown 
around an exhibit 
increased the desire to view it. He was the son 
of a tavern-keeper of Bethel, Conn., and from 



PHINEAS T. BARNUM 







BARODA 


597 


BAROMETER 


the time he was thirteen worked for his living. 
At the age of eighteen he went into the lottery 
business; in the next year he married secretly 
and soon began to edit the Danbury Herald of 
Freedom. 

In 1834 he removed to New York, where he 
entered upon his first venture as a showman, 
buying Joice Heth, the reputed colored nurse 
of General Washington, and exhibiting her with 
considerable profit. After 1839 he was reduced 
again to poverty, but in 1841 he bought Scud- 
der’s American Museum in New York, through 
which he became at once prosperous by exhib¬ 
iting various fraudulent freaks and curios, and 
also a noted dwarf (Charles S. Stratton of 
Bridgeport), whom he styled Gen. Tom Thumb. 
In 1847 he offered Jenny Lind $1,000 a night 
for 150 nights, and received $700,000—the con¬ 
cert tickets often being sold at auction, in one 
case as high as $650 for a single ticket. In pre¬ 
senting this marvelous singer to American audi¬ 
ences he performed a distinct service to music 
lovers (see Lind, Jenny). 

Soon, however, he was again bankrupt, but 
immediately entered upon new enterprises and 
made another fortune. His greatest venture 
was his traveling museum, menagerie and cir¬ 
cus, known as the “Greatest Show on Earth,” 
which required 500 men and horses and 100 
railroad cars to transport it. He paid $10,000 to 
the London Zoological society for the huge ele¬ 
phant, “Jumbo.” This traveling circus was the 
forerunner of the later great traveling com¬ 
panies of like character. Barnum published 
several books, including an autobiography, 
which tells frankly of many of his audacious 
frauds. 

BARODA, bar o'da, an important city of 
India, a trade center for the surrounding coun¬ 
try, which has an abundant yield of grain, flax, 
cotton and tobacco. It is also the capital of 
the state of the same name, and is a fortified 
city, situated 248 miles north of Bombay. 
There are several fine buildings and educational 
institutions. Since 1802 the state has been trib¬ 
utary to Great Britain, but is nominally gov¬ 
erned by a native ruler called the gaekwar, 
one of the richest and most powerful of Indian 
potentates. Population of the state is 1,952,- 
692; of the town, 103,7.90. 

BAROMETER, barom' e ter, an instrument 
for recording atmospheric pressure, used chiefly 
in forcasting weather and in measuring heights 
of mountains (see Air). If you take a glass 
tube something over thirty inches long and 
closed at one end, fill it with mercury, put your 


thumb over the open end as shown in Fig. 1 a 
and insert this end in a cup of mercury as in 
Fig. 1 b, the liquid in the tube will fall until its 
top is only about 


Vacuum 



FIG. 1 


thirty inches 
above the surface 
of the liquid in 
the cup. If you 
were to admit air 
to the vacuum 
above the mer¬ 
cury by breaking 
open the top of 
the tube, the mer¬ 
cury would fall 
until it reached 
the same level in 
the tube as in the 
cup. So long as 
the tube remains 
air-tight there is 
no weight press¬ 
ing on the mer¬ 
cury in it, and 
the fluid is thrust 
upward by that 
in the cup, which is under pressure from the 
atmosphere. This is the experiment which 
Torricelli, a pupil of Galileo, made in 1643; 
from it he learned that the weight of all the 
air above any point is equal to the weight of a 
column of mercury about thirty inches high. 
See Torricelli. 

Measuring Altitude with a Barometer. Not 

long after Torricelli’s experiment was first per¬ 
formed, scientists realized that if it were truly 
the weight of the air which supported the fluid 
in the tube, the mercury would fall farther 
upon a mountain top, where there was less air 
above it. Pascal proved this to be true, and 
the mercury tube was given the name barom¬ 
eter, which means 'pressure-measure. Since 
then barometers of all sorts have been helpful 
in measuring heights, and when you read that 
an aeroplane pilot has reached a height of 
10,000 feet you may know that this figure was 
learned from his barometer. 

The Barometer and the Weather. The ba¬ 
rometer has made possible the modern science 
of weather predicting. When the mercury falls 
rapidly a storm is quite sure to follow, while a 
“rising barometer” foretells fair weather. And, 
by drawing upon a map isobars or lines of equal 
atmospheric pressure ( iso means equal and bar 
means pressure ), the probable course of winds 
and storms can be learned. More about this 















BARON 


598 


BARR 


will be found in the article Weather Bureau. 

Different Kinds of Barometers. The barom¬ 
eter in Fig. 2 is exactly the same in its prin¬ 
ciple as the tube and cup in Fig. 1, but is fitted 
with appliances to assist accurate reading. By 
turning the thumbscrew at the lower end, the 
bottom of the mercury chamber can be raised 
or lowered so that the surface of the fluid in 
the reservoir will be level with the zero mark 
of the scale. Such an adjustment is necessary 
because this surface rises whenever the mercury 
in the tube falls, and falls when the latter rises. 

Barometers can be made without mercury; 
Pascal filled one with wine, but it had to be 
forty-six feet long, because wine has little 
weight. Barometers built without any liquid at 
all are called aneroid, which means dry. They 
are not as accurate as mercury instruments, 
but indicate much slighter changes in the 
atmosphere. An aneroid barometer is shown 
in Fig. 3. 



ANEROID BAROMETER 
(Fig. 3) 

An aneroid barometer maj^ be made to pre¬ 
serve a record of changes in the weather by 
fitting the end of the pointer with a pen, which 
draws a line upon a slowly passing paper. A 
mercury barometer will perform the same task 
through continuous photography. c.h.h. 

BARON, hair' un, the title held by noblemen 
in the lowest rank of the British peerage. It 
was introduced into England at the time of the 
Norman Conquest (1066), when it was applied 
to those who received grants of land from the 
king in return for military services. The barons 
eventually became divided into “greater” and 
“lesser” barons, according to the amount of 
land held. They gradually assumed consider¬ 
able power; their grants of land were considered 
hereditary and were handed down from father 
to son, thus establishing the feudal aristocracy. 


Fig. 2.—Standard Mercurial Barometer. Scale 
at left is marked in inches; at right in centi¬ 
meters, 



(Fig. 2) 


The greater barons became 
earls or dukes, with the 
lesser barons as their re¬ 
tainers (see Earl; Duke). 
The title of baron is now 
conferred by the king, 
usually for distinguished 
service or in recognition of 
distinction in art or let¬ 
ters; the holder is ad¬ 
dressed as “Lord” and is 
entitled to a seat in the 
House of Lords. 

Baronet. A title taking 
rank between that of baron 
and knight is that of bar¬ 
onet. King James I, when 
sorely in need of money, 
introduced this title to be 
sold to a limited number 
of persons. The king’s 
need of money was such, 
however, that the limit was 
very elastic. The title is 
now conferred by the king 
on those he wishes to 
honor. It is hereditary, 
but does not entitle the 
holder to a seat in the 
House of Lords. A bar¬ 
onet is addressed as “Sir.” 

BARR, Amelia Edith 
Huddleston (1831- ), a 

popular American novelist 
whose reputation was not 
established until she was 
past fifty years of age, and 
who has since then written 
about sixty books. She 
was born in England and 
educated in that country 
and in Scotland, emigrat¬ 
ing to the United States in 
1854, four years after her 
marriage. In 1867, while 
living in Galveston, Tex., 
she lost her husband and 
three sons in a yellow- 
fever epidemic, and it was 
the urgent need of earning 
a living for herself and 
three daughters that caused 
her to take up writing as a 
profession. 

She removed to New 
York City in 1869, and for 





























































BARR 


599 


BARRE 


years toiled away on miscellaneous work— 
advertisements, circulars, short articles, verses, 
etc.—learning to write by writing, and seeing 
the end of her apprenticeship in 1884, when a 
leading publishing firm accepted her Jan Ved- 
ders Wife, the book that secured for her the 
place she now holds among American writers. 

Jan Vedders Wife, one of Mrs. Barr’s most 
characteristic tales, a vigorous story of life in 
the Shetland Islands, has been translated into 
many different languages. Others of her novels 
have an historic background, as The Border 
Shepherdess, the scenes of which are laid in the 
borderland between England and Scotland ; 
The Bow of Orange Ribbon, a tale of New 
York during the period of Dutch supremacy; 
and Friend Olivia, a story of the English Com¬ 
monwealth. Among her latest novels are The 
Hands of Compulsion, The House on Cherry 
Street and Sheila Vedder. One of Mrs. Barr’s 
most marked traits is the charm and clearness 
with which she presents primitive and whole¬ 
some types of characters. She has written an 
interesting autobiography, All the Days of My 
Life. 

BARR, Robert (1850-1912), a British novel¬ 
ist whose vigorous and animated stories have 
gained for him a wide circle of readers. He 
found much of the material for his scenes and 
characters both in the United States and in 
Canada. He was born in Glasgow, Scotland, 
and educated in Toronto, Canada, later becom¬ 
ing headmaster of the Central School of Wind¬ 
sor, Ontario. In 1876 he was on the staff of 
the Detroit Free Press writing under the name 
of “Luke Sharp,” and five years later was sent 
to London to establish an English weekly edi¬ 
tion of that paper. During his residence in 
England he became associated with Jerome Iv. 
Jerome (which see), in the founding of the 
Idler, a monthly magazine. Barr’s first novel, 
In a Steamer Chair, was published about the 
same time. 

His narratives are full of life and action, and 
with him the important thing is to tell the 
story, while the portrayal and development of 
character is a secondary matter. One of his 
most popular novels, In the Midst of Alarms, is 
a story of the Fenian raid in Canada in 1866. 
Other well-known titles are Countess Tekla, 
The Face and the Mask, A Prince of Good 
Fellows and The Palace of Logs. The Un¬ 
changing East is a series of travel sketches. 

BARRANQUILLA, balir ran keel' ya, is the 
chief commercial city of Colombia, South 
America. It is in the extreme north of the 


country, on the Magdalena River, near its 
entrance into the Caribbean Sea. The river is 
navigable for many miles from Barranquilla 
(although not at its mouth) and is the principal 
artery for the interchange of inland produce 
and for the distribution and collection of im¬ 
ports and exports. Barranquilla is connected by 
rail with Sabanilla, a seaport fourteen miles 
northwest, and exports principally coffee and 
hides. The town was founded in 1629 but did 
not become of any commercial importance until 
the 'nineteenth century. In 1912 the population 
was 48,900. 

BARRAS, barah' , Paul Francois Jean 
Nicholas, Count de (1775-1829), a French 
statesman who bore a prominent part in the 
French Revolution of 1789. Though descended 
from a noble family, he eagerly took up the 
cause of the Revolutionists, joined the mob 
that stormed the famous old prison known as 
the Bastile (which see), and also took part in 
the attack on the royal palace of the Tuileries. 
As a member of the National Convention he 
voted for the death of King Louis XVI in 1793. 
For some time thereafter Barras exercised great 
power. He became president of the Conven¬ 
tion, helped to bring about the overthrow of 
Robespierre and other leaders in the Reign of 
Terror, and in 1795 was nominated one of the 
five members of the Directory. To him Napo¬ 
leon owed his appointment as commander-in- 
chief of the army in Italy. While the Direc¬ 
tory was in control of affairs the authority of 
Barras was unquestioned, but when the Direc¬ 
tory was replaced by the Consulate, in 1799, 
he was forced to yield his power to Napoleon, 
and to leave Paris. He afterward resided at 
Brussels, Marseilles, Rome and Montpellier, 
constantly watched by the police, and returned 
to Paris only after the Bourbons were restored. 
His memoirs are of great importance as a 
source of information concerning the French 
Revolution. See Robespierre ; Directory ; 
French Revolution. 

BARRE, bair' ee, Vt., leads the world in the 
production of fine granite for monuments. It 
is situated in Washington County, northeast oi 
the geographical center of the state, on the 
Winooski River. Montpelier, the capital, is six 
miles northwest; Boston is 214 miles southeast. 
The Montpelier & Wells River Railway, a 
division of the Boston and Maine system, 
serves the city, and there is trolley connection 
with Montpelier. The first settlement was 
made in 1788, and the town was organized in 
1793 as Wildersburg; the name was changed 


BARREL 


600 


BARRIE 


to Barre in honor of Isaac Barre, a defender of 
American rights in the British Parliament. In 
1894 the city was incorporated and made inde¬ 
pendent of the town of Barre, but the interests 
of town and city are closely interwoven. Scotch 
and Italians predominate in the foreign element 
of the population, which increased from 10,734 
in 1910 to 11,706 in 1914. The area is four and 
one-half square miles. 

The quarrying and cutting of granite has 
made Barre one of the leading industrial cen¬ 
ters of. New England. There are more than 
100 granite quarries and establishments; these 
employ about 4,500 men and have an annual 
output worth about $4,000,000. Granite-cutting 
tools, granite-polishing machines and derricks 
are manufactured here. In addition to its pub¬ 
lic schools Barre has Goddard Seminary and a 
$90,000 public library. The Federal building, 
completed in 1912 at a cost of $125,000, a $100,- 
000 city hospital and a $125,000 hotel are the 
noteworthy buildings. The public square con¬ 
tains an imposing granite statue of Robert 
Burns, erected by the Scotsmen of Barre. Three 
miles southeast of the city is Millstone Hill, a 
huge mass of finest granite. h.a.p. 

BARREL, a vessel made of pieces of wood 
called staves, bound together by metal or 
wooden hoops. The staves are wider in the 
middle than at the ends, causing the barrel to 
bulge in the middle. This shape has been found 
most suitable, giving increased strength, though 
causing a waste of space in shipment. The top 
and bottom, called heads, are formed by circu¬ 
lar boards which fit into grooves near the ends 
of the staves. When used for liquids, a hole is 
bored in one end, through which to fill and 
empty the barrel; this hole is called a hung, a 
name also given to the cork or plug used to fill 
the hole to preserve the contents. 

For many centuries barrels were made en- 
tirely by hand, but now labor-saving machinery 
is employed. The barrel as a measure has many 
different meanings. In England a barrel of 
wine contains 31 *4 gallons; a barrel of beer, 
3614 gallons—though for convenience beer is 
usually sold in 414, 9 and 18-gallon kegs. Can¬ 
ada adheres to what is called the imperial 
standard; a wine barrel contains 2614 gallons; 
an ale barrel, 3114; beer, 3614 gallons. 

In the United States a standard measurement 
for barrels was established for the first time in 
1915. The law provides for a barrel with 2114- 
inch staves, 1714-inch heads, and the material 
must not be more than 4 /io of an inch in thick¬ 
ness. The capacity must be 7,056 cubic inches. 


A barrel having that capacity, whether its 
measurements agree with those stated or not, 
may be considered as standard. To sell what 
is stated to be a barrel of any commodity in 
a vessel of less than 7,056 cubic inches capacity 
is an offense punishable by a fine of $500, or six 
months’ imprisonment. 

The workmen who construct barrels from 
previously measured staves which are sawed 
into shape are called coopers, and the name of 
their trade is cooperage. When all barrels were 
made by hand cooperage was an excellent trade 
for a young man to learn; workmen were paid 
by the piece, and rapid assemblers could earn 
good wages. However, the advent of machinery 
has nearly destroyed this trade, except in coun¬ 
try districts. 

BARRETT, hair'et, Lawrence (1831-1891), 
an American actor whose best work was done 
during a memorable association with the fam¬ 
ous Edwin Booth. He was born in Paterson, 
N. J., and made his first appearance on the 
stage at Detroit, Mich., in 1863, as Murad, in 
the drama, The French Spy. In 1861, at the 
beginning of the War of Secession, Barrett for 
a time served as captain of a company of 
Massachusetts infantry. After his retirement 
from the army he returned to the stage, taking 
important roles in Edwin Booth’s company and 
varying his work with the management of 
theaters in New Orleans and San Francisco. 

He acted successfully in England during a 
short visit there in 1884. Three years later 
Barrett became again associated with Booth 
and remained with him until his death, playing 
Othello to Booth’s Iago, and Cassius to his 
Brutus, and interpreting many other Shakes¬ 
pearian roles with distinction. Though he had 
not the genius of Booth, nevertheless his act¬ 
ing had high intellectual quality. His Life of 
Edwin Forrest and a sketch of Edwin Booth 
are admirable. 

BARRIE, hair'ie, Sir James Matthew 
(1860- ), a Scotch dramatist and story- 

writer, of quaint and delicate humor, tender 
pathos and poetic fancy, whose fairy play, 
Peter Pan, is undoubtedly one of the best¬ 
loved dramas of all time. He was born in 
Kirriemuir, Scotland, and soon after his grad¬ 
uation from Edinburgh University, in 1882, 
began to find a loyal reading public for his 
sketches and stories. In 1885 he removed to 
London, and by 1900 had become one of the 
most popular writers of his time. King George 
V made him a baronet in 1913. 

Auld Light Idylls and The Window in 


BARRIE 


601 


BARRISTER 


Thrums, picturing the every-day life of the 
Scotch people, with their quaint speech and 
customs, are clas¬ 
sics among books 
of their kind, 
and display ad- 
mirably the 
author’s peculiar 
genius. The Lit¬ 
tle Minister es¬ 
tablished his 
fame; S en ti¬ 
me ntal Tommy 
and Tommy and 
Grizel reveal not 
only his gift in 
the portrayal of 
character, his engaging humor and his tender 
touch in writing of the pathetic, but also his 
appreciation of romance. Barrie’s love for 
child life comes out clearly in The Little White 
Bird, a book of special interest because it 
introduces Peter Pan, the boy who would not 
grow up, and whose story was expanded into 
the play that makes grown-up people children 
again. 

The plays of this author have the individual 
touch that makes them like no others, and 
they are as charming to read as to see on the 
stage. Many of them have become familiar 
to American play-goers through the sympa¬ 
thetic interpretation of Miss Maude Adams, 
whose Lady Babbie of The Little Minister, 
Maggie of What Every Woman Knows, Leo¬ 
nora of The Legend of Leonora and, above all, 
her Peter Pan, will not soon be forgotten. 
Quality Street, The Admirable Crichton, Alice- 
Sit-by-the-Fire and The Will are other suc¬ 
cessful plays by this writer. b.m.w. 

BARRIE, Ont., the county town of Simcoe 
County, is sixty-four miles northwest of To¬ 
ronto, on the Grand Trunk, the Canadian 
Pacific and the Hamilton & Northwestern rail¬ 
ways. It is situated on Kempenfeldt Bay, at 
the western end of Lake Simcoe, and has 
steamship connection with Orillia and other 
towns on the lake. It is a favorite summer 
resort, but is more important as a manufac¬ 
turing center. The principal manufactures are 
building materials, including bricks, flour, boil¬ 
ers, gas engines, leather, boots and shoes, wicker 
work and excelsior. Hydro-electric power is 
obtained from the Severn River at low cost. 
The Carnegie Library, a collegiate institute and 
a business college deserve mention. Popula¬ 
tion in 1911, 6,420; in 1916, estimated, 7,200. 


BARRIER REEF, a chain of coral reefs off 
the eastern coast of Queensland, Australia, and 
extending from Cape Sandy to Torres Strait, a 
distance of about 1,250 miles. They are from 
ten to 150 miles from land. The sea between 



LOCATION OF BARRIER REEF 

the reefs and shore is quiet and affords a safe 
passage for steamers but is dangerous for sail¬ 
ing vessels. Pearls and pearl-shells are ob¬ 
tained from the reefs, which cover an area of 
about 100,000 square miles. 

BARRISTER, bair'ister, in England, Ire¬ 
land and some of the British colonies, the high¬ 
est grade among lawyers, the word being 
derived from the word bar. A barrister is 
literally one who appears before the bar in 
the law courts and argues the case. This is 
his chief business, and in the higher courts 
only a barrister may appear for the client. 
A barrister who has been honored with the 
rank of King’s Counsel (K. C.), takes prece¬ 
dence over the ordinary practitioners, who are 
called utter or outer barristers. A King’s Coun¬ 
sel may stand within the bar of the court, but 
an outer barrister must stand outside. To 
become a barrister a man must be a member 
of one of the Inns of Court (which see), and 
must then pass an examination before he is 
“called” to the bar. 

In Canada there is no formal distinction 
between barristers, solicitors, advocates, attor¬ 
neys and other titles, but the honor of “K. C.” 
is frequently given to Canadians. It is com¬ 
mon for a lawyer to style himself “Barrister 
and Solicitor” in all the provinces except Que¬ 
bec, where “Advocate” is preferred. The dif¬ 
ferent functions of barrister and solicitor, how¬ 
ever, are understood; though a man calls him¬ 
self both, when he acts as legal adviser he is 



J. M. BARRIE 















BARRON 


602 


BARTLETT 


acting as solicitor. In the United States the 
word barrister is now seldom, if ever, used. 
In its place the phrase “Attorney and Coun- 
sellor-at-Law” is common, and in general 
speech a member of the legal profession is 
roughly described as a lawyer. 

BARRON, James (1769-1851), a commodore 
in the United States navy who came promi¬ 
nently into public notice during the critical 
period before the War of 1812. In 1807, while 
commanding the Chesapeake, he was chal¬ 
lenged by the captain of the British frigate 
Leopard, who demanded the surrender of sev¬ 
eral American sailors accused of being British 
deserters (see Impressment of Seamen). Bar¬ 
ron’s refusal to obey this demand was met by 
a broadside from the Leopard’s guns, which 
killed three and wounded eighteen of the 
Chesapeake’s crew. Barron thereupon hauled 
down the American flag and surrendered the 
suspected men, for which act he was court- 
martialed and suspended from rank and pay 
for five years. At the end of that term he 
was placed on shore duty. In 1820 Barron 
killed Commodore Decatur in a duel in which 
he himself was seriously wounded. 

BAR'RYMORE, the name of a family of 
actors who represent the highest traditions of 
their profession. They are the children of 
Maurice Barrymore and Georgie Drew-Barry- 
more, and John Drew is their uncle. 

Ethel Barrymore (1879- ), in private life 

Mrs. Russell Griswold Colt, was born in 
Philadelphia. Since 1895, when she first ap¬ 
peared on the stage, she has been successful. 
In 1897 she was engaged by Sir Henry Irving, 
the English actor, and as a member of his 
company appeared in many important parts. 
In 1910 she was starred in Captain Jinks and 
has since had ample opportunity to reveal the 
diversity of her talent in many plays, such as 
A Doll’s House, Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire, Cousin 
Kate, Mid-Channel, The Shadow and Our Mrs. 
McChesney. Miss Barrymore’s personality and 
accomplishments have made her a favorite. 

John Barrymore (1882- ), began his pro¬ 

fessional career in Chicago in 1903. Since 
then he has creditably upheld his family’s repu¬ 
tation and has proved his versatility in varied 
roles, including leading parts in The Boys of 
Company B, Miss Civilization, A Stubborn 
Cinderella, The Fortune Hunter and many 
other plays. In 1915 he was engaged as leading 
man with the Famous Players Film Company, 
and became a favorite with patrons of moving 
picture theaters. 


Lionel Barrymore, brother of Ethel and John 
Barrymore, is well-known both on the stage and 
as an actor in moving pictures. He made his 
first appearance on the stage in 1893 and has 
played in Arizona, The Second in Command, 
The Best of Friends and The Other Girl. 

BARTER, the exchange of one article for 
another without the medium of money. Among 
uncivilized people or in places remote from 
active commerce, barter has always been car¬ 
ried on. Natives of Africa and the islands of 
the south seas, following the custom of people 
of primitive times, are readily induced to 
barter such things as they possess in exchange 
for weapons, ornaments, cloth or food stuffs, 
which have definite value to them. When 
money is shown to them it has no specific 
meaning, for they cannot relate it to their 
experiences, but they do sense at once the 
value, to them, of a piece of merchandise. 

BARTHOLDI, bahr tol dee' , Frederick 
Auguste, a great French sculptor, whose life 
story is summarized under the title Liberty, 
Statue of. 

BARTHOLOMEW, bahr thoV o mew, the 
Apostle of whom Jesus said: “Behold an 
Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile.” 
Bartholomew is probably the same person as 
Nathanael, mentioned in the Gospel of Saint 
John as one of the first of the Disciples. 
Although there are many traditions concerning 
Bartholomew, such as his carrying the Gospel 
to India, but little is actually known of him. 

BARTHOLOMEW’S DAY, SAINT. See 
Saint Bartholomew’s Day, Massacre of. 

BART'LETT, Paul Wayland (1865- ), 

an American sculptor, who first exhibited in 
the Paris Salon at the remarkably early age of 
fourteen. He was born at New Haven, Conn., 
and grew up in an artistic atmosphere, his 
father having been a sculptor and art critic. 
After studying in Boston he went to Paris, 
where in 1880 he entered the School of Fine 
Arts. Seven years later he attracted wide atten¬ 
tion by his Bear Tamer, shown at the Salon; 
his Ghost Dancer, first viewed at the World’s 
Columbian Exposition, showed astonishing 
skill. His later notable works include a statue 
of General Joseph Warren in Boston, an eques¬ 
trian statue of General McClellan, and an 
equestrian statue of Lafayette, in Paris, pre¬ 
sented to France by the school children of the 
United States. For the Congressional Library 
at Washington he produced a statue of Colum¬ 
bus and one of Michelangelo, and for the 
central entrance of the New York Public Li- 





BARTOLOMMEO 


603 


BARTON 


brary six great figures representing Fable, the 
Drama, Poetry, Religion, History and Philos¬ 
ophy. Chosen to adorn with sculptures the 
pediment of the east portico of the Capitol 



“PEACE PROTECTING GENIUS” 

One of Bartlett’s group of figures on the Cap¬ 
itol at Washington, D. C. 


at Washington, he designed for the purpose a 
group of figures representing the democracy of 
the United States as shown in its working peo¬ 
ple. Critics rank the production very high 
among works of this character. 

BARTOLOMMEO, bahr to lom may' o, Fra 
(1475-1517), the name assumed by Baccio della 
Porta, one of the principal painters of the Flor¬ 
entine school during the Italian Renaissance. 
He was born at Florence, Italy, and early came 
under the influence of the great Leonardo da 
Vinci. While engaged in painting some pic¬ 
tures for the convent of the Dominican friars, 
he became a fervent admirer and follower of 
Savonarola, and was so grieved by the untimely 
death of the great leader that he joined the 
Dominican Order and gave up painting for 
several years. 

Persuaded at length by his superior to resume 
his work, he made the acquaintance of Raphael, 
who taught him the rules of perspective. Later, 
while on a visit to Rome, he saw the beautiful 
frescoes of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, 
which worked a transformation in his art. Fra 
Bartolommeo’s paintings are remarkable for 
their arrangement of light and shadow and rich 


and delicate coloring. He excelled, however, 
in the handling of drapery, and was the first to 
use the jointed model known as a lay figure. 
His best-known canvases are Saint Mark, his 
masterpiece, in the Pitti Palace at Florence; 
Saint Sebastian and Marriage of Saint Cath¬ 
arine, in the Louvre, Paris; and a portrait of 
Savonarola. (See the story of each artist 
named, in its place in these volumes.) 

BAR'TON, Clara (1821-1912), one of the 
most famous women America has produced, 
who devoted her life to the good of humanity, 
and whose most enduring achievement is the 
founding of the United States branch of the 
Red Cross So¬ 
ciety. She was 
born in Oxford, 

Mass., educated 
in Clinton, N. Y., 
and became 
deeply interested 
in soldiers’ relief 
work during the 
War of Secession. 

It was due to her 
that a bureau of 
records, to assist 
in the search for 
missing men, was 
organized. She 
herself named and marked the graves of over 
12,000 soldiers in the Andersonville (Ga.) Na¬ 
tional Cemetery. 

In 1869 Miss Barton went to Switzerland, 
where she came in touch with the members 
of the International Committee of the Red 
Cross. Encouraged by them, and inspired by 
the work of the Red Cross during the Franco- 
German War, in which she assisted, she re¬ 
turned to America in 1873, and began at once 
her successful efforts to bring about the organi¬ 
zation of the American branch of the society. 
She became its first president, and held that 
position until 1904. 

To Miss Barton, also, is due the honor of 
having originated the clause in the Red Cross 
constitution whereby the society may extend 
relief in calamities other than war, such as 
famines, floods, earthquakes and pestilence. 
She took charge of the relief work in the yellow- 
fever outbreak in Florida (1887), the Johns¬ 
town flood (1889), the Russian and Armenian 
famines of 1891 and 1896, in the Spanish-Amer- 
ican and Boer Wars, and in the Galveston 
flood of 1900. The German emperor recognized 
her services by decorating her with the Iron 



MISS CLARA BARTON 

Revered founder of the Red 
Cross Society in America. 


















BASALT 


604 


BASEBALL 


Cross of Germany. Miss Barton has written 
History oj the Red Cross, Story of the Red 
Cross and Story of My Childhood. See Red 
Cross Societies. 

BASALT', a well-known rock formed by the 
action of heat and therefore one of the igneous 
rocks. It is fine-grained, heavy and crystalline, 
and is very common in regions that have been 
disturbed by volcanic action. Its tendency to 
crystallize in columns gives a peculiar character 
to the scenery. The columns are four-sided, 
six-sided, or eight-sided, and are usually jointed. 
Fingall’s Cave on the island of Staffa, the 
Giant’s Causeway, Ireland, and the cliffs along 
the Columbia River in Washington are noted 
illustrations of basaltic columns. See Igneous 
Rocks. 

BASE, in chemistry, is a compound which 
will unite with an acid to form a salt. Bases 


are very soluble in water and are commonly 
known as alkalies. Most bases are solids. The 
metal of the base takes the place of the hydro¬ 
gen of the acid. A base may be an oxide, as 
calcium oxide or lime, or a hydroxide (hydrate), 
as potassium hydroxide. The union of a base 
and an acid usually destroys the properties of 
both. In some cases, however, not all the 
hydrogen of an acid is replaced by the metal 
of a base, and the salt formed may have acid 
properties. 

In mathematics, base refers to the third side 
of a triangle and the part of a pyramid or cone 
on which it rests; in percentage (which see), to 
the number on which per cent is computed. See 
Triangle; Pyramid. 

In architecture, the base refers to the lowest 
division of a column or shaft (see Column ; 
Architecture). 



ASEBALL, the national game of 
the United States, is rapidly conquering the 
world. In Canada, though sharing in favor 
with lacrosse and soccer football, it is more 
popular every year. Cuba, too, has its pro¬ 
fessional teams, and a few Cubans have been 
members of teams in the “big leagues” of the 
United States. While William H. Taft was 
governor of the Philippine Islands, baseball 
was successfully introduced among the Igor- 
rotes as a substitute for head-hunting. The 
Filipinos, Japanese and the Chinese in Hawaii 
already play, and the two last named do it 
nearly as well as the best American amateur 
teams. Lima, in Peru, and Caracas, in Vene¬ 
zuela, have clubs, and since the tour around the 
world of the Chicago “White Sox” and the 
New York “Giants” in 1913-1914 a baseball 
league has been established in New South 
Wales, Australia. 

Strangely enough, war has been largely re¬ 
sponsible for the spread of baseball. Before the 
American War of Secession the game was prac¬ 
tically unknown, though growing, but thou¬ 
sands of soldiers learned the game while under 
arms, and afterwards played it in their com¬ 


munities. Again it was by soldiers that base¬ 
ball was introduced to the Far East and to 
the Panama Canal Zone. During the War 
of the Nations many soldiers on temporary 
leave from the front watched the games of a 
three-club league on Saturdays in Paris. Hun¬ 
dreds of Italians who returned from America 
to fight for their country were baseball en¬ 
thusiasts. Their interest and that of the sol¬ 
diers of other nations is sure to revive the 
plans for adopting baseball, which in several 
of the European countries were halted by the 
war. Many people seriously believe that an 
international league on the Continent would 
establish international friendships and do much 
to prevent future wars. There is no doubt 
that the football contests between France and 
Great Britain in recent years were responsible 
for much of the mutual friendship of those two 
countries which the war intensified, and base¬ 
ball, a game for all classes, should be a much 
stronger influence. 

Baseball as a Science. Though the word 
;professional in many other sports carries with 
it an inference of the undesirable, in baseball 
it stands for scientific athletics. So keen is the 




































































BASEBALL 


605 


BASEBALL 


play of teams in the professional leagues-and 
so nearly perfect the defense of the players 
in the field that their opponents know the 
difference between a successful and an unsuc¬ 
cessful attempt at scoring to be a matter not 
of seconds, but of fractions of a second. The 
knowledge of strategy and of psychology which 
both sides employ would enlighten some gen¬ 
erals. 

Each pitcher and catcher knows the indi¬ 
vidual peculiarities, abilities and weaknesses 
of opposing batters, and the pitcher who throws 
the kind of a ball that the batter least expects 
is the one who wins games. The batter on 
his side must know the very few places he 
can hit the ball where it will not be caught 
in the air or thrown to first base before him. 
One who makes three safe hits in ten times 
at bat ranks with the best. Base running is 
perhaps the most scientific feature of the game. 
If a runner starts from first base to steal 
second just as the pitcher throws to the catcher, 
he is pretty sure when he arrives there, three 
seconds later, to find that the catcher has 
thrown the ball to someone at second base in 
time to put him out. If he has a lead of a 
few feet and a start from first base when the 
ball is thrown he may just win the race with 
it, but if he is too daring he is apt to be put 
out by a sudden throw of the pitcher to the 
first baseman. The instant the ball is hit 
fielders dash for the proper spot to catch or 
stop it. Almost before the spectators realize 
the ball has met with a bat, a fielder may be 
many yards on his way. He throws it to the 
proper base almost with the same motion that 
intercepts it, and with machine-like accuracy 
to which a distance of two hundred feet seems 
no hindrance. 

Almost perfect physical control marks the 
best players. The pitcher who can “pull him¬ 
self out of a hole” into which his own or his 
teammates’ errors have put him, and the batter 
who can hit safely in an emergency, are sure of 
success. 

Organized Baseball. There are in the United 
States two major leagues, the National, founded 
in 1876, and the American, its rival since 1900. 
Each league has eight teams, or clubs, which 
play almost daily from April to October. The 
two pennant winners are then matched, and 
the club winning four games is declared the 
world’s champion team. A third league, known 
as the Federal, was organized in 1913, with a 
circuit of six clubs, but the organization was 
not successful financially, and passed out of 


existence in 1915. The several minor leagues 
of the United States and Canada are affiliated 
with the major leagues, and the two organiza¬ 
tions have a working agreement whereby the 
“big” leagues are supplied with recruits from 
the minor. Such transfers of players are ac¬ 
companied by payments in money; the sum 
of $50,000 has been paid for one infielder, and 
it is believed that more was^ once paid for an 
outfielder. 

Baseball, as it is now conducted, is not only 
a clean, popular sport, but a highly-specialized 
business. The grounds and grand stands held 
by lease or owned outright by the major 
leagues represent a money value of from five 
million to ten million dollars, and it costs from 
$400,000 to $600,000 to purchase the franchise 
of an average club. The baseball “fans” of 
the United States and Canada constitute a 
goodly proportion of the population of those 
countries. The total receipts for the five games 
of the World Series of 1916, played by the 
Boston and Philadelphia clubs, were $385,590.50, 
and the total attendance 162,359. The last 
game of the series played in the magnificent 
new park of the Boston team was witnessed 
by 42,620, the largest number that ever paid 
to see one game, while hundreds of others 
enjoyed the contest from roofs of neighboring 
buildings. Probably not far from 10,000,000 
people find time to see the national game dur¬ 
ing a single season. 

The professional baseball player may not 
regard his occupation lightly. Men who win 
honors on the “diamond” are trained and disci¬ 
plined. Temperance and clean habits are ex- • 
pected of all ball players, and late hours, over¬ 
eating, drinking and other forms of dissipation 
are strictly forbidden. For several weeks be¬ 
fore the opening of the season the men are 
put through a severe course in physical train¬ 
ing, usually in the South, that they may enter 
upon the serious work of the year in first-class 
condition. During the season they travel in 
the most comfortable cars available and they 
live in the best hotels. The manager of a 
winning team, in other words, must see to it 
that his team is kept in fighting condition 
throughout the season. 

The personnel of a club is constantly chang¬ 
ing, for men are released as they lose their 
skill, new material is ever being sought, and 
desirable players are often purchased from one 
team by another. Ten thousand dollars is not 
considered an excessive price to pay for a 
good player. The number of men on the team 


BASEBALL 


606 


BASEBALL 


is also subject to change, but it is usually 
between twenty and twenty-five. In 1916 the 
National League fixed a limit of twenty-one 
players for each club. The baseball profession 
is a lucrative one. The ordinary utility man 
receives from $2,000 to $3,000 a year, while the 

Details of 

The Diamond. By noting the accompanying 
diagram anyone can lay out a baseball field. 
The dotted lines should first be measured, at 
right angles to each other; the base lines should 
next be laid. All other lines are at right angles 



either to a dotted line or a base line. The 
home base and the pitcher’s plate are usually 
of whitened rubber, the other bases white 
canvas bags filled with soft material. Note 
particularly that second base has its center 
over the intersection of the base lines, while 
the others are within the diamond. The solid 
lines should be marked with lime, chalk or 
something equally noticeable. No fence on 
fair territory should be within 235 feet of the 
home base. 

Boys often find more pleasure in playing on 
a diamond with less distance between the 
bases. 

How the Game Is Played. A hardwood bat 
less than 42 inches long and 2% inches in 


annual salary of the “star” players, particularly 
pitchers, may be $10,000 and upward. One 
player, an outfielder, has been paid $18,500 
for a season’s work. The president of the 
American League receives $25,000 a year, and in 
1910 he was given a twenty-year contract. 

I 

the Game 

diameter, a solid but elastic ball about 9 inches 
in circumference, a glove for each player, and 
masks and pads for the catchers form the usual 
equipment. Each team has nine players on 
the field during a game. While the members 
of one team take their turns at bat and attempt 
to score, their opponents are in the field to 
prevent them from scoring. The players in the 
field include the battery, the infield and the 
outfield. The battery consists of the pitcher 
(indicated in the diagram), who must have 
one foot on the 'pitchers plate when throwing 
the ball towards the batter, and,the catcher 
(C), who must wait for the pitched ball within 
the triangle behind the home base. The other 
players may be anywhere within the foul lines, 
but their usual positions are as indicated. The 
infielders are the first baseman (1 B), the sec¬ 
ond baseman {2 B), the third baseman {SB), 
and the shortstop (S.S.); the outfielders are 
the right, center and left fielders ( R F., C. F., 
L.F .). 

The captain of the home team chooses 
whether his men shall bat or field first, and 
usually decides for the latter; therefore the 
visiting team is usually first at bat. The first 
batter of the visiting team then takes his posi¬ 
tion on one of the spaces marked B. When the 
pitcher throws the ball to the catcher the bat¬ 
ter may let it pass or attempt to hit it. In 
the first case, the umpire, standing behind the 
catcher, calls “Strike” if the ball passes over 
any portion of the home base between the 
batsman’s knees and shoulders, or “Ball,” which 
means unfairly delivered ball, if it does not 
pass within that space. In the second case, if 
the batter attempts to hit the ball and fails, 
the umpire calls a strike. If the batter hits 
the ball and it does not go within the foul lines, 
or if it falls wdthin the foul lines and rolls 
outside before passing first or third base, he 
is said to have made a foul, or foul hit. If 
the ball touches his bat without being turned 
from its course, he has made a foul tip. Unless 
the umpire has already called two strikes 
against the batter, a foul of either style counts 
as a strike, 





















BASEBALL 


607 


BASEBALL 


To score a run the batter must pass around 
the diamond to first, second and third bases 
and again to the home base, which he must 
reach without being put out. If the umpire 
calls three strikes against him or if an oppo¬ 
nent catches a foul before it touches the ground 
he is out without becoming a baserunner. An 
exception is made if there is no runner on first 
base and the batter’s third strike is not caught. 
If the umpire calls four balls, the batter ad¬ 
vances to first base, or he may do so if he is 
hit by a ball thrown by the pitcher. 

If the batter hits the ball, unless he makes 
a foul as defined above, he starts to run 
around the bases. If an opponent catches the 
ball before it touches the ground, or while 
holding the ball touches first base before the 
runner reaches it, the runner is out. On his 
way to first base the runner must keep inside 
of the three-foot line shown on the diagram. 
If he reaches first base before the ball, but is 
running too fast to stop and does not wish to 
continue to second, he must turn to the right 
in returning to the base. If he continues on 
his circuit, or after he has stopped and returned 
to first base, he is out, if while not touching 
the base he is touched with the ball by an 
opponent. A batter who runs when his third 
strike is not caught must be put out in the 
same way as one who has hit the ball. 

As soon as there is a runner on the bases 
the umpire usually moves to a position behind 
the pitcher. In important games there is usually 
a second umpire, who takes from the umpire- 
in-chief most of the responsibility of decisions 
regarding base-run¬ 
ners. The next batter 
endeavors to help the 
base-runner to ad¬ 
vance. If he makes a 
single, a safe hit bring¬ 
ing him to first base, 
the runner ahead is 
often able to advance 
two bases. A two- 
bagger, or hit which 
enables the batter to 
reach second base, 
ordinarily gives the first runner a chance to 
score. A three-bagger, or a home run, in which 
the batter scores himself, of course scores 
everyone who was on the bases ahead of him. 
Sometimes the batter makes a sacrifice hit, one 
which gives the runner an opportunity to 
advance but does not enable the batter to 
reach first base, A common form of sacrifice 



HOW A BALL IS 
MADE 

(a) Three layers of 
yarn; (b) rubber; (c) 
cork; ( d ) leather cover. 


is a bunt, in which the ball is hit so that it will 
roll slowly and not far from the home plate. 
If the runner advances without the help of the 
batter, he is said to have stolen a base. Should 
a ball hit by the batter be caught before falling 
to the ground and be brought to the base which 
was occupied by a runner before the latter can 
return to it, both the batter and the runner 
are out, and the fielders have made one form 
of double play. With more than one runner 
on the bases a triple play is sometimes made. 
One member of the team at bat may stand in 
each of the spaces marked Coach, to direct the 
batter and the runners. 

As soon as three men of the side at bat are 
declared out, the fielding and batting teams 
change places. When each has had a turn at 
bat, an inning has been played. Nine innings 
constitute a normal game; if at the end of 
them the score is a tie, the game continues 
until one side or the other is ahead at the end 
of an inning. The last half of the ninth inning 
is not played if the side which would be at bat 
is already ahead. By mutual agreement, or 
because of darkness or storm, five innings may 
be a full game. 

Scoring. In nearly all games, both profes¬ 
sional and amateur, a detailed record is made 
of the work of each player, called the box 
score. In the third game of a world’s series, 
Boston’s score was as follows: 


Boston AB. R. 

Hooper, rf. 4 1 

Scott, ss. 3 0 

Speaker, cf. 3 1 

Hoblitzel, lb. 3 0 

Lewis, If. 4 0 

Gardner, 3b. 3 0 

Barry, 2b. 3 0 

Carrigan, c. 2 0 

Leonard, p. 3 0 


B. P. A. E. 
12 0 0 
0 2 10 
2 2 0 0 
0 9 0 1 
3 10 0 
0 16 0 
0 2 10 
0 8 0 0 
0 0 2 0 


Totals.28 2 6 27 10 1 

00010000 1—2 

Three-base hit—Speaker. Earned runs—2. 
Sacrifice hits—Scott. Sacrifice fly—Hoblitzel. 
Left on bases—4. First on balls—Carrigan, 
Speaker. Struck out—By Leonard, 6. Umpires 
—at plate, O’Loughlin; on bases, Klem; left 
field, Rigler; right field, Evans. Time—1.48. 
Attendance—4 2,300. 

This is the interpretation of the box score 
printed above: 

A. B., the number of times At Bat, not includ¬ 

ing those when the batter made a sacrifice 
hit or reached first base by a base on balls, 
being hit by the ball or interfered with by 
the catcher. 

R., the number of Runs, or scores. 

B. , the number of Base Hits, or balls hit in 

such direction or with such speed that per- 













BASEBALL 


608 


BASEBALL 



Subjects for Baseball 
Essays 

The Most Exciting Game I Ever Saw 

(1) Preparing for the game 

(a) Why I went 

(b) With whom I went 

(c) How we reached the field 

(2) Waiting for the game 

(a) The weather 

(b) The crowd 

(c) The general spirit 

(d) My own feelings of suspense 

(3) The actual game 

(a) Relative strength of teams 

(b) Exciting incidents 

(c) The score 

( 4) After the game 

(a) How the victors felt 

(b) How the defeated felt 

(c) How I felt 

What the Bat and the Bail Told 
Each Other 

(1) The Bat speaks 

(a) Where I was bought 

(b) My owner 

(c) My appearance 

(d) My first game 

(e) How my first “strike” felt 

(f) “Swapped” for a catcher’s 

glove 

(g) Broken and thrown in a cor¬ 

ner 

(2) The Ball replies 

(a) My pride in my original ap¬ 

pearance 

(b) Given as a birthday gift 

(c) The delightful feeling of fly¬ 

ing through the air 

(d) My anger when the bat struck 

me 

(e) Exciting games I played in 

(f) The first rip 

(g) Lost for a week 

(h) Cast aside for a rival 

(i) “Little brother’s” plaything 



feet fielding could not prevent the batter 
reaching base, or put out the runners ahead 
of him. It will be noticed that Lewis made 
the unusual record of three hits out of four 
opportunities, but scored no runs. How¬ 
ever, this last hit made in a pinch with two 
men of his side already out, enabled Hooper 
to score from second base, winning the 
game. 

P., the number of opponents Put Out. In this 
instance the first baseman has the greatest 
number to his credit, the catcher standing 
next. In a game where the pitcher strikes 
out many, the catcher would have more. If 
the opposing batters continually hit the 
ball into the air, the fielders have more. 


A., the number of Assists, or times that a 
player assists in a put out by stopping, 
catching or throwing the ball. 

E., the number of Errors which result in gains 
for opponents, not including those of the 
pitcher in pitching or of the catcher in fail¬ 
ing to stop a pitched ball. By adding the 
number of put outs, assists, and errors we 
learn the total number of opportunities 
each player had and how reliable he is. 
Thus Hoblitzel’s error does not show him a 
poorer fielder than Lewis, for Hoblitzel had 
ten chances, while Lewis had but one. 

The figures below the total show in which 
innings the scores were made. 

Earned Runs, those made without assistance by 
errors of the other side. 

Sacrifice Hit, explained above in the text. 
Sacrifice Fly, a ball hit into the air so far that, 
although it is caught before touching the 
ground, the fielder does not have time to 
return it in time to prevent a runner ad¬ 
vancing. 

Left on Bases. The number of men who 
reached bases and do not score shows in a 
general way the success or failure of team 
work at crucial moments. 

Base on Balls, shows something of the opposing 
pitcher’s work, and more about the base 
running. Leonard, Boston’s pitcher, gave 
no bases on balls. 

Struck Out, the number of men put out by the 
pitcher’s ability and judgment. 

Umpires. This being a very important game, 
there were four. 

Had there been any in this game, the sum¬ 
mary would also have included stolen bases, 
two-base hits, home runs, double and triple 
plays, wild pitches and passed balls (pitches 
not stopped by the catcher). 

Indoor Baseball. This is a popular winter¬ 
time game in gymnasiums. It is modeled after 



the outdoor game, with changes necessary to 
prevent damage to windows, and to adapt the 
























BASEBALL 


609 


BASEBALL 



Outline 


I. How the Game Is Played 


(1) The field 

(a) Diamond shape 

(b) Dimensions 

(c) Bases 

(2) Players 

(a) Number 

(b) Position 

(c) Duties 

(3) Umpires 

(4) The actual game 

(a) Batting 

(b) Base-running 

(c) Fielding 

(d) Innings 

(5) Technical terms 

(6) Scoring 

(a) Careful record of each player’s 
work 

II. The Science of Baseball 

(1) What “professional” means in base¬ 
ball 


(2) Great physical control and accuracy 
needed 

(3) Base-running—the most scientific fea¬ 
ture 


( 1 ) 


( 2 ) 


(3) 

(4) 


( 1 ) 

( 2 ) 

(3) 

( 1 ) 

( 2 ) 


III. Organized Bas'ehall 

Major leagues 

(a) National 

(b) American 
Minor leagues 

(a) In Canada 

(b) In United States 
Training and care of players 
Economic phases 

(a) Large receipts 

(b) Generous salaries 

IV. Popularity 

National game in United States 
Popularity in other countries 
Part taken in its spread by soldiers 

V. Indoor Baseball 

Difference in implements 
Difference in rules 


Questions 

How many members have the big league teams? 

What is an earned run? What is a stolen base? 

What difference is there between the home base and the second base in mate¬ 
rial and in position relative to the base lines? 

In scoring, how do you know whether to credit the batter with a hit or give the 

fielder an error? 

What position must the pitcher assume when pitching? 

Which of the players usually make the greatest number of put-outs, and why? 
What is the difference between a foul in indoor and in outdoor baseball? 

What three items would you take into consideration in figuring what percent¬ 
age of a fielder’s plays were made without errors? 

In what way can the batter make a strike besides failing to hit a fairly deliv¬ 
ered ball? 

How does pitching in indoor baseball differ from that in outdoor baseball? 
What must the runner be careful to do when he reaches first base? 

How many men are there on an indoor baseball team? 

Where outside of the United States is baseball popular? 

What is the average income of a ball player? 

What are the requirements in a good player? 

Can a good player safely use stimulants? 

What is the highest price paid for a player? 

What is the record attendance crowd at a single game? 

How are championships played and determined? 








































BASEL 


610 


BASKET BALL 


playing to a small diamond. The ball is soft 
and larger than the outdoor ball. The bat is 
thinner. The bases are not fastened to the 
floor. 

The main points in which the rules differ 
from those of outdoor baseball are the follow¬ 
ing: (1) Either seven or nine may constitute 
a team; (2) the pitcher must swing his arm 
parallel with the body, and must stand within 
his box; (3) a pitched ball striking the batter 
does not entitle him to a base; (4) a batted ball 
is fair or foul according to where it first hits, 
not where it afterwards rolls; (5) a base runner 
must be at his base when the pitcher delivers 
the ball and must not leave it till it has 
reached the catcher. w.c. 

Consult Spalding’s Baseball Guide , for com¬ 
plete rules; issued annually. For special in¬ 
struction, consult Spalding’s America's National 
Game; Chadwick’s Art of Pitching , Fielding and 
Base Running. 

BASEL, bah' zel, a most important commer¬ 
cial and manufacturing city of Switzerland, 
capital of the canton, or state, of Basel-Stadt. 
It is forty-three miles north of Berne, in two 
parts on opposite sides of the Rhine, con¬ 
nected by three bridges, the oldest of which 
dates from the thirteenth century. It has an 
ancient cathedral, founded in 1010, containing 
the tombs of eminent persons, the most notable 
being that of Erasmus; a university, founded 
in 1459; a seminary for missionaries, and a 
museum containing the valuable public library 
and pictures. The city possesses a most valu¬ 
able collection of the w T orks of the Holbeins, 
who for a time made their home in Basel (see 
Holbein). The industries embrace the manu¬ 
facture of silk ribbons, paper, aniline dyes, 
tanning and brewing. More than fifty per cent 
of the imports of Switzerland pass through 
Basel. 

Here was signed the treaty of peace between 
France and Prussia and that between France 
and Spain, both in the year 1795, and in Basel 
was held an ecclesiastical council in 1431 (see 
Basel, Council of). Population in 1910, 
131,914. 

BASE LINE, in surveying, a line of known 
length and position, taken as the starting point 
for laying out townships and their subdivisions. 
For further description and illustration, see 
Surveying. 

BASILICA, basil' ika, among the ancient 
Romans a great oblong hall in which the 
magistrates heard pleas for justice and gave 
decisions. These courtrooms were common 


throughout the Roman world at the beginning 
of the Christian Era. The length of the typical 
basilica was about three times the width. At 
one end was the entrance; the other end, 
called the apse, which had the form of a half¬ 
circle, contained a raised floor or platform on 
which the judges had their seats. The roof was 
supported by two rows of pillars which ran 
from the apse to the front of the hall, and 
divided the main floor into three aisles—a 
central aisle, called the nave, and a narrower 
one on each side of it, called the portico. 

There were numerous modifications of this 
type; the famous Basilica Julia, for instance, 
one of the most splendid buildings of ancient 
Rome, had five aisles and four rows of columns. 
The basilica furnished the model for the early 
Christian churches, and for a long time churches 
built on this plan were known as basilicas. 

BASIN, bay' s’n. In the ordinary meaning 
of the term, a basin is the region drained by a 
river and all its branches, or the area drained 
by a river system. The Mississippi basin, for 
instance, includes all that part of North Amer¬ 
ica drained into the Mississippi River and its 
tributaries. The term is also applied to regions 
in the interior of a continent, which have no 
outlet to the sea. In these regions salt lakes 
are occasionally found, such as Great Salt Lake 
in Utah, and the Dead Sea in Palestine. The 
streams in these basins flow into the lakes or 
disappear in the sands. 

BASKET BALL, an American game played 
either out-of-doors or in gymnasiums, and 
popular with both sexes. It is an excellent 
game not only for physical exercise but for 
mental training as well, as it calls for concen¬ 
tration, quickness of perception and thought 
and the ‘‘team work” which is so valuable a 
feature of all group plays. Its rules governing 
fouls and behavior on the floor are so stringent 
that anger and loss of self-control practically 
rule one out of the game. Physically, the game 
does not demand the great strength of foot¬ 
ball; but quickness, agility, endurance, a keen 
sense of direction and muscular control are 
essential. Throughout it is a rapid game, well 
played only by enthusiastic players who throw 
themselves heart and soul into the sport. 

Beginnings of Basket Ball. Unlike most 
games basket ball was not a slow growth, but 
was invented by a quick-witted young man. 
James Naismith had listened in the Young 
Men’s Christian Association training school at 
Springfield, Mass., to a lecture on the elements 
of successful games, which proposed certain 




BASKET BALL 


611 


BASKET BALL 



Outline 


I. How the Game Is Played 


( 1 ) 


( 2 ) 

(3) 


(4) 

(5) 


( 6 ) 


(7) 


The field 

(a) Dimensions 

(b) Markings 

(c) The goal—a suspended basket net 
The ball 

The “make-up” of the team 

(a) Center 

(b) Forwards 

(c) Guards 

Length and object of the game 
The actual game 

(a) Specific duties of each player 

(b) Manner in which gains may be 
made 

Scoring 

(a) Baskets 

(b) Free throws 

Rules 

(a) For the regular game 

(b) For the “live” game 


( 1 ) 

( 2 ) 

(3) 

(4) 


( 1 ) 

( 2 ) 

( 1 ) 

( 2 ) 


(c) Fouls 

1. Technical 

2. Personal 

II. Advantages of the Game 

May be played indoors or out 
Played by either sex 
Requires quickness but not great 
strength 

Tends to increase 

(a) Quickness of perception 

(b) Self-control 

(c) Speed 

(d) Endurance 

(e) Muscular control 

(f) Team-work faculty 

III. Basket Ball for Girls 

Roughness eliminated 

Too violent for only form of exercise 

IV. History 

Invention 
Rapid spread 


Questions 

Could a basket ball field be correctly laid out on a floor fifty by forty feet? 
How many members of the team have the privilege of throwing for basket? 
Why is drill behind closed doors necessary to the making of a good team? 

How did it happen that basket ball was played at first only by Young Men’s 
Christian Associations? 

Which would a team rather do, make a basket from the field or score on a free 
throw ? 

What is the difference between a technical foul and a personal foul? 

What difference is there in the penalty dealt out for them? 

What advantage has basket ball over football for the average player? 

Describe the difference between a regular game and a live game. 

How far may a player run with the ball? 

Why would it not be wise for a girl who clerks in a store to spend two evenings 
a week playing basket ball? 

How does the ball differ from that used in football? What are the goals? 

If two players get the ball simultaneously, how is it put into play again l 
What happens when a ball goes out of bounds ? 

Who invented basket ball? 

What beneficial effects besides physical strengthening does the game have? 

If a game begins at eight o’clock, at what time will it close? 

Is actual play going on all the time? 

Which form of basket ball is commonly played by girls? What is its advantage? 
Which player has a chance to play first? 





















BASKET BALL 


612 


BASKET BALL 


inventive tests. He worked out this game prac¬ 
tically as it stands to-day in all essential 
features. Other associations throughout the 
country promptly took it up, and were later 
followed by schools and colleges, until now it 
is one of the most popular of athletic sports. 

How Played. The game is played on a field 
laid out as shown in the accompanying dia¬ 
gram. This field must be longer than broad, 
and should cover not more than 4,500 nor less 
than 2,100 square feet of actual playing space, 



though a boundary territory on all sides is 
necessary; 70x50 feet is ideal, but the usual 
dimensions are 70 x 35 feet. At each end of 
the field, in the center, is a goal, which con¬ 
sists of the basket, suspended ten feet above 
the ground. This basket is a hammock net on 
a metal ring eighteen inches in diameter, which 
must be from six to fifteen inches from the 
rigid surface to which it is fastened. The ball, 
resembling a football, but round instead of 
oval, is an inflated rubber bladder in a heavy 
leather case. It is from thirty to thirty-two 
inches in circumference, and weighs from 
twenty to twenty-three ounces. 

The rules of play are in two forms, one for 
a regular game, and the other for a so-called 
live game, both of which are plaj^ed by both 
sexes, though the live game originated as 
women’s rules. In the live game the court is 
divided by extra transverse lines into zones, 
to one of which each player is confined. This 
eliminates many of the rougher or more active 
features. The directions here given apply prac¬ 
tically to either game. A team consists of five 
persons—a center, left and right forwards, left 
and right guards; and each player should have 
qualifications for his particular position, though 
the specialization is not so decided as in foot¬ 
ball or baseball, and frequently in the regular 
game a skilled player will “play all over the 
floor.” The game is played in two halves, 
usually of twenty minutes each with ten min¬ 
utes between, and its object is the “making 
of baskets” by either team. „ /.. 


Scoring. Each team has a basket for which 
it throws, trying at the same time to prevent 
the opposing team from making baskets. A 
“basket” counts two points if thrown in active 
play, but a “basket on fouls” counts but one 
point. Whenever a foul is called by an official 
against any member of a team, the opposing 
team has a “free throw”; that it, a chosen 
player stands at the free throw line, fifteen 
feet from the basket, and tosses the ball 
toward the basket, no interference being per¬ 
mitted. 

Course oj the Game. The centers of the two 
teams take their positions in the four-foot 
circle in the middle of the field, each facing his 
own goal, (the goal into which he will try to 
throw the ball) and the referee tosses the ball 
in the air between them, higher than they 
can jump. With this throwing of the ball, plaj r 
begins. Each center tries to strike the ball 
as it comes down, and the players of both 
teams follow the ball about the field, attempt¬ 
ing to seize it and throw it towards the goal. 
Though the forwards are the plaj^ers whose 
specific duty it is to throw for basket, the 
center and the guards have the same privilege 
in the regular game. The special business of 
the guards, as the name implies, is to guard 
the basket, or rather to oppose the forwards 
of the other team, who are to be prevented 
from throwing for baskets. When the ball goes 
beyond the boundary line, it is put in play 
again by an opponent of the player who forced 
it out of bounds, or if the referee cannot deter¬ 
mine which player touched the ball last before 
it went out of bounds, he puts it in play by 
tossing it up between the two opposing players 
who are nearest it. 

A player may catch the ball, throw it or 
strike it with the open hand, but he may not 
run with it, kick it, or strike it with the fist or 
body, and when he holds it, it must be entirely 
with the hands. Nor may he touch the bodj^ 
of any other person carrying the ball, or lay 
hands upon the ball when it is in another’s 
possession. # If two players grasp the ball at 
the same time, the referee tosses it up between 
them as he does between the centers at the 
opening of the game. 

The rules against foul plays, which include 
technical fouls, such as running with the ball, 
kicking the ball or striking it with the fists, 
as well as such personal fouls as holding an 
opponent, pushing, tripping or using unneces¬ 
sary roughness, are very strict. As stated 
above, any foul gives tp the ppposiiig ie$m a 









BASKETRY 


613 


BASKETRY 


free throw, but only personal fouls disqualify a 
player. Any one who makes four personal fouls 
is disqualified for the remainder of the game. 

Basket ball gives excellent chance for team 
work, and every well-drilled team has signals 
which are intelligible for certain formations and 
plays to its own team but mean nothing to 
the opponents. By these the general course of 
the play may be determined, but of course 
they must be very flexible, permitting of in¬ 
stant adjustment, for seldom indeed does a 
game proceed as it has been mapped out. 

Basket Ball for Girls. The elimination of 
roughness and “all over the floor” play makes 
basket ball an excellent game for girls, and 
many play the regular game; but it must be 
remembered that if rightly played it is never 


an easy, leisurely game, suited to those who 
wish merely a little light exercise. Indeed, 
unless undertaken under the direction of a com¬ 
petent leader, the game is likely to prove too 
violent for anyone not in excellent condition. 
A girl who works, for instance, will not find 
a game or two of basket ball a week the best 
exercise for her unless she takes other exercise 
to keep herself in fit condition. 

Any intending player of basket ball, man, 
woman, boy or girl, should be examined for 
heart condition by a regular physician before 
engaging in play. j.h.b. 

Consult Spalding’s Guide to Basket Ball, for 
playing rules. For general information, apply¬ 
ing particularly to the game for girls, consult 
Hill’s Athletic and Outdoor Sjiorts for Women. 



ASKETRY. “O let me do it,” is the 
plea that every mother and teacher hears from 
day to day as the child, eager for something 
to occupy his hands and mind, discovers some 
simple work at which he thinks he can succeed. 
The thoughtful parent and teacher are con¬ 
stantly in search of occupations suitable for 
children, and one of the most available is that 
of making baskets. 

Basketry is one of the most desirable occu¬ 
pations for children in the school and in the 
home for the following reasons: 

1. It is simple, and can be made successful 
without any large amount of previous training 
on part of the teacher or mother. 

2. It is inexpensive. It requires only a few 
simple tools, and the material is at hand with 
only the expense of labor necessary to gather 
and prepare it. This makes basketry especially 
suitable for rural schools. 

3. It is one of the best occupations for train¬ 
ing the hand and eye. 

4. The baskets are useful and in making them 
the child feels that he is contributing to the 
welfare of the home as well as gratifying his 
desire to make something. 

Material. There is a great variety of ma¬ 
terial suitable for making baskets. For con¬ 
venience we divide it into imported and native. 


The imported material consists of rattan, raffia, 
palm leaf, rushes and hemp. The native in¬ 
cludes willow, cat-tail, flags, rushes, straw, 
grasses, corn husks, willow bark, cedar bark, 
and for large baskets, splints of ash and other 
woods. The above list does not include all 
the materials available for baskets, for in each 
locality will be found something that may not 
be found elsewhere. 

Preparation oj Material. Since imported ma¬ 
terial is placed upon the market ready for use, 
our attention to preparation is confined to 
native material. The willow should be cut 
when the twigs are small, and the bark should 
be peeled off before the twigs dry. If care 
is used in peeling the bark it can be used for 
weaving. Flag leaves should be split into 
strands before they dry. All material should be 
dried as soon as collected; the color is better 
preserved if the drying is in the open air where 
the material is exposed to the sun. 

Tools. The only tools necessary are a sharp 
knife, a pair of strong shears, a brad-awl or a 
large knitting needle, and a tape measure. 

Mats. The first step in making baskets 
should be the making of one or more mats. 
The mat is easier to make than the basket, 
and it is also the foundation of the basket, 
because in making the basket we must begin 




















































BASKETRY 


614 


BASKETRY 


with the bottom. Two sizes of material are 
necessary, the larger size forming the frame 
and known as spokes, and the smaller for bind¬ 
ing the frame together and known as the 
weaves. If the material is dry and brittle it 
should be soaked until it is pliable. Do not 
soak too long or it will absorb so much water 
that it will swell; then it will shrink on drying, 
and the mat will be loose. 

Take six pieces of rattan or small willow, as 
the case may be, 12 inches long and one piece 
7 inches long. Arrange them in two bunches 
of three each; cross them at right angles at the 
center. Hold them in the right hand, so that 

three will be 
horizontal and 
three vertical. 
Insert the seven- 
inch piece be¬ 
tween the first 
A and second verti- 

—r 

cal spokes above. 
Bind them to¬ 
gether w T ith the 
weaves, rattan or 
bark, as shown in 
Fig. 1. Weave 
over and under the center from left to right 
and pull the weaves down close to the center. 

Begin to separate the spokes with the second 
row of weaving; with the third row they should 





ay 


Ml 


1 



be evenly separated, as in Fig. 2. When the 
mat is six inches in diameter, fasten the weaves 
securely and make the border. The spokes 
should extend three inches beyond the mat. 
Cut the ends, if necessary, to make them even. 
Sharpen the ends so they will push down be¬ 
tween the weaves, then bend them as in Fig. 3. 


Fig. 4 shows the completed mat. Practice on 
mats until your weaving is even and the mat 
is perfectly flat. Then you are ready to begin 
a basket. 



This will require eight spokes 21 inches long 
and one 11 inches long. Make the bottom of 



the basket just as the mat was made. Bend the 
spokes to an upright position and fasten them 
by the first and second weave. If you wish a 
vertical basket, make the weave tight, but if 



a b 

you wish to have it larger at the top, let the 
weave be somewhat loose. When the right 
height is reached make the border. Fig. 5 


















































































































BASKETRY 


C15 


BASKETRY 


shows the completed basket, which will be in 
the form of a or b, depending on the tightness 
or looseness of the weave. When you have 
acquired skill in making a simple-weave basket 
you will be able to weave with two or even 
three weaves, and to modify styles to suit. 



mon use wherever strength and durability of 
structure are desired. The most suitable ma¬ 
terial is black ash, which is easier split into long 
thin strips that become very pliable when 
soaked. The simplest weave for a splint basket 
is shown in Fig. 6, in which the splints cross at 
right angles, each splint of the “weft” passing 



alternately over and under the splints of the 
“warp.” This style of weave is not suitable 
for the bottom of a round basket, but it may 
be used with equal success with both coarse 
and fine splints. 






Outline and Questions on 
Basketry 


(1) 

( 2 ) 

( 3 ) 

(4) 


( 1 ) 


( 2 ) 


(3) 

(4) 


( 1 ) 

( 2 ) 


I. Advantages 

Simple 
Inexpensive 
Good training 
A useful art 

II. Materials 

Imported 

(a) Rattan 

(b) Raffia 

(c) Palm leaf 

(d) Rushes 

(e) Hemp 
Native 

(a) Willow 

(b) Cat-tail and rushes 

(c) Straw and grasses 

(d) Corn husks 

(e) Bark 

(f) Splints 
Preparation 
Tools 

III. Weaving 

Mats 

Baskets 

(a) Simple weave 
Splint baskets 
Twilled work 
Wicker 

Twined baskets 
Coiled baskets 


(b) 

(c) 

(d) 

(e) 

(f) 


Questions 


What materials growing near your 
own home are suitable for basketry? 

Why would it not be wise to soak 
the materials for basket-making over 
night? 

In making a simple basket, how can 
you determine whether the sides shall 
slant or be vertical? 

Which is the most intricate of all 
the styles of weaving? 

Give four reasons why basketry 
should be popular. 

What tools are necessary? 

In finishing a mat, what is done with 
the ends of the spokes? 

What is the difference between 
twilled work and wicker work? 

Is morning or evening the better 
time for gathering materials? 

Is weaving done from right to left 
or from left to right? 

What implements and what mate¬ 
rials are used in making coiled bas¬ 
kets? 

What tree furnishes the best mate¬ 
rial for splint baskets? 




















































































































































































































































































































BASKETRY 


616 


BASKETRY 



Twilled Work. A style of weaving known as 
twill work is common in baskets made from 
cane. It consists in passing each splint of the 
weft over two splints of the warp, then under 
two, thus forming a diagonal or twilled pattern. 
See Fig. 7. 

Wicker Work. 

Wicker work, Fig. 

8, is commonly 
seen in willow 
baskets. It is 
subject to a great 
variety of 
changes, some¬ 
times being com- 
bin e d with 
twilled work in 
forming borders. 

Twined Bas¬ 
kets. Twined 
baskets are com¬ 
mon among the Indians of the Rocky Moun¬ 
tain and Pacific coast regions. Twining is the 
most intricate and beautiful of all stjdes of 
weaving, and many baskets so made are mar¬ 
vels of skill and art. The warp is of strong rods 
or splints which 
are not easily 
bent; the weft is 
in pairs or in 
three-strand twin¬ 
ing, and braiding 
in threes. Twin¬ 
ing is subject to 
many changes of 
pattern, hence a 
great variety of 
styles comes from 
it. Fig. 9 shows the method of starting a 
basket in three-strand braid and twined work. 
This work, however, is too difficult for be¬ 
ginners. 

Coiled Baskets. Coiled baskets are easily 
made, and this method of construction is usu¬ 
ally chosen for small baskets. Raffia, rushes, 
grass, cat-tail, flag and other flexible material 
may be used. Coiled baskets are made by 
sewing over and over with a flexible material, 
each stitch interlacing with the one under¬ 



neath. What corresponds to the warp in the 
woven basket is of coarser and more rigid ma¬ 
terial than that used for sewing. A needle with 
a large eye is necessary. Various stitches are 



used, each forming a different pattern, shown 
in Fig. 10, a, b and c and the long and short 



stitch, in Fig. 11. Fig. 12 shows the process of 
making a coiled mat. A beautiful style of open 



work is shown in Fig. 13, and Fig. 14 shows a 
pattern in which the stitches are coiled around 


























































































































































































BASQUE 617 

three rods. Coiled basketry is admirably 
adapted to school and home work, and it lends 
itself readily to the use of such home material 
as grass, cat-tail and corn husks. 



Among the Indians coiled baskets have been 
found so small that they would pass through a 
lady’s finger ring, while others are larger than 
an ordinary barrel. w.f.r. 

Consult Mary White’s How to Make Baskets; 
Laura Rollins Tinsley’s Practical and Artistic 
Basketry; William S. Martin’s Inexpensive Bas¬ 
ketry. 


BASS 

BAS-RELIEF, bah' releef', which means 
literally low relief, is a mode of sculpturing 
wherein the figures stand out but slightly from 
their background. Strictly speaking, the pro¬ 
jection should be less than half the thickness 
of the figure, but if the work is artistic it may 
appear to the observer to project considerably 
more. A part of the frieze of the Parthenon at 
Athens, the work of Praxiteles, which contains 
the most famous examples of bas-reliefs in the 



ON THE PENSION BUILDING, 
WASHINGTON 

Figures like these, representing an army on 
the march, extend the entire distance around 
the great building. 

world, is here pictured. These figures give in 
eveiy line the sense of movement. The horse¬ 
men in the procession seem actually to pro¬ 
gress, for the first horse has his leg raised but 



SECTION OF FRIEZE OF THE PARTHENON 


BASQUE, bask, a brave, proud and inde¬ 
pendent people whom no invaders have ever 
crushed or expelled from their native province 
in Northern Spain and the southwestern corner 
of France near the Pyrennes. They have 
refused to mingle much with inhabitants of the 
neighboring provinces, but have kept unchanged 
their ancient customs, dress, and, above all, 
their language. This language, which so far as 
is known bears no relation to any other, is 
spoken by perhaps half a million people. 
Though industrious and home-loving, the 
Basques make excellent sailors or soldiers when 
the necessity arises. Ignatius Loyola, Saint 
Francis Xavier and other famous men were 
natives of the Basque provinces. 

The fitted, skirtless jacket formerly worn by 
women everywhere is called a basque, because 
it was copied from the garb of the Basque 
women. 


slightly, the second raises his higher, the third 
still higher, somewhat in the manner in which 
the very earliest moving pictures were made. 
See Alto-Rilievo; Mezzo-Rilievo. 

BASS, the name given to many species of 
fish which differ in size, shape, color and mark¬ 
ings, but which in general possess one common 
trait—they are all fighters, or game fish. They 
may be divided into two great groups, fresh¬ 
water and salt-water bass; it is the former with 
which the fisherman is most familiar. 

Fresh-Water Bass, which belong to the sun- 
fish family, are chiefly of two species—the large¬ 
mouthed black bass and the small-mouthed 
black bass; and of these it may be said that, 
considering their size, they are among the gam- 
est fishes that swim. Both species have short, 
compressed bodies, and are beautifully colored. 
The large-mouthed bass loves the quiet water 
of a lake, where it lurks near shore in the 























































































































BASSANO 


618 


BASS VIOL 


shelter of rocks or snags, but the small-mouthed 
species prefers the clear, running water of a 
stream. The former often attains a weight of 
from six to eight pounds, and sometimes even 
of twelve or fifteen pounds, but the latter does 
not grow so large. Both are excellent food 
fishes, their flesh being white, flaky and very 
firm if taken from cold water. 

The black bass is caught best by casting, as 
it swims not far from the surface of the water 
and spies the bait the instant it strikes the 
water. A light rod with tackle somewhat 
heavier than that used for trout-fishing is the 
regular outfit. Bass will rise for minnows, 
frogs or angleworms, but most frequently arti¬ 



ficial flies of brown or black with a plentiful 
mixture of red are chosen. The average trout 
cannot tire out a fisherman as can a large game 
fish; most amateurs will find a struggle with 
five-pound bass a sufficiently sharp contest. 

The Salt-Water Bass are not closely related 
to those above described, but they, too, afford 
excellent sport. The best-known species is the 
striped bass, or rock fish, of the Atlantic coast, 
one of the chief food fishes of North America. 
Angling for these great fish, which often weigh 
from forty to eighty pounds, is one of the chief 
sports of the eastern coast. With these, as with 
their inland relatives, casting is the most effect¬ 
ive method, but the rod and tackle must be 
correspondingly stronger, and living bait seems 
most attractive. In all seas surrounding Amer¬ 
ica bass are plentiful; the sea bass off the coast 
of Southern California sometimes weigh 
between 300 and 400 pounds. g.w. 

BASSANO, bahssahn'no, Alta., a town 
eighty-two miles east of Calgary and ninety- 
seven miles northwest of Medicine Hat, on the 
main line and two branches of the Canadian 
Pacific Railway. Three miles from Bassano is 
the great Horseshoe Bend dam, which cost 
$7,000,000, and was built to impound water for 
the Canadian Pacific’s irrigation project. The 
dam consists of an earth embankment 7,000 
feet long and about forty-five feet high, to 


which is joined a concrete spillway 720 feet long. 
Bassano is the natural center for the surround¬ 
ing agricultural area, and will probably become 
the most important point between Calgary and 
Medicine Hat. Population in 1911, 540; in 
1916 about 1,200. See Canada, subtitle Irriga¬ 
tion. 

BASSOON', a musical wind instrument of 
the double reed variety, played by blowing 
through an S-shaped mouthpiece. Like a flute, 



its notes are produced by holes, some of wdiich 
are stopped by keys, others by the fingers. It 
serves as the bass among wind instruments, and 
has a compass of three octaves. For con¬ 
venience of carriage the instrument is divided 
into three or more parts, whence it derives its 
Italian name 
jag otto, meaning 
a bundle. 

BASS, base, 

VIOL, a musical 
instrument 
played with a 
bow, constructed 
like the violin, 
though much 
larger (see Vio¬ 
lin). It is so 
large, in fact, that 
to be played the 
bottom must rest 
on the floor and 
the body held be¬ 
tween the knees. 

Viols are really 
the ancestors of 
the violin, at one 
time there hav¬ 
ing been the 
treble, tenor and 
bass viols. Bass 
viols are occa¬ 
sionally used as 
solo instruments, 
to play lute com¬ 
pos i t i o n s, but 
they are more 
generally used to BASS VIOL 

play the bass in orchestras. Two are used in 
the larger symphony orchestras. 
















































































































































































BASSWOOD 


619 


BASTILLE 


BASSWOOD, BASS or LINDEN, a large, 
handsome tree found east of Montana through¬ 
out the United States and Canada, in Europe 
and Northern Asia. In dense forests it grows 
straight, but in open places is a spreading tree, 
giving plenty of shade and shelter with its 
large, oval, tooth-edged leaves. The yellow 
flower-clusters, fragrant and rich in honey, fur¬ 
nish an oil used in perfumes. The American 



LEAF AND FLOWER OF BASSWOOD 


basswood grows to a height of eighty feet or 
more, with a diameter of four feet. It lives 
hundreds of years, and it takes centuries for it 
to reach its full height. 

These trees bear a berry-like, gray-green fruit 
the size of a pea, the seeds of which have a 
sail-like leaflet. When the pods are ripe and 
burst open, the little seeds sail away on the 
breezes. The timber of the linden is called 
whitewood, and is used for carriages, furniture, 
boats, honey-boxes—and the tones from the 
piano come from basswood sounding boards. 
The inner bark is used for mats, fish net, cord 
and coarse cloth. High grade charcoal is also 
obtained from basswood. 

In Berlin, Germany, there is a wide street 
nearly a mile long, lined with linden and chest¬ 
nut trees, bearing the name “Unter den Lin¬ 
den.” It is described in the article Berlin. 

BASTIEN- LEPAGE, bastyaN' lepazh', 
Jules (1848-1884), a French portrait and land¬ 
scape painter, whose work had a simplicity and 
naturalness that has brought him repute as the 
leader of a new school of art. He studied at 
Verdun and at the School of Fine Arts in Paris, 
and first won attention in 1874 by his Song of 
Spring, the picture of a peasant girl looking 
down upon a village. The same year he exhib¬ 
ited his Portrait of My Grandfather, showing 
the subject in the act of taking a pinch of 
snuff; this canvas was so unconventional as to 


be considered a new departure in portrait paint¬ 
ing. Bastien-Lepage won the Cross of the 
Legion of Honor through his Portrait of 
Madame Bernhardt, but failed in his efforts to 
obtain the coveted “Prize of Rome.” His most 
important landscape painting, The Hayficld, 
now in the Luxembourg Gallery, is regarded as 
a fine example of realistic art. 

BASTILLE, bas teel' , the famous Parisian 
prison whose destruction on July 14, 1789, is 
celebrated as a national holiday of France. 
In the French language bastille means any 
strongly-fortified structure. The Bastille of 
Paris, built b}' Charles V about the year 1370 
as a citadel, became a place of confinement for 
those who had displeased the king or his court, 
and to the people it became a hated symbol of 
oppression. 

The storming of the Bastille by the Parisian 
mob as the protest of the common people 
against the centuries-long oppression of the 
ruling classes was the first act in the French 
Revolution (which see). After the mob’s 
demands had been refused by the governor, 
Delaunay, its members assaulted the fortress. 
After hours of fighting they had only effected 
an entrance into the outer court, but the 
arrival of a few pieces of artillery of the Royal 



Guard forced Delaunay to lower the second 
drawbridge. The governor was seized, and on 
the way to the town hall was put to death. 

On the following day the razing of the Bas¬ 
tille commenced. The key was sent as a pres¬ 
ent to George Washington in America. To-day 
a bronze column marks the spot where the first 
struggle for French liberty took place, 




























BASUTOLAND 


620 


BATANGAS 


BASUTOLAND, ba soo'toh land, the finest 
grain-producing and cattle-raising country of 
the African continent, noted especially for its 
breed of ponies, which equals that of the 
Arabian horses of the desert for speed and 

endurance. Basu¬ 
toland is a native 
province and 
British possession 
of South Africa, 
bounded on the 
northwest by Or¬ 
ange River Col¬ 
ony ; on the south 
and southeast by Cape Colony and on the 
northeast by Natal. The region is mountain¬ 
ous, with well-watered valleys and fertile slopes, 
and it has several peaks which rise to a height 
of 10,000 feet. In 1871 the Basutos, who had 
lived under a semi-protectorate of the British 
since 1848, were proclaimed British subjects 
and the province was joined to Cape Colony. 
In 1879 the native tribes caused a revolt which 
the Cape forces were unable to put down, and, 
finally, in 1884, when peace was restored, Basu¬ 
toland was separated from Cape Colony and is 
now governed by a resident commissioner under 
the high commissioner of South Africa. The 
Basutos are of Bantu stock, hardy, intelligent 
and quick to adopt modern ideas (see Bantu). 
Population, in 1911, 405,600. 

BAT, a little creature of the night, one of 
the group of wing-handed, flying, back-boned 
animals. Its best-known characteristic is that 



THE BAT 

(a) One of the common bats (pipistrelle), 
with wings extended; (b) Australian flying fox, 
or fruit bat; (c) same as (b), in sleeping posi¬ 
tion. 

it cannot see well in the bright light of day, 
from which fact comes the expression, “Blind as 
a bat.” At night, however, its sight is keen, 
and it is therefore a nocturnal animal, or night- 


flier. Bats are common in temperate and warm 
regions, but most numerous and of largest size 
in the tropics. 

All European bats are small and have a 
mouse-like skin. Extending from thumb to 
toe is a delicate membrane forming the wings, 
the forearm and fingers forming ribs like those 
of an umbrella. It has been discovered that 
this flying membrane and parts of the skin on 
the face are very sensitive to touch. The 
thumb of each hand has a sharp nail which the 
bat uses to cling to trees. With its wings at its 
sides the bat very much resembles the monkey, 
but walking is difficult as its knees bend back¬ 
ward. 

Many bats are remarkable for having a curi¬ 
ous growth on the nose, shaped something like 
a horseshoe. In some bats these growths 
resemble leaves, and in one species the entire 
nose looks like a flower. During the day this 
strange little animal remains in caverns, in 
crevices of ruins, hollow trees or other lurking 
places. At night, like a ghost, it flits out in 
search of food, wdiich consists chiefly of insects. 
In a voice high-pitched and squeaking, its call 
carries far on the still night air. When the 
mother bat leaves her shelter, her young either 
cling to her neck and are taken along, or she 
leaves them on a tree, hanging safely hidden by 
leaves. We should not fear the bat as a harm¬ 
ful goblin, but rather look on it as a helpful 
worker in the night, for the food it eats—the 
night insects and mice—are enemies of gardens 
and orchards. There are two species of South 
American bats known to suck the blood of 
other mammals, and hence they are called 
vampire bats (see Vampire Bat), though the 
name has also been given to a species not 
guilty of this habit. 

As winter approaches in cold climates bats 
seek shelter in caverns, vaults, ruined and 
deserted buildings and similar retreats, where 
they cling together in large clusters, hanging 
head downward, and sleep until the returning 
spring recalls them to life. The brown bat, the 
heavy bat of the Eastern states, the big-eared 
bat of the Mississippi valley, the leaf-nosed 
bat and the lyre bat are common species m.s. 

BATANGAS, bahtahn' gahs, a seaport and 
capital of the province of the same name in 
Luzon, one of the Philippine Islands, about 
seventy-two miles south of Manila. It has an 
excellent harbor on Batangas Bay. Interesting 
features of the city are the former royal palace, 
the convent and the prison. Situated in the 
midst of a fertile territory, producing sugar, rice, 










BATAVIA 


621 


BATH 


coffee, hemp, corn and fruits, its trade is very 
extensive. The chief manufactures are silk, 
cotton goods and abaca. It is a progressive 
city, and since American occupation numerous 
expositions are held there with a view to 
increasing its commerce. Population in 1910, 
33,131. 

BATA'VIA, the capital of the Dutch East 
Indies, a seaport of Java and the great commer¬ 
cial market of the Malay Archipelago. It is 
situated on the north coast of the island, on a 
wide, deep bay. The principal warehouses and 
offices of the Europeans, the Java Bank, the 
Exchange and other business buildings are in 
the old town, which is built on a low, marshy 
plain near the sea, and is intersected with 
canals. The Europeans reside in a new, much 
healthier and more attractive quarter, beautiful 
in its abundant foliage. Here is located one of 
the most magnificent botanical gardens in the 
world. Newer Batavia has good electric rail¬ 
ways, steam tramways, electric lighting, tele¬ 
phones and water works; in public utilities and 
architecture it equals any city of the same size 
in Europe or America. The domestic and for¬ 
eign trade is extensive, sugar, spices, coffee, rice 
and indigo being the chief exports. 

The city was founded by the Dutch in 1619 
and attained its greatest prosperity in the 
beginning of the eighteenth century. Its in¬ 
habitants are chiefly Malay, with a considerable 
mixture of Chinese and about 9,000 Europeans. 
Population, about 139,000. 

BATAVIA, N. ¥., the county seat of Gene¬ 
see County, in the western part of the state, is 
thirty-six miles northeast of Buffalo, on Tona- 
wanda Creek, and on the Erie, the Lehigh Val¬ 
ley and the New York Central railroads. The 
population was 11,613 in 1910 and 13,278 by the 
state census of 1915. The area exceeds three 
square miles. 

Batavia is the seat of the New York State 
School for the Blind. It contains the county 
courthouse, county jail, the Richmond Memo¬ 
rial Library and Y. M. C. A. building and 
several club buildings. One of the most inter¬ 
esting features is the Old Holland Land Office, 
containing a museum of historical relics. The 
'‘Batavia Scheme,” a method by which back¬ 
ward pupils receive individual instruction, 
originated in the schools of this city. 

Among the important manufactures of Bata¬ 
via are agricultural machinery, metal cans and 
tanks, clamps, preserved fruits and vegetables, 
cut glass, firearms, monuments, extracts and 
perfumes, automobile tires, shoes, vacuum 


cleaners, etc. Batavia was platted by Joseph 
Ellicott in 1801 and was incorporated as a vil¬ 
lage in 1823. It was the home of William 
Morgan, whose death in 1826 was charged to 
members of the Masonic Order because of his 
avowed intention to reveal Masonic secrets 
(see Anti-Masons). b.oft. 

BATES, Arlo (1850- ), an American 

poet, novelist, essayist and teacher, was born in 
Maine. After his graduation from Bowdoin 
College, in 1876, he began a literary career in 
Boston, and in 1880 became editor of the Sun¬ 
day Courier. During his thirteen years of ser¬ 
vice on that journal many of his novels and 
poems were published, and he also corre¬ 
sponded for the Providence Journal, the Chi¬ 
cago Tribune and the Book Buyer. In 1893 he 
accepted the chair of English in the Massa¬ 
chusetts Institute of Technology. Professor 
Bates’ Talks on Writing English and Talks on 
the Study of Literature are clearly and interest¬ 
ingly written. Many of his graceful and pic¬ 
turesque poems may be found in volumes 
entitled Berries of the Brier, Sonnets in Shadow 
and Under the Beech Tree. Of his novels, 
probably the best-known is the story of a New 
England girl, called The Diary of a Saint. The 
Pagans, The Philistines and Love in a Cloud 
are other well-known novels. 

BATES, Blanche (1873- ), an American 

actress who became widely known to play¬ 
goers while starring under the management of 
David Belasco. She was born at Portland, Ore., 
and gained her first stage experience as a mem¬ 
ber of a stock company which toured the 
Pacific coast. Her real start in her profession, 
however, she owed to Augustin Daly, who in 
1898 gave her a small part in The Taming of 
the Shrew in his New York company. There¬ 
after she made rapid progress, and her inter¬ 
pretation of the role of Mirtza in the Great- 
Ruby (1899) created a sensation. Her char¬ 
acterization of Cigarette in Under Two Flags, 
was another notable success, but she has gained 
the widest renown in Belasco’s production of 
Madame Butterfly, The Darling of the Gods 
and The Girl of the Golden West. 

BATH, England, a fashionable watering- 
place, and the chief city of Somersetshire. It 
is beautifully situated in a wooded valley along 
the Avon River, twelve miles southeast of 
Bristol and the Bristol Channel, and 108 miles 
west and south of London. The city was 
founded by the Romans in the first century 
a. d. They named it Aquae Solis, meaning 
the waters of the sun, and built many baths, 


BATH 


622 


BATHS AND BATHING 


some of which have been excavated and found 
remarkably well preserved. 

Modern Bath is one of the loveliest cities in 
England. The houses are of white stone and 
are built upon terraces at the feet of high hills 
which rise north and east of the town. Inter¬ 
esting features are the celebrated Abbey 
Church, one of England’s fine specimens of the 
late Gothic style of architecture, the guild 
hall, and buildings connected with the baths. 
The city has grown about the hot springs rising 
near the river bank, which yield about 500,000 
gallons of water daily. It reached the height of 
its influence and prosperity in the eighteenth 
century. It is now a parliamentary borough, 
and sends two members to Parliament. In 1911 
the population was 50,729. 

BATH, Knights of the. The Order of the 
Bath is the oldest order of English knighthood, 
but it is inferior in rank to the Order of the 
Garter, which is conferred only on noblemen 
(see Garter, Order of the). The date of the 
founding of the Order is not known, but it was 
in existence in 1127 when, according to history, 
Henry I conferred knighthood on Geoffrey of 
Anjou. The recipient of the honor was required 
to bathe, the act being symbolic of the pure 
and cleanly life his knightly vows enforced. 
After falling into abeyance for more than a 
century, the Order of the Bath was revived by 
George I in 1725. 

Until 1847 the order was military, but since 
that date this knighthood has been conferred 
by the king or queen on those deemed worthy 
of honor for services in the field of science, art 
or letters, as well as in the field of war. The 
Order comprises three classes, namely Knights 


early period bathing has been practiced for 
cleanliness, health, comfort and recreation, 
either in the home or in public establishments. 
The ancient Romans considered the bath one 
of their luxuries, and erected magnificent public 
buildings in which to gratify their taste for 
this form of physical culture. Recent years 
have witnessed a revival of interest in the pub- 


Grand Cross of the Bath (G.C.B.), Knights 
Commanders (K.C.B.) and a lower order of 
Companions (C.B.). The holders of the two 
former titles are entitled to the prefix “Sir”; 
the lower class carries no title. 

BATH, Maine, is the county seat of Saga- 
dohoc County, in the south-central part of the 
state. It is thirty miles south of Augusta, 
thirty-six miles northeast of Portland and is on 
the west bank of the Kennebec River, twelve 
miles from the sea. It is served by the Maine 
Central Railroad, electric interurban lines and 
by steamers which run to Boston, Portland, 
Augusta and Boothbay Harbor. The popula¬ 
tion in 1910 was 9,396. The area exceeds thir¬ 
teen square miles. 

The city has an excellent harbor, and the 
river seldom freezes. The business section 
extends along the low waterfront for five miles; 
the residence section occupies higher ground. 
Bath has a public library, the state military 
and naval orphan asylum, two homes for aged 
persons, a hospital and a soldiers’ monument. 
Shipbuilding, both of wood and of iron and 
steel, is the principal industry and several ves¬ 
sels, torpedo boats, gunboats and rams of the 
United States navy have been built here. 
There is a considerable coastwise and foreign 
trade in ice, coal, lumber, iron and steel. The 
principal industries relate to shipbuilding and 
include manufactures of lumber, cordage, ship- 
blocks, windlasses, marine engines, and brass 
and iron foundries, machine shops, etc. 

Settled about 1660, by Robert Gutch, a mis¬ 
sionary to the Indians, Bath was first a part of 
Georgetown. It was incorporated separately in 
1781, and in 1847 became a city. 


emphasis; for modern social workers consider 
it an important feature of their program for the 
uplift of humanity. Dr. Simon Baruch, who 
was the chief agent in securing legislation pro¬ 
viding for compulsory municipal baths in New 
York state, has publicly stated that money 
spent for public baths does more to raise the 
standard of health and morality than a much 



ATHS AND BATHING. From an lie bath, but there has been a new point of 










































































BATHS AND BATHING 


623 


BATHS AND BATHING 


greater amount spent in any other way, and the 
Boston Bath Commission has reported that the 
greatest single agency in decreasing the number 
of juvenile arrests in Boston, during a specified 
decade, was the people’s bath. It is this hu¬ 
manitarian feature of the modern public bath 
that sets it apart from public bathing of the 
Roman age. 

Modern Public Baths. These may be grouped 
into two general classes—open-air baths and 
baths in buildings. The former are represented 
by bathing beaches, which are maintained by 
all large cities that have sea or lake water 
fronts, by bathing pools in city parks and by 
the less familiar floating baths. Enclosed bath 
houses have all the well-known devices for pro¬ 
moting cleanliness and providing recreation— 
bath tubs, shower baths and swimming pools— 
though not all of these are alwaj’s found in one 
establishment. 

During the warm season public bathing 
beaches are a wonderful boon to those city- 
dwellers whose bathing facilities are limited. 
Municipal beaches are sometimes operated 
free, but more often a fee of a few cents is 
charged for the use of bathing suit, locker and 
towel. As social workers have pointed out, 
these beaches not only provide wholesome 
recreation, but they have an educational value 
in that they encourage the bathing habit. 
Many persons who have patronized the beaches 
for the element of fun have learned the beauty 
and comfort of cleanliness. 

Floating baths are most successful in towns 
on unpolluted bodies of water. Such a bath 
consists of a platform placed upon floats, and 
having in the center a pool surrounded by 
dressing rooms. By means of an ingenious 
arrangement of slats, the water circulates freely 
through the sides and bottom of the pool, and 
the bath may be moored at any suitable point 
along the water front. In cities where the 
rivers are polluted by sewage these baths are 
not desirable. 

Indoor bathing is practiced both for recrea¬ 
tion and for cleanliness. In the best-equipped 
bath houses there are shower or tub baths for 
cleansing the body, and a large pool for swim¬ 
ming. It is perhaps unnecessary to state that 
an enclosed swimming pool used for any pur¬ 
poses other than recreation could not be kept 
in a sanitary condition. Patrons of these pools 
are required to wash the body in a tub or under 
a shower before plunging in for the swim. A 
model swimming pool has the walls and floor 
finished in marble slabs, glazed tiles or other 


washable materials, a scum gutter runs along 
the sides at the water level to catch floating 
impurities, and there is a continuous inflow of 
pure water into the pool. 

Considering its importance, the modern pub¬ 
lic bath movement was late in starting. The 
first bath house provided with hot and cold- 
water equipment to be established by a modern 
European city^ was one opened in Liverpool in 
1842. At the present time every borough in 
Great Britain with a population of over 50,000 
has municipally-owned bath houses, and the 
smaller cities are gradually adopting the idea. 
Germany, France, Austria, Norway and Sweden 
maintain them in the larger cities, and they are 
found throughout Russia, even in the small 
villages. In the latter country, however, sani¬ 
tary conditions in connection with the public 
baths are often unsatisfactory. 

In America public bath houses are less com¬ 
mon than in Europe, because of the prevalence 
of bath tubs in private houses. In modern 
building, even the little cottage or apartment 
is provided with bathing facilities. In the 
crowded tenement districts of the larger cities, 
however, the provisions for keeping clean are 
woefully inadequate, and for this reason public 
bath houses, located as nearly as possible in the 
center of thickly-populated districts, should be 
found in every town where such conditions 
prevail. 

In a recent survey of the progress of the pub¬ 
lic bath in the United States, it was found that 
New York, Chicago, Boston and Baltimore 
have done the most in the matter of establish¬ 
ing such baths; that a large number of manu¬ 
facturing cities have taken no steps whatever 
to provide free or cheap baths for their work¬ 
ing population; and that this is true of some 
cities having between 300,000 and 500,000 in¬ 
habitants. In a few instances baths have been 
installed in public schools; the first of these 
were provided in 1900 by the Paul Revere 
School of Boston. New York was the first 
state to pass a law making the erection of pub¬ 
lic bath houses compulsory. In 1895 all cities 
of more than 50,000 inhabitants were required 
to erect such establishments, to be open four¬ 
teen hours a day, and be provided with hot 
and cold water. Buffalo, in 1897, opened the 
first public bath house under that law. 

The Turkish Bath. This is one of the most 
thorough cleansing baths known. In medieval 
times the religion of the Arabians made bathing 
compulsory, and the cleaning process which 
they originated has developed into a form of 


BATHS AND BATHING 


624 


BATHS AND BATHING 


bath that has become known by this name. 
The bather is exposed to high temperatures 
until his body is profusely covered with per¬ 
spiration. It is then washed off with cold 
water, and the skin is rubbed with woolen 
cloths and smeared with soap or salve. The 
attendant at the same time rubs off the old 
skin particles, kneads the muscles and bends 
the joints (see Massage). After the whole 
body is scrubbed with soap and warm water, it 
is dried with a haircloth, and the hard skin of 
the feet is rubbed off with pumice stone. The 
bather then reclines on a couch in a cooler 
room until his skin acquires its natural degree 
of warmth. 

The soaping and rubbing processes of the 
Turkish bath free the skin of practically all its 
grease and dirt accumulations, and it is to be 
recommended for those in robust health. Those 
suffering from sciatica, rheumatism, sore mus¬ 
cles and various forms of lameness will find it 
beneficial, but it should be avoided by people 
with heart and kidney diseases. Never take a 
Turkish bath to break up a cold when it is in 
the fever stage, as there is then danger of con¬ 
tracting pneumonia. The Russian vapor bath 
is similar to the Turkish bath, but the perspira¬ 
tion is induced by throwing water upon glowing 
hot pebbles and permitting the steam to 
envelop the bodies of the bathers. 

Bathing for Cleanliness and for Comfort. It 
is only by frequent washing of the entire body 
that one can keep the skin in a sweet and 
wholesome condition. About two and one-half 
million sweat glands are hard at work every 
day pouring out upon the skin the watery sub¬ 
stance called perspiration, which contains 
water, oil and waste matter from the blood. 
This perspiration, in evaporating, leaves upon 
the surface of the body solid and oily matters, 
which if neglected will clog up the sweat tubes 
and interfere with the skin’s work of eliminat¬ 
ing waste matter. For this reason everyone 
should bathe frequently. 

Just how often to bathe and what sort of a 
bath to take are matters that must be decided 
by the individual. Hot tub baths are said by 
many physicians to be weakening if taken 
oftener than twice a week, but doubtless there 
are many persons who suffer no ill effects from 
the daily cleansing bath in hot water. Whether 
it be a dip in tepid water or simply a sponge 
bath, daily washing of the entire body is a very 
commendable practice. 

The bath in cold water is popular because of 
its tonic effects. The first effect of cold water 


is a sensation of cold, which causes the blood 
vessels to contract. Then follows the reaction; 
that is, the blood vessels open again, the warm 
blood flows rapidly through the body, the skin 
feels warm, and the bather, who finishes his 
bath with a brisk rub, experiences a delightful 
sense of exhilaration and well-being.* Not all 
persons experience this reaction, however, and 
the cold plunge is usually the exclusive privi¬ 
lege of the vigorous. It should not be indulged 
in if the after effect is a prolonged sense of 
chill. Nevertheless, one can accustom the 
body to the effects of cold water by a gradual 
process, and even a cold sponge bath or a dash 
of water over the chest and shoulders every 
morning will be found a valuable help in pre¬ 
venting colds. 

Baths for the Sick. Vapor baths are used 
in treating certain skin diseases, kidney trouble 
and chronic rheumatism. Carbonic acid gas 
mixed with water provides a highly-tonic bath 
that has been found helpful in cases of heart 
trouble, nervous ailments, insomnia, neuralgia, 
rheumatism and gout, and electric currents, 
made to pass through the body of the bather, 
are also employed by physicians for curing 
abdominal and intestinal troubles, sprains and 
contusions and other ailments. Electric-light 
baths, in which the patient is affected by the 
chemical and physical influences of the light 
rays, were introduced at Battle Creek (Mich.) 
Sanitarium in 1893. Such baths are strengthen¬ 
ing, refreshing and stimulating. 

Mud baths, consisting of applications to the 
body of warm or hot mud, usually mixed with 
sulphur or other mineral substance, are given 
to patients suffering from rheumatism. Another 
curative agent is the so-called continuous bath, 
introduced into America in 1873. The patient 
rests in the tub in a hammock or a blanket, 
with his body under water and his head out, 
the temperature of the water being about 95°. 
He may remain in the bath for hours, days, 
weeks or longer, according to his ailment. 
Patients suffering from certain skin diseases and 
affections of the joints have been kept in such 
baths for years. Insane persons and those 
addicted to alcoholic or drug habits are often 
quieted by this form of bath. Hot baths to 
relieve pain, reduce inflammation, control 
spasms and quiet the nerves, and salt rubs are 
other commonly-known methods of treating 
the sick. 

The hot springs and medicinal springs in 
various regions of the earth attract many who 
are suffering from rheumatism and similar com- 


BATHS AND BATHING 


625 


BATON ROUGE 


plaints. The most noted hot springs in North 
America are those at Hot Springs, Arkansas 
(see Hot Springs, Ark.; Mineral Springs). 
Among the noted mineral springs of Europe 
are those at Baden, Carlsbad and Aachen, Ger¬ 
many; Spa, Belgium; and Tcplitz, Bohemia. 

Ancient and Medieval Baths. It would seem 
that civilized people have always believed in 
the bath, for Homer, writing ten centuries 
before the birth of Christ, mentions it as one 
of the first forms of refreshment offered to a 
guest. The Egyptians and Hebrews empha¬ 
sized washing as a religious rite, and this idea 
was also common to the Greeks, who connected 
the bath with preparations for the sacrifices, 
for the reception of oracles, for marriage, etc. 
Public baths were maintained both by the 



BATHS 'OP CARACALLA 

The baths of Caracalla, still magnificent in 
their ruins, could accommodate 16,000 people at 
one time. The building measured about a mile 
around. Its various apartments were adorned with 
beautiful paintings, stucco work and statuary. 

Greeks and Romans, and among the latter they 
reached a magnificence unheard of in modern 
times. The imperial thermae, covering enor¬ 
mous spaces in the heart of Rome, were a com¬ 
bination of library, gymnasium, garden, lecture 
room and bathing establishment, and those of 


Titus, Trajan, Caracalla and Diocletian are of 
time-honored fame. 

When the culture of the Western Roman 
Empire gave way to the darkness of the early 
Middle Ages, the magnificent public baths were 
abandoned. Just how much bathing itself fell 
into disuse in Western Europe historians are 
unable to say, but it is known for a surety that 
all the luxurious customs connected with the 
Roman bath were preserved in Constantinople, 
the capital of the Eastern Empire, and were 
adopted by the Mohammedans. From the 
eighth century to the present time all the 
Mohammedan cities of the East have main¬ 
tained public and private baths. b.m.w. 

BATON ROUGE, bat'un roosh', La., the 
capital of the state, the seat of government for 
East Baton Rouge Parish and a port of entry, 
is situated in the southeastern part of the state 
and on the Mississippi River, eighty-nine miles 
northwest of New Orleans by rail, and 250 miles 
by water from the Gulf of Mexico. Transpor¬ 
tation is provided by the Illinois Central, Saint 
Louis & San Francisco, Louisiana Railway & 
Navigation Company, and Southern Pacific 
lines, and by the Texas Pacific Railway through 
Port Allen, across the river. The population, 
which in 1910 was 14,897, had increased to 
16,442 by 1914. The city occupies an area of 
two and one-half square miles. 

Baton Rouge is built on the southernmost 
high land on the Mississippi River, safe from 
the destructive waters of the highest floods. It 
is a quaint, picturesque old city, with Spanish 
and French houses, tropical fruit orchards, and 
sugar and cotton plantations extending along 
the river bank. The state capitol is the most 
notable structure, and is unique among the 
capitols of the United States, presenting the 
appearance of an old Spanish fort or palace 
with the American flag waving from its tower; 
it replaces the one built in 1862. Because it is 
the capital city, many of the state’s institutions 
are located in Baton Rouge; these include the 
penitentiary, the Agricultural Experiment Sta¬ 
tion, the State University and Agricultural and 
Mechanical College (1860), of which the Audu¬ 
bon Sugar School, for training in growing sugar 
cane and in making sugar, is a distinctive fea¬ 
ture; and the state institutes for the blind and 
the deaf. Features of public interest are the 
city hall, post office, a plant for burning garbage, 
and a municipal abattoir, the latter operated 
under Federal supervision. The city has a 
national cemetery for soldiers. Besides the uni¬ 
versity there are, for higher education, Saint 















































BATRACHIA 


626 


BATTERING-RAM 


Vincent’s and Saint Joseph’s academies, South¬ 
ern University and Baton Rouge College (the 
last two for colored students), public and Hill 
Memorial libraries. 

The city is a port of entry for home and 
foreign commerce, and any vessel entering the 
river at its mouth may safely ascend to this 
point. By far the greatest contributor to the 
wealth and industry of the city is the Standard 
Oil Company of Louisiana, the headquarters of 
the Stanocola products. The plant covers 450 
acres, employs about 2,000 people, and is the 
industrial show-place of the city. This is the 
largest but by no means the only important 
industrial establishment in the city. There are 
also mammoth printing houses employing about 
1,600 people, large sugar refineries, manufac¬ 
tories of molasses, cottonseed and lumber prod¬ 
ucts, and pepper mills. 

Baton Rouge was settled by the French and 
is one of the oldest settlements in the state. 
It became a British possession in 1763, as part 
of West Florida, and fell under Spanish govern¬ 
ment in 1779. In 1817 it was incorporated as 
a town. From 1849 until 1862 it w r as the state 
capital; then Shreveport was chosen for the 
Confederate seat of government, and in 1864 
the Unionists made New Orleans the capital. 
The Louisiana Ordinance of Secession was 
adopted in Baton Rouge in 1861. In August of 
1862 the Union forces successfully defended an 
attack by the Confederate forces, under Gen¬ 
eral Breckenridge, though the Union leader, 
Brigadier-General Williams, lost his life. The 
city was reoccupied after a month and was held 
until the end of the war. It became the state 
capital again in 1882. In recent years its growth 
has been steady and in 1914 it adopted the 
commission form of government. b.m.a. 

BATRACHIA, batra' ke a, a name originally 
given to an order of animals which included 
toads, frogs, newts and salamanders. The name 
means jroglike. Batracliians live on land and 
in water, and they are now all included in the 
family Amphibia, a name meaning double life. 
Since the latter name is more expressive of the 
chief characteristic of these animals it is pre¬ 
ferred to the old name batrachia. See Amphib¬ 
ians. 

BATTALION, batal' yun, a term used in 
nearly every army to denote a unit of military 
organization, consisting of a body of troops 
whose numbers vary according to the standard 
of the army to which they belong. In the 
United States a battalion consists of four com¬ 
panies with a total of 1,000 men. A British 


battalion has 1,000 men, divided into eight 
companies. German battalions in war time 
number 1,002, in four companies. French, Aus¬ 
trian and Italian battalions have practically the 
same formation as those of Germany. 

BATTENBERG, bat' en berg, a princely 
family of Prussia which has played a part in 
the history of Bulgaria, of England and of 
Spain. Prince Alexander of Hesse, who married 
Countess von Hanke, was given to understand 
that the marriage could be looked upon only as 
morganatic—that is, that neither his wife nor 
his children could share his possessions nor 
bear his title. In 1853, however, the countess 
was created princess of Battenberg, the name 
being taken from a little town of Hesse-Nassau, 
and her sons were accordingly known as princes 
of Battenberg. 

The eldest son, Louis Alexander, Prince of 
Battenberg (1854- ), became a naturalized 

British citizen, and entered the British navy. 
In 1884 he married his cousin, the Princess Vic¬ 
toria, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. His 
rise in rank in the navy was steady, and was 
based on distinguished services. In 1911 he was 
made second sea lord of the admiralty, and in 
the following year admiral of the fleet. 

The second son of Alexander of Hesse was 
the Prince Alexander of Battenberg, who was 
chosen prince of Bulgaria when that country 
became self-governing in 1879. By reason of 
his real ability as well as his devotion to his 
adopted country he deserved well at the hands 
of the Bulgarians, but political troubles ran 
high, and in 1886 he was compelled to resign 
the throne. 

A younger brother of the foregoing, Prince 
Henry Maurice, married the Princess Beatrice, 
daughter of Queen Victoria, and it was his 
daughter, the Princess Victoria Ena, who in 
1906 became queen of Spain as the wife of 
Alfonso XIII. 

BATTERING-RAM, a device of the days 
before the invention of gunpowder and heavy 
guns for battering down the walls of besieged 
places. As used by the Greeks and Romans, 
it consisted of a beam, or spar, with a massive 
metal head often shaped like the head of a 
ram, which suggested the name of the weapon. 
It was carried on the shoulders of a number 
of men who rushed it against the walls, or was 
suspended by chains to a beam set across two 
uprights. Sometimes the framework was 
mounted on wheels, which greatly increased its 
effectiveness. Often the ram was 120 feet or 
more in length, with a head weighing nearly 



BATTLE 


627 BATTLEDORE AND SHUTTLECOCK 


two tons, requiring 100 men to work it. The 
soldiers operating the battering ram were usu¬ 
ally protected by a screen. During the siege 


TWO FORMS OF ANCIENT BATTERING RAM 

of Jerusalem the Romans used battering rams 
with terrible effect, no walls being able to with¬ 
stand their constant blows. 

BATTLE, Trial by, or Wager of, a custom 
of the Middle Ages of proving the innocence 
of one accused of crime by a solemn, judicial 
duel fought between the accused and the 
accuser, in the belief that God would give the 
victory to the right. Women and churchmen 
w r ere forbidden to take part in these duels but 
might choose a champion to fight in their stead, 
and this fighting by proxy led to great abuse of 
the custom, for professional fighters were often 
trained and hired out to do battle. Introduced 
into England by William the Conqueror, the 
custom was not formally abolished by law until 
1819. Wagner’s music drama of Lohengrin cen¬ 
ters around the idea of trial by battle, the 
white knight Lohengrin appearing in response 
to the prayers of Elsa, who has been falsely 
accused. 

BATTLE CREEK, Mich., in Calhoun Coun¬ 
ty, in the southwest part of the state, is twent}^- 
two miles east of Kalamazoo, 165 miles east of 
Chicago and 121 miles west of Detroit. It is at 
the junction of Kalamazoo River and Battle 
Creek, and is on the Michigan Central and 
Grand Trunk railroads. Interurban electric 
lines connect with Detroit and neighboring 
cities and towns. The area of the city is nearly 
six square miles. In 1910 the population was 
25,267; in 1914 it was 28,122. 

Battle Creek is the home of Battle Creek 
Sanitarium (established in 1866). The institu¬ 
tion includes a hospital, dormitories, homes for 
children and for the aged, and a college, and 
has a tabernacle with a seating capacity of 
3,500. Prominent buildings of the city are the 
Federal building, the city hall, Post Tavern, 
Ward building, the public library and Y. M. 
C. A. building, the two latter the gift of Charles 
Willard; also a well-equipped hospital. 


Largely due to the dietetic reforms of the 
Sanitarium, Battle Creek has become famous 
as a manufacturing center of breakfast foods 
and for publications of diet-reform literature. 
The city has extensive manufactories of thresh¬ 
ing machines and other farm implements, trac¬ 
tion engines and steam pumps, and produces 
also printing presses, hose fixtures, paper car¬ 
tons and boxes. Extensive car shops of the 
Grand Trunk Railroad are located here. The 
city is in a rich agricultural section and has an 
important trade in grain, fruit, live stock and 
wool. Battle Creek was settled in 1831 and 
incorporated as a village in 1850. Trouble 
which occurred between surveyors and Indians 
at this point is a circumstance said to have 
given the city its name. A charter granted in 
1859 was revised in 1900. The commission form 
of government was adopted in 1913. g.s.b. 

BATTLEDORE AND SHUTTLECOCK, a 
game played with a small racket, called a 
battledore, and a shuttlecock made of a piece 
of cork, or other light material, with feathers 
fixed round the top. The racket may be cov¬ 
ered with stout parchment or made of strings 
crossed and fastened as in a tennis racket. Two 
players stand facing each other a few yards 
apart and hit the shuttlecock back and forth 
as many times as possible without allowing it 
to touch the ground. The player who allows 
the shuttlecock to fall to the ground loses a 
point. A game may consist of any number of 
points agreed upon by the players. 



BATTLEDORE AND SHUTTLECOCK 

(a) Two forms of battledore; (&) the shuttle¬ 
cock, which is not so large in proportion to the 
size of the battledore as the illustration would 
lead one to believe. 

This mild but interesting sport is of very 
ancient origin, and has been popular in China, 
India and other Eastern countries for at least 
2,000 years. A modern development of it is 
known as Badminton, and it is popular as an 
indoor winter pastime in England. The racket 
and shuttlecock are heavier than those used in 
the older game, and the rules of Badminton are 
similar to those of tennis. A net is placed 
across a marked court, and the shuttlecock is 

















BATTLEFORD 


628 


BAVARIA 


sent back and forth over the net. It is usually 
played by four persons, two on each side of the 
net. 

BATTLEFORD, a town in Saskatchewan, at 
the confluence of Battle and Saskatchewan 
rivers, on the Canadian Northern and Grand 
Trunk Pacific railways. It is ninety miles 
northwest of Saskatoon and 254 miles east of 
Edmonton. Battleford was one of the first 
settlements in the Northwest, and from 1876 
to 1883 was the capital of the Northwest Terri¬ 
tories. It is now the center of a judicial dis¬ 
trict and of a district of the Royal Northwest 
Mounted Police, and has a Dominion lands 
office and meteorological office. The court¬ 
house, the town hall and the high school are 
conspicuous structures. The Battleford dis¬ 
trict is noted for mixed farming, and is also 
popular for hunters, duck and prairie chicken 
being abundant. Population in 1911, 1,335; in 
1916, estimated, 1,500. 

BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC, a 

stirring popular hymn, much sung on national 
or patriotic occasions in the United States. It 
was written by Julia Ward Howe in 1861, to the 
music of the old song John Brown’s Body, and 
the author herself has told how she happened 
to write it. She went, during the War of Seces¬ 
sion, to watch a review of the Union troops, 
and later described her return to Washington in 
the following words: 

“The road was so filled with soldiers that 
our return from the parade grounds was very 
tedious, and to pass the time away we sang 
John Broion's Body. Some of the marching 
regiments took it up and it was passed along 
the road until the echoes reverberated for miles. 
My pastor asked me why I did not put the 
spirit of the song into some gracious and ex¬ 
pressive words. I told him I had tried. One 
morning soon after that I awoke suddenly, and 
the lines I wanted were running vaguely through 
my mind. I arose and put them down. They 
were published in the Atlantic Monthly, and the 
editor (James Russell Lowell) named it “The 
Battle Hymn of the Republic.” 

The first stanza runs as follows: 

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming 
of the Lord; 

He is trampling out the vintage where the 
grapes of wrath are stored; 

He has loosed the fateful lightning of his ter¬ 
rible, swift sword— 

His truth is marching on. 

BATTLESHIP. See Warship. 

BATUM, or BATOUM, batoom', a Black 
Sea port belonging to Russia, to which it was 
given in 1878 by the Treaty of Berlin, with the 
condition that it should not be made into a 


naval station. That condition was later can¬ 
celled, and in 1886 Batum became an important 
naval and military depot, for its harbor is one 
of the most spacious on the eastern shore of 
the Black Sea. Its trade is very large, and it 
is the chief point of export for vast amounts of 
petroleum, wheat and manganese ore from 
Transcaucasia. Its population is about 40,000. 

BAUCIS, baw' sis, AND PHILEMON, fit' e 
mon, an aged couple who, according to the old 
myth, were wonderfully rewarded for their 
kindliness and hospitality. One evening Jupiter 
and Mercury, who had been wandering about 
the earth in disguise and had been driven from 
a village by its unkind inhabitants, came to the 
cottage of Baucis and Philemon. The old 
couple, not recognizing their visitors, kindly 
received the gods and gave them the best from 
their frugal store. While they were at the table 
Baucis and Philemon were amazed to see that 
the milk pitcher was no sooner emptied than it 
was filled again. Realizing that they were 
entertaining divine and not mortal guests, they 
fell on their knees in worship. Their little cot¬ 
tage was then changed into a beautiful temple, 
of which they were made priest and priestess, 
and years later, when they were very, very old, 
they were changed into two graceful trees which 
stood beside the temple gates. 

BAUXITE, bo'zite, a clay-like, non-crys- 
tallized mineral which is the source of alumi¬ 
num. It is usually found mixed with iron oxide. 
In color it varies from white through yellow 
and brown to red. Eighty per cent of the Amer¬ 
ican bauxite comes from Arkansas, and Ala¬ 
bama, Georgia and Tennessee produce the bal¬ 
ance. There are large deposits in Ireland. The 
American deposits are excellent for the pro¬ 
duction of aluminum, and alum, the salts of 
which are used for dyeing. Another use for it 
has been found in the manufacture of fire 
bricks and crucibles. See Aluminum; Alum. 

BAVARIA, with the exception of Prussia, is 
the largest and most populous state of the Ger¬ 
man Empire. It is a kingdom, and consists of 
two distinct parts, Bavaria proper, on the ex¬ 
treme southeast of the Empire, with Austria- 
Hungary on the east and south, and Western 
Bavaria, or the Rhine Palatinate, which lies to 
the west of the Rhine River. The latter por¬ 
tion is only about one-thirteenth of the entire 
kingdom, which has a total area of 29,293 
square miles, but it has almost one-seventh of 
the entire population of 6,887,291. South Caro¬ 
lina is a little larger, with about one-fourth the 
number of people. 






BAVARIA 


629 


BAVARIA 


Physical Features and Resources. The gen¬ 
eral article Germany includes Bavaria as well 
as the other states in its discussion of geo- 



THE KINGDOM OF BAVARIA 
Its location in the German Empire. 

graphical features, resources and industries, but 
there may be mentioned here a few of its dis¬ 
tinctive characteristics. It is almost entirely 
cut off from the surrounding states by moun¬ 
tains, within which lies a basin-like plateau 
of 1,600 feet elevation, broken by ranges of 
hills. Most of the country is drained bj'- the 
Danube River, but in the northwestern part 
the drainage is toward the Main. 

More than any other German state Bavaria 
is given over to agriculture, and many agricul¬ 
tural associations have aided in spreading 
advanced methods until the soil has been 
brought to a point of productiveness equaled 
in few other sections of the world. Grains, 
potatoes and hay are the principal crops, but 
hops also are raised in large quantities, for 
Bavaria is the greatest beer-producing spot in 
the world. The yield for years has averaged 
over 420,000,000 gallons annually, or a million 
and a third gallons every working day. 

Government. Though a part of the German 
Empire, Bavaria is independent in its internal 
affairs and has its own hereditary monarch. 
The king is the sole executive, but he is 
assisted by a Cabinet of seven ministers who 
are responsible to the people for his acts. The 
legislative body is known as the Landtag, and 
consists of two houses, a Chamber of Coun¬ 
cilors of the Realm of about ninety members, 
all hereditary or appointed for life, and a lower 
house of 163 elected members. Bavaria also 
sends six representatives to Berlin to the 
Bundesrat, or upper house of the imperial Par¬ 
liament, and forty-eight members to the 
Reichstag, or lower house- 


The principal cities are Munich, the capital; 
and Augsburg, Nuremberg, Wurzburg and 
Ratisbon. They are described in their alpha¬ 
betical places in these volumes. 

History. The inhabitants of the territory 
now known as Bavaria were Celts at the time 
the country first engaged the attention of his¬ 
torians (see Celts). The Celtic tribe was con¬ 
quered by the Romans about 15 b. c.; in the 
eighth century the Franks gained control, and 
Bavaria was included in the empire of Charle¬ 
magne. After his death and that of his de¬ 
scendants, it was constituted a duchy, and in 
1180 was transferred to the family of Wittels- 
bach, a member of which is still the ruling 
sovereign. The Rhinish Palatinate came into 
the possession of the same family in the next 
century; the connection between these two 
parts of the kingdom is thus an old one, though 
it has at various times been broken. One of 
its dukes was for a brief time (1742-1745) 
emperor of Germany. See Palatinate. 

Its Years as a Kingdo7n. Napoleon made of 
Bavaria a kingdom in 1805, and increased its 
territory because its king furnished him an 
army, and although a portion of this land 
had to be given up at the final adjustment after 
Napoleon’s fall, the new kingdom was consid¬ 
erably larger than the old duchy. A constitu¬ 
tion, which with certain changes is still in 
force, was adopted in 1818, but the people did 
not receive from it the larger liberties which 
they had expected. This was largely owing to 
the inability of successive kings to realize the 
needs of the country. 

Through jealousy and other causes, Bavaria 
opposed the efforts of Prussia to unite the 
German states under its own headship, and in 
the War of 1866 took sides with Austria. As 
a result it was made to give up a generous slice 
of territory and to form an offensive and de¬ 
fensive alliance with the victorious Prussia. 
Compelled by this alliance and the feeling of 
the people, Bavaria took part in the Franco- 
German War in 1870 and at the close of the 
struggle took a leading part in the formation 
of the German Empire. For a time the king¬ 
dom was most unfortunate in its sovereigns. 
Louis II went insane and killed himself in 
1886, and his brother, Otto I, was also declared 
incapable of ruling because of mental infirmity. 
In 1913 the regent, Prince Ludwig Leopold, 
was proclaimed king as Ludwig III. 

In times of peace Bavaria has control of its 
own army, but in war times this passes under 
the sway of the Empire. When the War of 



BAYARD 


630 


BAYEUX TAPESTRY 


the Nations broke out in 1914 Bavaria was 
prompt to send its quota of troops, and the 
Bavarian contingent under Prince Leopold, 
brother of the king, was the first to enter War¬ 
saw when that city fell to the Germans in 1915. 
See Germany. a.mc c. 

BAYARD, ba yar', Pierre du Terrail (known 
as Chevalier Bayard) (1476-1524), a French 
knight whose chivalrous virtues won him the 
title of “the knight without fear and above 
reproach.” Unlike most characters of medieval 
history and legend, he satisfies the standards of 
the most critical modern historian by reason of 
his bravery, his generosity and his unblemished 
honor. 

He served under the French kings Charles 
VIII, Louis XII and Francis I, and under all 
of them achieved wonderful successes over the 
Italians, Spaniards and English. One of his 
most famous exploits was the defense of a 
bridge at Garigliano, in 1503, against the 
assaults of 200 Spaniards. The brilliant victory 
at Marignano, 1515, was won largely through 
his efforts, and Francis I bowed before him 
after the victory to receive knighthood from 
him. 

BAYARD, by' erd, Thomas Francis (1828- 
1898), an American statesman, of a family dis¬ 
tinguished for ability. His grandfather, James 
Asheton Bayard (1767-1815), and his father, of 
the same name (1799-1880), were United States 
Senators, and young Bayard was brought up in 
the best traditions of the Democratic party, to 
which they belonged. He was born at Wil¬ 
mington, Del., studied law with his father, and 
while still a young man acquired a reputation 
as an attorney. With his father, he opposed 
the War of Secession, feeling that though the 
South did wrong to secede, the North also did 
wrong in trying to prevent secession by force. 

Elected to the Senate in 1869, to succeed his 
father, he became a leader among the Demo¬ 
crats, and was several times mentioned as a 
possible candidate for the Presidency. Pres¬ 
ident Cleveland made him Secretary of State 
in 1885, and he served with credit during the 
Bering Sea trouble and other crises. In 1893 
he was made ambassador to Great Britain, and 
was the first to bear that title, all our former 
representatives there having borne the title of 
minister plenipotentiary and envoy extraor¬ 
dinary. The House of Representatives passed 
a vote of censure against him for certain criti¬ 
cisms of his home country while he held this 
post, but he is regarded as among the very 
able statesmen the country has produced. 


BAY CITY, Mich., the county seat of Bay 
County, is in the eastern part of the state at 
the head of navigation on the Saginaw River, 
four miles from the south shore of Saginaw 
Bay. Detroit is 108 miles southeast; Saginaw 
is thirteen miles south. Bay City is served by 
the Michigan Central, Pere Marquette, Grand 
Trunk,- Detroit & Mackinac and the Detroit, 
Bay City & Western railroads, and by electric 
line to Saginaw. Steamers ply between this 
and other lake ports. In 1910 the population 
was 45,166; in 1914 it was 47,047. 

Bay City and West Bay City, on opposite 
sides of the river, which is here spanned by 
several bridges, were consolidated in 1905. The 
area of the city is about ten square miles. It 
has six public parks, a Federal building, a city 
hall, erected at a cost of $200,000, a public 
library and the Bay County Bar Library, a state 
armory and a Masonic Temple. The industries 
include ship and yacht building, lumber and 
planing mills, box factories and other large 
wood-working plants, a chicory plant, and 
manufactories of mill supplies and machinery, 
salt, sugar, alcohol and chemicals. The im¬ 
portance of coal mining and shipping is increas¬ 
ing and there is an extensive trade in lumber 
and other manufactured products. 

Bay City was settled in 1836, was incorpo¬ 
rated as a village in 1859 and became a city 
in 1865. 

BAYEUX TAPESTRY, bayu' tay'estri, 
the most remarkable and costty embroidery re¬ 
maining from early medieval times, picturing 
in a series of scenes the life of Harold and the 
invasion and conquest of England by William 



SECTION OF BAYEUX TAPESTRY 


the Conqueror. Tradition asserts that it is the 
work of the latter’s wife, Matilda, and that it 
was made for Odo, bishop of Bayeux, as a 
decorative hanging for his cathedral, where it 
was found. It is 230 feet long and about 
twenty inches high, and contains 1,512 figures 
with inscriptions in Latin, worked in red, green. 

















BAYONET 


631 


BAY RUM 


blue and j^ellow wool, cn a white canvas foun¬ 
dation. Authorities do not hesitate to consult 
it for details as to the manners and costumes of 
the time which it represents. (See William I, 
The Conqueror.) The tapestry has been pre¬ 
served in good condition, and is still kept in 
the library in the town of Bayeux. 

Bayeux is a very old town, and its life cen¬ 
ters about its fine cathedral, said to be the 
most ancient in Normandy. It is in the Aure 
valley, about five miles from the English Chan¬ 
nel, and has a thriving agricultural trade, be¬ 
sides manufactures of porcelain, lace and calico. 
Population in 1911, 7,638. 

BAY'ONET, a sword-like blade attached to 
the barrel of a rifle, deriving its name from 
the town of Bayonne, in France, where it was 
invented in the fifteenth century. At first the 
bayonet had a handle which was thrust into 



THE MODERN BAYONET 

the gun barrel, but very soon it was improved 
so as to fit around the barrel and thus cause 
no interruption in firing. Before the War of 
the Nations the bayonet had fallen almost into 
disuse in civilized warfare, but in that conflict 
it proved a terrible weapon in the hand-to-hand 
fighting in the trenches. The British and 
United States infantry are supplied with a bay¬ 
onet twenty inches in length, while French and 
German bayonets are several inches longer. 
The bayonet, when not fixed to the rifle, is 
worn in a leather scabbard attached to a belt 
and suspended on the left side of the body. 

BAYONNE, bay' yohn, N. J., located in 
Hudson County, and one of the leading indus¬ 
trial cities of the state, is noted especially for 
its large petroleum and coal interests. It is 
situated on New York and Newark bays, on 
the northeastern coast of the state, and is 
separated from Jersey City on the north by 
Morris Canal and from Staten Island on the 
east by Kill van Ivull. New York City is 
six miles northeast. The city is served by the 
Central Railroad of New Jersey, and electric 
lines operate to Jersey City. In 1910 the 
population was 55,545; in 1915 it showed a 
remarkable increase, being then 67,582. The 
city is four square miles in area. 

Bayonne is an attractive residential city, and 
the excellent railway accommodations induce 
many New York merchants to make it their 
home. The Hudson County Boulevard passes 


through the city. On Kill van Kull are located 
the immense Port Johnson Coal Docks, where 
several hundred people are employed in ship¬ 
ping coal. The city has the largest plants of 
the American Radiator Company and of the 
Standard Oil Company; the petroleum refin¬ 
eries of the latter are connected by pipes with 
the oil fields of Pennsylvania and with several 
of the leading cities on the Atlantic coast. Be¬ 
sides these immense industrial plants, there are 
large color-paint and chemical works, smelters, 
motor-boat, structural-iron and insulated-wire 
factories, and silk mills. 

The city of Bayonne includes the former vil¬ 
lages of Centerville, Bergen Point, Bayonne, 
Pomrapo and Constable Hook. Originally it 
was a part of Bergen, but became a separate 
township in 1861. In 1869 it became a city and 
was rechartered in 1872. 

BAYREUTH or BAIREUTH, biroit', a town 
of Bavaria, Germany, fifty-eight miles north¬ 
east of Nuremberg, of undying fame and in¬ 
terest because of its associations with the great 
composer Richard Wagner (which see). On the 
street named for him may be seen the home of 
the musician, with his grave in the garden, but 
his most interesting memorial is the famous 
Wagner Theater, opened in 1876, and devoted 
entirely to the performance of his music- 
dramas. The theater is built on a height over¬ 
looking the town, and has leading to it a broad 
avenue of shade trees. In connection with the 
theater is a school for training young people 
to take part in the Wagner music festivals, 
which are held nearly every year and which 
attract music-lovers from all over the world. 
BajTeuth also contains the graves of Franz 
Liszt and Jean Paul Richter, and a monument 
to the latter has been erected in the cemetery. 

Bayreuth is a town of some importance as a 
railway and trading center. Woolen, linen and 
cotton goods, leather, earthenware, musical in¬ 
struments and tobacco products are manufac¬ 
tured, and there are several breweries, distil¬ 
leries and brick kilns. Its important buildings 
include the palace of Duke Alexander of 
Wurttemberg, the old opera house, the town 
hall, a riding school, and a famous old church 
dating from 1439. There are a number of edu¬ 
cational and charitable institutions. Popula¬ 
tion in 1910, 34,547. 

BAY RUM, a widely-used liquid toilet prepa¬ 
ration, made by mixing the oil of bay with 
alcohol and water, and adding small amounts 
of the oil of orange peel and of allspice, to 
improve the odor. The oil of bay is obtained 






BAY TREE 


632 


BEADS 


by distilling the leaves of the bayberry, a West 
Indian tree of the myrtle family. Bay rum 
is chiefly used by barbers, hair-dressers and per¬ 
fumers. It is also sometimes used as a liniment 
to relieve pain in rheumatism. Bay rum is 
made in the West Indies by distilling rum in 
which bay leaves have been steeped. 

BAY TREE, the name of several related 
trees which have been famous in literature and 
history. The Psalms speak of “the wicked 
spreading himself like a green bay tree,” and 
the ancient Greeks used sprigs of bay, or laurel, 
as it was called, to crown the victors in their 
great games (see Olympic Games). In this 
sense it is still used figuratively; a poet is said 
to have “won his baj^s” when he gains praise 
and renown. 

The sweet bay, which was the victor’s laurel 
of the ancients, is an evergreen tree which is 
native to the Mediterranean countries, but is 
also grown in the warmer parts of North 
America. Its aromatic leaves are often used as 
a seasoning. The best-known bay of America, 
however, is the white bay, a member of the 
magnolia family, which with its shining ever¬ 
green leaves is highly ornamental. California 
also has a bay tree which yields a valuable 
lumber. 

BAZAR or BAZAAR, bazahr', an Oriental 
market for articles of all sorts, in which trad¬ 
ers maintain small stalls or shops. Sometimes 
a bazar is confined to a single narrow street; 
at other times it may spread out through a 
number of streets, all perhaps covered. Gos¬ 
sip is carried on quite as much as trade, and 
bazars form the setting for many of the tales 
of the Arabian Nights. In America the name 
bazar has come to mean a sale of various ob¬ 
jects, mostly home made, for philanthropic 
purposes. 

BEACH, Rex (1877- ), an American 

writer whose stories of adventure, published 
originally in magazines and later in book form, 
have given him a place among America’s pop¬ 
ular novelists. He was born at Atwood, Mich., 
studied at Rollins College, Fla., and afterward 
fitted himself for the profession of law. The 
success of various short sketches sent to the 
magazines determined him, however, to give 
his time to the writing of tales rather than to 
the trying of cases, and with the appearance 
of Pardners and The Spoilers he made many 
friends among the reading public. The Spoil¬ 
ers, in particular, a vivid story of Alaska life, 
made certain his literary career. His stories 
are clean and vigorous, and have an ever¬ 


present touch of humor which distinguishes 
them from much of the late fiction. The 
Barrier, Going Some, The Ne’cr-do-Well, The 
Net and The Iron Trail are titles of his more 
recent books. Several of his stories have been 
dramatized, and a number of them have been 
adapted to the moving picture screen. 

BEACON, N. Y., comprises the villages of 
Fishhill Landing and Mattewan, incorporated 
as a city in 1912. It is situated in Duchess 
County, in the southeastern part of the state, 
and is on the Hudson River. New York is 
fiftj^-nine miles south, and Poughkeepsie, the 
county seat, is sixteen miles north. The New 
York Central, and the New York, New Haven 
& Hartford railways afford transportation fa¬ 
cilities, and Newburgh, across the river, has 
ferry connection. Fishhill was founded in 1700 
and was named for Dutch Fish Creek. Mat¬ 
tewan was settled in 1804. The population of 
the combined villages was 10,165 in 1915, and 
was chiefly American. The area is a little less 
than five square miles. 

Beacon is picturesquely located on a river 
famous for its beautiful scenery. Beacon Hill, 
or Old Beacon, one of the highest monuments 
of Hudson Highlands, 1,500 feet, is in the 
vicinity. The city claims the distinction of 
being the first in the state to adopt the com¬ 
mission form of government. It is actively 
engaged in the manufacture of engines, boil¬ 
ers, rubber goods, hats, tools and bricks. An 
embroidery company is possibly the largest 
industrial plant, having about 1.000 employees. 
The most notable buildings are the State 
Hospital for the Criminal Insane (Mattewan), 
the New Hospital and the Highland Hospital. 
The De Garmo Institute is located here, and 
there is a city library. l.h.w. 

BEACONSFIELD, Earl of. See Disraeli, 
Benjamin. 

BEADS, beeds, small ball-shaped objects of 
every conceivable color, made of metal, coral, 
amber, ivory, stone, glass, wood and other sub¬ 
stances, and used in a great variety of ways. 
As jewelry, they are strung on threads to form 
necklaces and bracelets. Rosaries are strings 
of beads used in counting prayers; it is inter¬ 
esting to note in this connection that the term 
bead comes from a word common to the Teu¬ 
tonic language, which signifies to pray. Tiny 
beads are sold in the shops in skeins, to be 
knitted or chrocheted into the beadwork so 
popular at the present time for making bags, 
purses, watch fobs, candle shades and numer¬ 
ous other articles, Wooden beads, brightly 


BEAM 


633 


BEAN 


colored, are familiar objects in the kindergar¬ 
ten. 

Beads have been commonly used for cen¬ 
turies as barter among savage races. The In¬ 
dians who traded with the New England col¬ 
onists made beads of wampum (which see) so 
beautiful that they had a fixed price, three 
black beads or six white ones being worth one 
English penny. The wampum beads were 
drilled out of a shell by means of a wooden 
shaft which had a point of jasper or flint. The 
Western Indians fashioned beads of rainbow- 
colored abalone shells, found along the Pacific 
coast. 

Seeds, beans and berries are natural beads 
that the children love to string into chains. 
Black-eyed Susans and tiny scarlet beans 
tipped with black make especially gay neck¬ 
laces. Job’s-tears, the hard, tear-shaped seeds 
of the grass known by that name, ranging in 
color from pearly white to black, are perhaps 
the most commonly used of nature’s beads. 

The girl who is interested in bead work will 
find simple and clear directions for using beads 
in the book, Three Hundred Things A Bright Girl 
Can Do. 

BEAM, beem, a horizontal timber or bar of 
iron or steel, supporting weight in a structure 
of any sort. In the article Bridge will be 
found pictures illustrating the way in which 
beams break under loads, and showing why 
steel beams are commonly given the form of 
the letter I. 

There are several minor uses of the word 
beam. In the familiar expression describing a 
rolling ship as on its beam ends, the reference 
is to the beams on which the deck rests. The 
beam of a balance is the bar which supports 
the scales; see Balance, where there is an 
illustration. A loom has a wooden cylinder 
on which the weaver winds the warp previous 
to weaving, and one on which the woven cloth 


is rolled; both are called beams. The bar 
which draws a plow is a beam. 

BEAN, the name given to various plants 
which provide one of the most important veg¬ 
etable foods for man, as well as excellent 
forage for cattle and nitrogen for the soil. 
Some bean plants are short, stocky shrubs, 
others are climbing vines, and the seeds, also 
called beans, vary in size, shape and color. 
The flowers, however, whatever their color and 
size, are alike in shape, the most insignificant 
blossom on .the garden bean being almost ex¬ 
actly like the bright-red winged flowers of the 
scarlet runner, which is grown not for its seed 
but for its beauty. The seeds of all varieties 
are borne in pods, and this, with the butterfly 
shape of the blossoms, shows that the bean 
belongs to the same family as the pea—the 
pulse family. 

Food Value. As stated above, beans, whether 
green or dried, have a high food value, and it 
has been estimated that in no other form can 
so much nutriment be bought at so low a 
price as in the so-called navy beans. It is for 
this reason that these beans form one of the 
staples dealt out by charity organizations to 
their dependents. Because beans are rich in 
protein (which see), they are particularly -well 
adapted to take the place of meat, and when 
baked beans are served it is wise to omit meat 
from the bill of fare. Frequently the state¬ 
ment is heard that the Japanese and Chinese 
live largely upon rice, and thus have a diet 
deficient in protein, but the soy bean in some 
form, perhaps merely as a sauce for the rice, 
is present at almost every meal and supplies 
the very necessary protein element. 

Kinds of Beans. In the United States and 
Canada the best-known of all beans is prob¬ 
ably the kidney bean, of which many varieties 
are cultivated. These include not only the 
familiar red kidney bean, but almost all of the 



AVERAGE FOOD VALUES 

At left: Green string beans. At right: Dry navy beans. 












BEAN 


634 


BEAR 


so-called “string” beans, whether green-podded 
or wax-podded, of which the entire pod with 
its unripened seeds is eaten. To the kidney 
beans, too, belongs the navy bean, the basis of 
the famous “Boston baked beans” which, with 
its invariable Boston brown bread, come to the 
table of so many New Englanders every Sat¬ 
urday evening. 

The lima, introduced from Peru, as the name 
indicates, is another important bean, distin¬ 
guished by its slender vine-like growth and its 
large pods with their broad, flat seeds. These 
are much used both when green and when dry. 



GOLDEN WAX BEAN 


In Mexico there is a little dark-colored bean, 
called the jrijole, which may almost be said to 
constitute the national dish. From the tables 
of the poor especially, these beans, highly sea¬ 
soned with red peppers, are rarely absent. 

But America is not the only country which 
produces important beans; from China and 


Japan have been introduced the soy bean, 
which is in those countries a staple food 
article. In America this bean is grown, how¬ 
ever, chiefly as forage and as a restorer of 
nitrogen to the soil; for it has in even greater 
measure than most members of the pulse fam¬ 
ily that peculiar ability to take nitrogen from 
the air and store it in little tubercles on its 
roots (see Agriculture, subtitle Agricultural 
Education, page 100; Nitrogen; Fertilizers). 

Enemies. The bean has one very dangerous 
insect enemy—the bean weevil, a little dark- 
gray beetle which lays its eggs on the growing 
pods. The damage done by the grubs to the 
green plants, however, is small compared with 
that which they do to the dried seeds, and it 
is always safest, before storing these, to im¬ 
merse them for a short time in water at 
140° F. This does not harm the beans and it 
destroj^s the pests. 

Another enemy of the bean is the fungus 
disease called anthracnose, which causes con¬ 
siderable damage to growing beans by shrivel¬ 
ing the pods and discoloring the seeds. Inves¬ 
tigation has shown no very satisfactory method 
of dealing with this pest, and the greatest care 
should be exercised in selecting seed for plant¬ 
ing, as the disease is transmitted from genera¬ 
tion to generation. 

World Production. Italy is the most im¬ 
portant bean-producing country of Europe, 
with an annual yield of about 16,600,000 
bushels. Spain, producing nearly 11,800,000 
bushels, Austria, about 8,725,000, and the 
United Kingdom, about 7,842,000, are next in 
order. The annual yield of the United States 
is over 11,145,000 bushels; Canada produces 
about 827,000 bushels, on 46,300 acres. The 
largest crop, by far, is harvested in the prov¬ 
ince of Ontario. Chile is the most important 
South American country in the production of 
beans, raising each year about 1,550,000 
bushels. a.mc c. 



EAR, to dwellers in North America, have always been plentiful in all parts of the 

probably the most interesting and certainly continent where civilization has not pressed 

the best-known of all the larger wild animals. too closely; second, they remain well and 

There are three reasons for this. First, bears strong in confinement and are thus to be seen 


























BEAR 


635 


BEAR 


in any zoo, no matter how small it may be; 
and third, they are easily trained and taught 
to do many simple things. 

Appearance and Habits. Bears are shaggy 
beasts, much like huge dogs, but they have 
more massive bodies, broader heads, and teeth 
fitted for grinding as well as for tearing. Their 
bodies look more bulky than they really are, 
by reason of the loose skin, long, coarse hair 
and short legs; and since they walk flat on 
the soles of their feet instead of on their toes, 
they have none of the lightness and graceful¬ 
ness of movement which distinguishes other 


flesh-eaters—the dog family and the cat fam¬ 
ily, for instance. But their awkwardness is 
apparent rather than real, for they can move 
very rapidly, over either smooth ground or 
steep and dangerous rocks, and most of them 
can climb a tree with astonishing ease and 
nimbleness. This, however, is not true of the 
grizzly bear, which is not a climber. 

The bears are classed as flesh-eating animals, 
though they have excellent general appetites 
and can eat almost anything. Small animals 
of the woods, lambs and little pigs from unpro¬ 


tected farms, fish, grubs and eggs are most 
attractive, but if these are not at hand fruits, 
nuts, herbs and roots form a satisfactory sub¬ 
stitute; and honey appeals so strongly to their 
taste that they will risk getting well stung in 
order to make a meal of it. Their sense of 
smell is very well developed; hearing, mod¬ 
erately so; but their little eyes do not serve 
them well. 

Unlike the wolves and foxes, the bears do 
not live and hunt in packs. Kipling in his 
Jungle Book was true to nature when he gave 
to his wolves the “law of the pack,” but made 


his great bear a solitary creature. A bear fam¬ 
ily has its cave in some rock crevice, under 
heavy brush, or in a hollow tree, and there 
they spend the winter, not exactly torpid, but 
half asleep and needing little if any food. In 
the spring the young ones, usually two in num¬ 
ber, are born and the mother takes the great¬ 
est care of these until they are fairly large 
cubs. There are few animals more dangerous 
to meet than a mother bear angered by any 
injury done to her cubs. 

In spite of much that is said to the con- 





































BEAR 


636 


BEAR 


trary, most bears are not cowards. Bret Harte, 
who lived in the western country, and should 
have known whereof he spoke, wrote of the 
grizzly as “Coward, of heroic size,” but hunters 
agree that a bear is no enemy to be laughed 
at. Most bears are good-natured, it is true, 
and do not begin a fight unless they are pro¬ 
voked to it or fear that their young are in 
danger; but once aroused they show a tre¬ 
mendous strength against which little but a 
quick-shooting rifle can prevail. 

The “bear’s hug” is a very real thing, and 
natives of the countries where bears live know 
this and prefer to capture or kill the animals 
during the winter season, when they are sleep¬ 
ing or are at least sluggish. 

Value to Man. Uncivilized peoples have 
always regarded bear’s meat very highly, and 
the most modern of hunters find that it is of 
fine flavor. The fat, moreover, is of use, for 
though “bear’s grease” is no longer popular 
for the hair as it was two generations ago, 
other ointments are made from it; but the 
skin is the most valuable part of the animal. 
The skins of large bears, carefully dressed and 
mounted, bring good prices, $1,000 being no 
uncommon price for a fine polar bear rug, 
while a grizzly bear rug will sell for a quarter 
or a half that price. 

Winter Habits. While the statement is com¬ 
monly made that the bear hibernates, or passes 
the winter in a state of stupor, this is not true 
in the sense in which it is true of the snake, 
for instance. (See Hibernation.) In cold 
countries most bears do retire to their caves 
and there sleep through the winter, waiting 
the return of spring and a new food supply, 
but they do not become torpid. The hiberna¬ 
tion of the female is much more complete than 
is that of the male, which frequently prowls 
about at night during even the coldest weather. 
When the female comes out in the spring she 
is very thin and almost unable to walk. The 
grizzly bear hibernates very little, and the 
polar bear, despite the coldness of its dwelling 
place, not at all. 

Kinds of Bears. Almost all the bears live in 
North America, Europe or Asia, though South 
America has one species, the Andean, and 
Africa has the Atlas bear. 

Most distinctive of all the species is the 
polar or ice bear of the Arctic regions. It is 
a wonderful example of the adaptation of an 
animal to its surroundings, for its creamy white 
color allows it to creep practically unseen upon 
its prey, which would quickly be aware of an 



Outline and Questions on 
the Bear 

I. Appearance 

(1) Size and shape 

(2) Loose skin; long hair 

(3) Apparent awkwardness 

II. Habits ami Senses 

(1) Food 

(a) Flesh 

(b) Other food 

(2) Special senses 

(3) Solitary habits 

(4) Strong mother instinct 

(5) Dangerous enemy when aroused 

(6) Winter habits 

(a) Period of stupor 

(b) Hibernation of female 

III. Kinds of Bears 

(1) Polar bear 

(2) Grizzly 

(a) Silvertip 

(b) Cinnamon 

(3) Brown bear 

(4) Black bear 

(5) Kadiak bear 

IV. Value to Man 

(1) The flesh 

(2) The fat 

(3) The skin 

Questions 

What kind of a bear is the “Bruin” 
of the stories? 

How much is a large polar bear skin 
worth ? 

What sense guides a bear in its 
search for honey? 

Why are bears better known than 
most wild animals? 

Why are some people under the im¬ 
pression that bears are cowards? 

What advantage to the polar bear is 
its color? 

Why do farmers dislike the black 
bear? 

What city in Europe is named for 
bears, and why? 

What are the winter habits of most 
bears? 

What book of Kipling’s makes clear 
one peculiarity of the bear? 

What is the largest of all bears? 
Is it dangerous? 

How do hunters regard the grizzly? 
When do natives prefer to capture 
bears? 

In what way are the looks of a bear 
deceiving? 



















BEAR 


637 


BEAR 


approaching enemy of any darker color. This 
is an exceptionally large bear, which often at¬ 
tains a length of nine feet or more and a 
weight of 1,000 pounds, and it has a long, 
pointed head, slender limbs, and large black 
feet. It lives chiefly on seals and fish, which 
latter it has little difficulty in catching, as it 
is an excellent swimmer. Polar bears are 
much seen in zoos, and seem to thrive in the 
temperate climates. 

The grizzly bear of the mountains of West¬ 
ern North America is one of the largest and 
most savage of the family; indeed, hunters 
consider it the most dangerous animal of 
North America. Formerly it was to be found 
anywhere from the Black Hills of Dakota 
westward, and from Mexico to Northern 
Alaska, but the advance of civilization has 
forced it to withdraw to the high mountains 
and deep forests. Once it was the enemy of 
the buffalo and the deer, and to-day the cattle 
and horses of western ranches are not always 
safe from its raids. Unlike most bears, it does 
not sleep during the winter, but ranges day 
and night for its prey. The grizzlies vary in 
color, some being brownish-yellow, some gray 
and some reddish-brown. The two latter 
classes receive special names—the gray are 
known as silvertips, the reddish-brown as cin¬ 
namon bears. A full-grown grizzly may be 
nine feet or more in length and may weigh 
1,000 pounds. Yellowstone National Park has 
some fine specimens which frequently come 
close enough to the hotels to be photographed 
by tourists. 

The brown bear of Europe and Asia is the 
Bruin of the children’s stories, for Bruin merely 
means brown, and this is the bear which is 
most often seen in menageries or with stroll¬ 
ing musicians, who teach it to dance clumsily 
and to perform tricks. The children of North 
America are not so familiar with these per¬ 
forming bears, but every village of Europe 
receives frequent visits from the bear-tamers 
and their pets. It was this animal which in 
earlier days in England was so cruelly baited— 
fastened to a stake and compelled to fight a 
pack of dogs—and doubtless the “three bears” 
whom Goldilocks met in the wood were of 
this species. 

The Swiss city of Bern takes its name, a 
shortened form of the German word for bears, 
from the tradition that many bears were killed 
on the day the city was founded; and to this 
day bears are kept by the city government in 
a den or pit in memory of this old story. 


The black bear is to be found in almost any 
part of North America where large stretches 
of forest remain. It is smaller than the grizzly, 
and is not always black, many species being 
brown or reddish-yellow. Not dangerous un¬ 
less enraged, the black bear is nevertheless 
hated and feared, for it is a persistent thief 
of pigs and sheep. 

The Kadiak bear, the largest bear of all, 
lives on Kadiak Island, Alaska, and is related 
to the grizzly. While other species of bears 
are being gradually exterminated, this one is 
still numerous, and bids fair to remain so 
since it is one of the most dangerous of all 
beasts of prey. v.l.k. 

Consult Seton’s Life Histories of North 
American Animals; Roosevelt's The Wilderness 
Hunter. 

BEAR, Great, the name of the most con¬ 
spicuous constellation in the northern heavens, 
called Arcturus by the Greeks, and usually 
named Ursa Major by astronomers. The Great 
Bear contains seven stars of the second mag- 



(See, also, full page drawings in Astronomy.) 

nitude, so arranged as to form the outline of 
a dipper-like figure with a handle of three 
stars. The two stars forming the end of the 
dipper are called pointers, as a line drawn 
through them and continued towards the Pole 
will almost touch the Pole Star. In the United 
States and Canada this group of stars is known 
as the Big Dipper, to distinguish it from the 
Lesser Bear, or Little Dipper, which contains 
the Pole Star. In England the Dipper is called 
the Wagon, the Wain and the Plow. 










BEARD 


638 


BEARS AND BULLS 


According to mythology, the Bear is Cal- 
listo, daughter of Lycaon, king of Arcadia, 
who, arousing the jealousy of Juno, was 
changed into a bear. Jupiter afterwards placed 
her in the heavens with her son Areas, the 
Little Bear. The accompanying illustration 
shows the relative positions of the Great and 
Little Bear. Held with the month at the top 
its position will be approximately correct at 
eight o’clock in the evening. 

BEARD, beerd, in modern usage, a term 
confined to mean the hair on chin and cheek. 
The word vioustache is applied to the growth 
on the upper lip, but this was formerly in¬ 
cluded in the beard. As a woman’s crowning 
glory is said to be her hair, so in ancient times 
was a beard regarded as a mark of full man¬ 
hood. Slaves and eunuchs were beardless ob¬ 
jects of contempt; women unfortunate enough 
to grow beards -were regarded as witches. 

Styles During the Centuries. The Egyptians, 
with intense love of cleanliness, shaved their 
faces except in times of mourning. The Greek 
philosophers were long-bearded men, thinking 
to derive added dignity from the luxuriant 
growth. Shaving was introduced into Greece 
by Alexander the Great, who ordered his sol¬ 
diers to remove their beards, so that their 
enemies might not seize them in battle. Be¬ 
fore the Norman Conquest it was customary 
for the Saxons to shave their chins and cheeks, 
but to allow their moustaches to grow. The 
Normans w T ere clean-shaven, their hairless faces 
causing the Saxons to call them an army of 
priests. The Japanese for centuries shaved 
clean, but, even in Nippon, fashions change, 
and the emperor now wears beard and 
moustache. In the United States and Canada 
the beard is not fashionable, by far the greater 
number of men being clean-shaven, or wearing 
only a moustache. In the British army it is 
against the regulations to shave the upper lip, 
while in the navy, both beard and moustache 
must be worn or the face must be clean-shaven. 

A Note from History. The beard appears a 
trivial matter to be the cause of a bloody war. 
Yet it is said that the shaving of the beard of 
Louis VII of France brought about a war with 
England that lasted 300 years. His wife 
objected to a beardless husband. The king 
divorced her and she became the wife of Henry 
II of England. The throne of France was after¬ 
wards claimed for her descendants. 

BEARD, Daniel Carter (1850- ), an 

American naturalist, artist and writer, who has 
come prominently before the public as founder 


of the first Boy Scouts’ society, that upon 
which the English society and the national 
organization in the United States were 
modeled. When the Boy Scouts of America 
were organized they chose him as their national 
scout commissioner; he has also been president 
of the Camp Fire Club, an association of 
sportsmen, authors and artists, which is not to 
be confused with the Camp Fire Circle. 

Beard was born at Cincinnati, O., studied at 
Covington, Ky., and at the Art Students 
League in New York, and became known as 
an illustrator of books and magazine articles. 
He also had classes in art, that at the Woman’s 
School of Applied Design being probably the 
first class ever organized in animal drawing. 
Mount Beard, near Mount McKinley, is named 
for him, though it is by no means certain that 
he discovered it. See Boy Scouts. 

BEARS AND BULLS, names popularly ap¬ 
plied to the two classes of brokers or oper¬ 
ators on the stock exchange or board of trade. 
The name is applied to them because of the 
characteristic method of attack used by those 
animals. The bear uses his claws and tries to 
tear down his prey; the bull tosses it up with 
his horns. So a stock exchange bear is one 
who tries to force prices down, while a bull 
tries to raise the prices. 

A bear sells stocks or bonds or grain in trying 
to create a larger supply than demand. If he 
succeeds, the price naturally falls, and he can 
buy back the securities at the lower price. His 
profit is the difference between the price at 
which he sold and the price at which he bought 
back the securities or grain. 

The bull on the contrary is always trying 
to keep prices going upward. Like the bear, 
he buys when prices are low, but to make a 
profit he must force the price upward, whereas 
the bear always tries to drive prices below 
those at which he bought. The bull, who 
wishes to maintain or raise prices, must buy 
all that the bear offers. If he fails to do so 
the price will begin to fall. The whole thing 
is much like the seesaw which every child 
knows. When the bull is on the high end, that 
is, when prices are high, the bear tries to 
get off the seesaw—that is, he sells, in order 
to drop prices. When the bear is on the high 
end he makes every effort to get down, while 
the bull tries to keep him up. Both sides can¬ 
not be up at the same time, and when one 
side goes up the other must go down. If 
the general tendency of prices is downward, 
it is usually said to be a bear market; if the 


BEATRICE 


639 


BEAUMONT 


prices are rising, it is a bull market. See Stock 
Exchange; Board of Trade. 

BEATRICE, be'atris, Nebr., county seat of 
Gage County, a manufacturing town situated 
in the heart of one of the best agricultural 
sections in the Middle West. The population in 
1910 was 9,356; in 1914 it was 9,987. Beatrice 
covers an area of four and a half square miles. 
It is in the southeastern part of the state, 
forty miles south of Lincoln, ninety-five miles 
southwest of Omaha and 200 miles northwest 
of Kansas City. 

The Big Blue River, on which the city is 
located, is the great asset of the community. 
It furnishes pow T er for city lighting and fac¬ 
tories; along its banks are parks and drives, 
and each year it is the scene of a water carni¬ 
val which attracts thousands of visitors from 
every part of the state. Canoeing is a favorite 
pastime. Iron works, including manufactories 
of gasoline engines and farm implements, 
large creameries, flour mills, cold storage plants 
and nurseries represent the chief industries. 
One mill manufacturing • company employs 
nearly 500 workers, and its annual output 
amounts to $1,250,000. 

Beatrice was named for Julia Beatrice Kin¬ 
ney, an honored pioneer. It was incorporated 
as a town in 1871, the year its first railway, the 
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, was completed 
to the settlement. In 1873 the town was 
granted a city charter. In addition to the 
first road it is now served by the Union Pacific, 
built in 1881, and the Chicago, Rock Island 
& Pacific, built in 1889. Beatrice is the seat 
of the state institution for feeble-minded 
youth. The buildings and grounds represent 
an expenditure of $1,000,000. The Gage 
County courthouse, built in 1890 at a cost of 
$150,000; the Federal building, erected in 1892 
and since enlarged at a total cost of $130,000; 
the public library; the Y. M. C. A. building, 
built at a cost of $125,000, and the $100,000 
high school building are objects of civic pride. 
The commission form of government was 
adopted in 1912. There are three commis¬ 
sioners and a police judge. v.r.j. 

BEATRICE PORTINARI, portenah're, 
(1266-1290), the poetical idol of Dante, made 
famous for all time by his Vita Nuova (New 
Life) and Divine Comedy. She was the daugh¬ 
ter of a wealthy citizen of Florence, and wife 
of Simone dei Bardi. She was but nine years 
of age when Dante met her first at the house 
of her father, and he saw her only once or 
twice throughout his life, but his love for her 


dominated his genius. He loved her as saint 
rather than as woman, however, and in his 
Divine Comedy makes her his guide through 
the highest heaven. See Dante. 

BEAU BRUMMEL. See Brummel, George. 

BEAUMARCHAIS, bomahrshay', Pierre 
Augustin Caron De (1732-1799), a famous 
French wit, politician and dramatist, whose 
literary reputation is due mainly to his bril¬ 
liant and amusing comedies, The Barber of 
Seville and The Marriage of Figaro. The 
popular opera by Rossini, bearing the title of 
the former, is adapted from Beaumarchais’ 
comedy. He early showed musical ability and 
was for- a time teacher of the harp to the 
daughters of Louis XV. In 1774 appeared his 
celebrated Memoires, written to uphold his 
side in a lawsuit. They were greatly enjoyed 
because of their wit, satire and liveliness. The 
best of his other writings is a drama entitled 
Eugenie. Beaumarchais had a remarkable 
liking for notoriety, and, among several other 
exploits, supplied the Americans with arms 
and ammunition during the Revolutionary 
War. 

BEAUMONT, bo' mont, Tex., the county 
seat of Jefferson County, in the east-central 
part of the state, eighty-four miles northeast 
of Houston. It is on the west bank of the 
Neches River, and is connected with the Gulf 
of Mexico, thirty miles distant, by the river 
and canals. With the completion of the 
$1,000,000 improvement of this waterway which 
was under construction in 1916, Beaumont will 
be accessible to ocean-going vessels. The city 
is served by the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe; 
Texas & New Orleans; Kansas City Southern; 
the Beaumont, Sour Lake & Western, and has 
electric interurban service. The population, 
which was 9,427 in 1900, increased to 20,640 
during the next decade and to 25,433 in 1914, a 
growth caused by the discovery and develop¬ 
ment of extremely rich oil fields. The area is 
six and a half square miles. 

Among the more prominent public buildings 
are the Federal building, erected at a cost 
exceeding $200,000, county courthouse, city 
hall, Y. M. C. A. building and a Sisters’ hos¬ 
pital. Beaumont is one of the principal lumber 
shipping centers in the South, the annual out¬ 
put, mostly yellow pine, exceeding 360,000,000 
feet. Live stock, rice and oil are also impor¬ 
tant exports. More than $45,000,000 is invested 
in the development of the oil fields, in refin¬ 
eries, pipe lines and transportation and storage 
facilities. The city is also in a richly product- 


BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER 


640 


BEAVER 


ive rice belt and has some of the largest rice 
mills in the state. Manufactured products 
are sawed and planed creosoted lumber (espe¬ 
cially shingles), oil-field and saw-mill machin¬ 
ery and supplies, cars, furniture, ice, cottonseed 
oil, refined oil and petroleum products. Beau¬ 
mont was settled in 1836, was chartered as a 
city in 1899, and is ruled by the commission 
form of government. 

BEAUMONT, bo' mont, Francis (1584-1616), 
AND FLETCHER, John (1579-1625), two Eng¬ 
lish writers who were prominent figures among 
the dramatists of the age of Shakespeare. 
Their names are always associated together 
because they worked as literary partners. Of 
the fifty or more plays which they produced, 
Philaster and The Maid's Tragedy are known 
to be largely the work of Beaumont; The 
Faithful Shepherdess, containing much delight¬ 
ful poetry, is attributed to Fletcher. The 
particular share that each had in most of the 
plays, however, is difficult to ascertain. Beau¬ 
mont seems to have been the stronger and 
more dignified writer of the two, but Fletcher 
was the superior poet. 

Though their plays were fully as popular as 
Shakespeare’s in their own period, they repre¬ 
sent the beginning of the decline of the Eng¬ 
lish drama. Character-drawing sinks to a low 
level in the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, 
and the men and women of these writers are 
so unnatural and overdrawn that they bear 
no comparison with the lifelike creations of 
Shakespeare. Further, though their plays are 
clever and amusing, they are greatly marred 
by coarseness. To the modern reader they 
are attractive chiefly by reason of the beauti¬ 
ful lyrics which they contain. 

BEAUREGARD, bo'regalird, Pierre Gus¬ 
tave Toutant (1818-1893), a Confederate gen¬ 
eral who began the War of Secession by the 
bombardment of Fort Sumter. He was born 
in New Orleans, was graduated at West Point, 
and after distinguishing himself in the Mexican 
War returned to West Point as its superintend¬ 
ent. In February, 1861, two months after his 
appointment to that post, he resigned to enter 
the Confederate army. His operations after 
the famous attack on Sumter include the win¬ 
ning of the first Battle of Bull Run, the com¬ 
mand of the Confederates in the hard-fought 
Battle of Shiloh and the defense of Charleston 
against naval attacks by Dupont and Dahl- 
gren. After the war he was president of the 
New Orleans, Jackson & Mississippi Railroad, 
adjutant-general of Louisiana, and for some 


time manager of the state lottery. For accept¬ 
ing this last-named office he was severely 
blamed, as the lottery was in evil repute and 
was soon thereafter put out of business by act 
of the Louisiana legislature. 

BEAVER, a fur-bearing animal which is the 
most famous, interesting and intelligent of 
gnawing creatures. Its life history reads like 
that of some modest, industrious race of peo¬ 
ple, which in spite of, or perhaps because of, 
its peaceful disposition, has been almost exter¬ 
minated. At one time beavers were common 
in the northern regions of both hemispheres, 
but they are now found in considerable num¬ 
bers only in the United States and Canada. 
Even in those countries, although laws exist for 
their protection, fur-traders are rapidly decreas¬ 
ing the numbers of this master-workman 
among land-and-water animals. In the early 
years of American history beavers were so 
common that their pelts were used in place of 
money. The term skin, used as a standard 
measurement in fur-trading posts, was based 
on the size of the pelt of a full-grown, perfect 
beaver, which, when cured, weighed sixteen to 
twenty ounces. Traders still use sticks to 
represent this measurement. 

Distinguishing Characteristics. Beavers be¬ 
long to the same family as muskrats (which 
see). They are about two feet long, from nose 
to root of tail, and weigh thirty-five pounds 
and more. The tail is about ten inches long. 
It is thick and oval-shaped, flattened horizon¬ 
tally for about half its length. It is naked of 
hair, but is covered with horny scales. The 
tail acts as a rudder and an oar when the ani¬ 
mal is in a pond or stream, and when slapped 
on the water it sounds a loud signal to an¬ 
nounce the presence of danger. Beavers have 
small eyes, short ears, blunt noses, small squir¬ 
rel-like forefeet and large webbed hindfeet. 
There are two kinds of hair. The upper, which 
is long, coarse and glossy, is removed before 
the skins are placed on the market. The under 
hair, that which is commercially valuable, is 
short, thick, soft and silky. Beavers are gener¬ 
ally of a chestnut-brown color, but some are 
black and others are white. Most interesting of 
beaver characteristics are the cutting teeth (in¬ 
cisors), two in each jaw. They are large, strong 
and sharp, and are curved into a semi-circle. 
The fronts of these teeth are of hard enamel, 
the backs are softer and easily worn away, so a 
chisel-like edge is always kept, for the teeth also 
continue to grow as they are worn away. The 
cutting teeth are to the beaver what an ax is 


BEAVER 


641 


BEAVER 


to the woodman, for with their aid trees of 
considerable size are felled. 

Life and Habits. The favorite haunts of 
beavers are forest-bordered rivers, lakes and 
streams. Though they occasionally live singly, 
or in pairs, beavers are sociable creatures and 
usually live in colonies. Their homes are sub¬ 
stantial, cleverly-built structures made of 
branches of trees plastered with mud, grasses 
and other materials. These dwellings are built 
in the water, or on the water’s edge, and are 
called beaver lodges. Sometimes they are 
three feet high and seven feet across. The 


at last with a tremble, then a lurch, the tree 
crashes to the ground. Then again must the 
gnawing go on. Branches and twigs are 
removed, the trunks are cut into the desired 
lengths and the logs are then dragged to the 
water. Logs, stones, twigs and earth are then 
cunningly fashioned into a substantial dam— 
straight across if the stream flows gently, but 
in a curve facing up-stream if the stream is 
rapid, so the structure will withstand the cur¬ 
rent. Both lodge and dam are masterpieces 
of animal-skill. Some authorities claim that 
beavers are so intelligent that they always 



THE BUSY BEAVER 


walls are substantial enough to afford protec¬ 
tion against the cold of winter as well as 
against the average beast of prey. There are 
two rooms, and always two entrances, both 
leading into the water. The lower room is 
used for storage of food, the upper one as the 
living room. The upper chamber is dry, and 
air is supplied through an opening at the top. 
This opening, however, is concealed by a mass 
of sticks which the beaver carefully arranges. 
If the chosen stream is not very deep, a dam 
must then be built to form a pond about the 
home, to insure continuous entrance through 
water in spite of summer’s drought or winter’s 
ice and snow. 

Systematically and steadily the work of 
home-building and the making of dams goes 
forward. When the home site has been chosen, 
the entire colony, young and old, busy them¬ 
selves at felling trees. Deep grooves are 
gnawed round the trunks of the trees. Chip 
by chip the wood is ripped out by means of 
the chisel-like teeth. The work goes on until 


fell their trees to fall toward the water, so 
they will not have to drag them far. It is 
not uncommon to find trees two feet in diam¬ 
eter which have been cut down by beavers. 

When the homes have been made and care¬ 
ful ly protected, the beavers spend a care-free 
summer living on twigs and bark and roots of 
water plants. With the approach of autumn, 
once again they busy themselves repairing their 
dams, if necessary, and gathering their winter 
store of willow, poplar, birch and alder bark. 
For, winter-long, when the pond is frozen 
over, they cannot go to the land and must live 
only on their store and on roots which they 
dig from the water. The breeding season of 
beavers commences in spring—in April or May. 
Two to four young ones appear at a birth, and 
they remain with their parents two years. In 
the third year they venture forth, mate and 
start new generations and new colonies. 

Among animals, beavers hold the same posi¬ 
tion that the bees and ants have among in¬ 
sects, in their remarkable instinct of working in 







































BEAVER 


642 


BEAVER FALLS 


0 


Outline and Questions on 
the Beaver 

I. Characteristics 

(1) Of muskrat family 

(2) Size, weight, shape and color 

(3) Tail 

(4) Appearance of head 

(5) Fur 

(6) Teeth 

II. Life and Habits 

(1) Haunts 

(2) Social nature 

(3) Lodges and dams 

(a) Materials 

(b) Method of construction 

(4) Food 

(5) Industry and intelligence 

III. Commercial Value 

(1) Fur 

(a) Danger of extermination of 

beaver 

(b) Importance of fur-hunting in 

history 

(2) Use as food among Indians 

(3) Use in manufacture of perfume 


Questions 


Of what use is the tail of the beaver? 

How does a beaver cut down a tree? 

What part did this animal play in 
the early history of North America? 

What famous American author wrote 
a description of its life and habits? 

To what curious use was the skin 
formerly put? 

Why does the beaver build a dam? 

With what insects may it be com¬ 
pared, and why? 

What parts of the beaver besides 
the skin are useful? 

How are the teeth specially fitted 
for the work they must do? 

How old is the young animal when 
it sets up housekeeping? 

Why are beavers not usually shot? 

How does the skin of the live ani¬ 
mal differ from that seen in a beaver 
muff? 

How large is the ordinary house or 
lodge? 

How many rooms has it? How 
many openings? 

What special adaptation is to be 
seen in the direction in which a dam 
is built? 

How would you go about it to catch 
a beaver? 




common; and to say that a person is ‘‘as 
busy as a beaver” is as much a compliment 
as it is to say one is “as busy as a bee.” Even 
though the beaver may live in a cage, its com¬ 
munity instincts are demonstrated. It will 
cut to pieces a box or a chair and build a dam 
for the stream that will never flow, or weave 
sticks between the bars of its cage. The ani¬ 
mals become used to confinement and colonies 
are flourishing in zoological gardens in various 
American and European cities. 

Commercial Uses. The thick, warm under 
coat of beavers is one of the most valuable 
of furs. It was at one time extensively used 
in the manufacture of hats, and the early 
prosperity of New York and Canada was based 
on beavers. The animals have been driven 
so far into the wilderness, however, and are so 
nearly extinct, that beaver fur has become ex¬ 
pensive and rare. It is now used chiefly for 
muffs, collars and trimming, but is necessarily 
less used year by 3 r ear. 

One form of beaver trap is a noose fastened 
to a branch of a tree, so arranged that when a 
beaver’s head is caught in the loop, the branch 
springs up, the rope tightens and so the animal 
is caught. As beavers go about chiefly at 
night, it is not easj' to catch them by shooting. 
In 1910 almost 25,000 beavers were killed in 
Canada, valued at about $132,000, or $5.25 a 
skin, before the expensive process of dressing. 

Indians and frontiersmen liked the flesh of 
beavers. A reddish-brown substance called 
castoreum is obtained from these animals; it 
has a strong, penetrating odor and is used by 
perfumers. At one time it was valued for 
medicinal purposes. 

A very fine description of the beaver, its 
method of living, also the method of trapping 
it, may be found in Astoria, written by Wash¬ 
ington Irving. m.s. 

Consult Mills’s In Beaver World; Morgan’s 
American Beavers. 

BEAVER FALLS, Pa., is in Beaver County, 
in the western part of the state. It is thirty- 
two miles northwest of Pittsburgh, is on the 
Beaver River and on the Pennsylvania and the 
Pittsburgh & Lake Erie railroads, and has 
electric interurban service. A bridge across 
the river connects the city with New Brighton. 
The population, which in 1910 was 12,191, was 
13,100 in 1914. 

Beaver Falls occupies an area of about two 
square miles, and is surrounded by hills. The 
vicinity is rich in natural gas and coal. Manu¬ 
factured products include steel, files, wire, nails, 
















BEBEL 


643 


BECKY SHARP 


bridges, automobile accessories, enamel signs, 
chemicals, glass, clay products, axes, shovels, 
tubing and gas engines. 

Settled in 1801 and first called Brighton, 
Beaver Falls was chartered as a borough in 
1S68. The commission form of government 
was adopted in 1913. The city has a Carnegie 
Library and Providence Hospital. In College 
Hill borough, one mile north, is Geneva Col¬ 
lege (Reformed Presbyterian). 

BEBEL, bay' bel, Ferdinand August (1840- 
1913), after Karl Marx, the greatest of German 
Socialists, the man who made the Social 
Democrats a great political party in Germany. 
His extraordinary eloquence, both with tongue 
and pen, made him even as a young man a 
leader among the working classes. He was at 
first opposed to Socialism, but under the influ- 
erfce of Marx and Liebknecht became a con¬ 
vert. In 1867 he was chosen chairman of the 
permanent committee of the German working¬ 
men’s unions, and two years later he was one 
of the organizers of the Social-Democratic 
party. 

Meanwhile he had been elected to the North 
German Diet, and in 1871 was chosen to the 
Imperial Reichstag. He was repeatedly re¬ 
elected, and with the exception of two years 
was a member until his death. He was the 
first Socialist elected to the Reichstag and for 
a time was the only Socialist member. Al¬ 
though the rules of the party do not recognize 
a leader, Bebel was for years its unquestioned 
chief. A man of great moral courage, he 
never hesitated to express his opinions freely 
and forcibly. Three years of his life were 
spent in prison because some of these opinions 
were held by the courts to constitute lese 
majeste and intended treason. He contributed 
numerous articles to Vorwarts, the Berlin 
organ of the Socialists, and wrote a variety of 
books and pamphlets on political and economic 
subjects. His reminiscences have been trans¬ 
lated into English under the title My Life. 

BECK, Sir Adam (1857- ), a Canadian 

manufacturer and legislator, best known for 
his efforts to secure the conservation and 
development of hydro-electric power in On¬ 
tario. He was born at Baden, Ont., and 
attended school there and at Galt. After a 
successful career as a manufacturer he became 
interested in political affairs. He was elected 
mayor of London, Ont., for the term begin¬ 
ning in 1902, and also in the same year was 
elected to the Ontario legislature, of which he 
was still a member in 1916. From 1905 to 1916 


he was a minister without portfolio in the 
provincial Cabinet, first under the leadership 
of Sir James P. Whitney and later of W. H. 
Hearst. In the legislature in 1906 Beck intro¬ 
duced legislation creating the Ontario hydro¬ 
electric power commission, of which he became 
chairman. 

BECKET, Thomas a. (about 1118-1170), 
archbishop of Canterbury, famous for the man¬ 
ner of his death and its effects on English his¬ 
tory, no less than for the achievements of 
his life. He was born in London, educated at 
Oxford and Paris and studied civil law at 
Bologna in Italy. Returning, he held various 
offices in the Church before his appointment by 
Henry II in 1155 as chancellor of England. At 
this time Becket lived in a luxurious manner, 
was a liberal entertainer and the king’s favor¬ 
ite companion, but after he was consecrated 
archbishop in 1162 he gave up his luxurious 
habits and became a zealous champion of the 
Church, liberal only in charities. 

A series of bitter conflicts with the king fol¬ 
lowed, ending in Becket’s flight to France, but 
a reconciliation took place in 1170, and Becket 
returned to England, resumed his office and 
renewed his defiance of the royal authority. 
At length the king, irritated at some new defi¬ 
ance, exclaimed in the hearing of his knights, 
“Have I not about me one man of spirit 
enough to rid me of a single insolent prelate?” 
Four of his barons, taking this as their com¬ 
mission, went to Canterbury and murdered the 
archbishop while he was at vespers in the 
cathedral, December 29, 1170. He was canon¬ 
ized in 1172, and the splendid shrine erected at 
Canterbury for his remains was a favorite 
place of pilgrimage. Chaucer’s Canterbury 
Tales are told by a number of people going on 
a pilgrimage to this shrine. 

BECKY SHARP, the chief character in 
Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, one of the most con¬ 
vincing, clearly-portrayed adventuresses in all 
fiction. As the personification of intellect 
without heart, she is set over against Amelia 
Sedley, the other heroine of this “novel with¬ 
out a hero,” who represents heart without 
intellect. Becky is not beautiful, but she is 
so clever and so unscrupulous that few can 
escape her net. Having married Rawdon 
Crawley, whom she does not love, merely 
because she wants an assured position in the 
world, she risks and loses that position and her 
own reputation in her efforts to entangle the 
wealthy Marquis of Stevne. At the close of 
the long story she is left alone, practically 


BED 


644 


BED 


penniless, but she has not changed her meth¬ 
ods and the reader feels that she will find no 
difficulty in snaring another dupe. 

BED, in a general sense, the place where 
one sleeps. Thus the term may include the 
heap of leaves or animal skin on which the 
savage lies, the fur bag that serves as a bed 
for the Eskimo, or the rug or mattress used by 
the Oriental. The Japanese goes to rest on a 
strip of matting with a wooden head rest 
which closely fits the neck. Much more elab¬ 
orate are the beds of Europeans, Canadians 
and Americans, who demand the comforts of 
springs, mattress, linen sheets, pillows and 
quilts or comforters, all of these being placed 
on a frame known as the bedstead. 

These bedsteads are made of wood, brass and 
iron, the brass and iron beds having become 


to the desire to save space is the so-called dis¬ 
appearing bed, which slides into a recess in the 
wall and is kept there when not in use. Some 
apartments provided with disappearing beds 
have no separate bed chambers whatever. 

The Beds of the Ancients. Among the an¬ 
cient Orientals there was slight difference 
between the bed and the couch on which they 
reclined during the day. The Babylonians and 
Assyrian monarchs rested on magnificent beds 
of ivory, gold and choice woods, and in the 
writings of the Greek historian Herodotus, the 
“Father of history,” mention is made of Per¬ 
sian beds adorned with gold and silver and 
covered with rare and costly fabrics. That 
the Israelitish king likewise had luxurious 
tastes in this respect is indicated by a passage 
in Proverbs VII. 16: “I have decked my bed 



DREAMS WERE NO SWEETER BECAUSE OF THESE 
At left: bed in home of well-to-do American in the Revolutionary period. In center: French 
carved and gilt bedstead, period of Louis XVI. At right: a Chippendale bed (see Chippendale). 


popular in recent years because they are con¬ 
sidered more sanitary than others. Iron beds 
are enameled in white or colors, and when 
made to harmonize with the decorations of 
the bed chamber are exceedingly attractive. 
However, beds of the choicer varieties of wood, 
such as mahogany, bird’s-eye maple or Circas¬ 
sian walnut, are in high favor. 

The desire to save space has also had an 
important part to play in changing the styles 
of beds. The old-fashioned folding bed, 
which resembles a wardrobe when folded up, 
has numerous modem successors in pieces of 
furniture that are slept in at night and become 
in the daytime library tables, bookcases, 
chests, etc. The sanitary couch and davenport 
lounge are also popular, as they can be used 
in the daytime as an ordinary couch. Probably 
the most remarkable bed that owes its origin 


with coverings of tapestry, with carved works, 
with fine linen of Egypt.” 

The Grecian love of the artistic is reflected 
in the construction of their bedsteads, the 
posts of which were usually graceful in design 
and crowned with the Ionic capital (see 
Capital). These bedsteads were narrow and 
only the headboard was raised above the bed. 
They were generally of wood, but sometimes 
marble or terra cotta was usedi Excavations 
in the ruins of Pompeii, destroyed by the erup¬ 
tion of Mount Vesuvius in a.d. 79, show that 
the Romans slept upon a bed much like the 
modern wooden bedstead in structure and pro¬ 
portions. Bedsteads of bronze, silver and gold 
have been taken from the ruins; a large num¬ 
ber of those excavated are adorned with pre¬ 
cious woods, ivory, tortoise-shell, gold and sil¬ 
ver. Some of the frames were so high they 





































BED 


645 


BEDFORD 


could he reached only by means of footstools. 
The rich used a mattress stuffed with wool or 
feathers; the poor had to be content with 
straw or dried reeds. 

Medieval and Later European Beds. After 
the fall of the Western Roman Empire a cer¬ 
tain degree ot simplicity prevailed in the house 
furnishings of the Europeans, but the Cru¬ 
saders brought back with them from Asia 
Minor some of the luxurious tastes of the East, 
and in the twelfth century beds ornamented 
with carvings and paintings were introduced, 
which had richly embroidered coverings, with 
canopies overhead. The beds of the French 
kings of the fifteenth century were famous for 
their size and richness, and it became custom¬ 
ary to hold royal receptions in bed. In the 
sixteenth century the French royal bed at¬ 
tained a splendor never before equaled, and 
the superb collection of Louis XIV, consist¬ 
ing of 413 bedsteads of all forms, was the won¬ 
der of all who saw it. 

In the sixteenth century the historic “four- 
poster,” commonly used in America in colonial 
days, was invented. This is a bed with four 
posts, one at each corner, which support an 
overhead canopy. The “four-poster” has 
recently come into favor again in America, 
without the use of the canopy. Oak became 
popular in England during the Elizabethan 
period as a bedroom wood; walnut was in 
vogue at about the same time in Italy and 
France. b.m.w. 

BED, a term used in geology with reference 
to any layer in a mass of stratified rock. It 
may consist of a number of thin layers, or 
laminae, or of a single stratum having con¬ 
siderable thickness. Several strata taken 
together are usually termed a formation. A 
very thin bed is called a seam. 

In mechanics, a bed is the foundation upon 
which a body rests. An example of this is the 
bed-sill upon which a stationary engine is fas¬ 
tened; also the lower mill stone in a grist mill. 

BEDBUG, a small, flat, wingless, reddish- 
brown insect about three-sixteenths of an inch 
long, that hides in the daytime and comes out 
at night for food. The female lays her eggs in 
summer in the crevices of bedsteads, furniture 
and the walls of a room. The younger insects 
are small, almost white and semitransparent, 
and grow to full size in about eleven weeks. 
The bedbug is fond of human blood, but 
thrives on other substances, and is often found 
on swallows, pigeons and doves. When touched 
it emits an unpleasant odor. 



BEDBUG 

Enlarged about eight 
times. 


1 he cockroach is the natural enemy of the 
bedbug, and it destroys them in great numbers. 
In Europe one spe¬ 
cies of small black 
ant will clear a house 
of bedbugs in a short 
time. Houses may 
be cleared of them 
by fumigating with 
brimstone, or paint¬ 
ing cracks and other 
places where they 
are secreted with cor¬ 
rosive sublimate dis¬ 
solved in wood alco¬ 
hol. 

The occasional 
presence of bedbugs in a house is not necessar¬ 
ily an evidence of careless housekeeping. They 
may enter a home in many ways—on clothing, 
by way of steam pipes from adjoining apart¬ 
ments, in trunks or boxes from other dwellings, 
etc. Unless one lives in a large tenement build¬ 
ing, however, where many of the neighbors are 
slovenly, there is no necessity of suffering long 
from the pests. 

or BAEDA, be' da, (about 
as The Venerable Bede, the 
of Saxon England and the 
?h History.” He was educated 
at Saint Peter’s monastery, Wearmouth; took 
deacon’s orders in his nineteenth year at Saint 
Paul’s monastery, Jarrow, and was ordained 
priest at the age of thirty. His Ecclesiastical 
History of England is the source of nearly all 
our information on English history up to the 
year 731, and was translated into Anglo-Saxon 
by Alfred the Great. The great body of his 
writings, consisting of thirty-seven titles, in¬ 
cludes lives of the saints, hymns, works on 
grammar and history, and comments on the 
Bible. He died while engaged in dictating a 
translation of the Gospel of Saint John. 

BEDFORD, Ind., locally known as The 
Stone City, on account of its extensive stone 
industry. It is the county seat of Lawrence 
County, eighty-nine miles southwest of Indian¬ 
apolis, seventy-six miles northwest of Louis¬ 
ville and 225 miles southeast of Chicago. The 
city is served by the Baltimore & Ohio South¬ 
western; the Chicago, Terre Haute & South¬ 
eastern, and the Chicago, Indianapolis & 
Louisville, known as the Monon Railroad. In 
1825 the first settlement was made; the city 
was incorporated in 1889 and was named for 
the city of Bedford, Pa. In 1914 the popula- 


BEDE, beed, 
672-735), known 
greatest scholar 
“Father of Englis 


BEDLAM 


G46 


BEDOUINS 


tion was 9,823, an increase of 1.107 since 1910. 
The area is less than two square miles. 

In the vicinity of Bedford there are more 
than twenty quarries of fine oolitic limestone, 
commonly called “Bedford stone,” and large 
quantities of it are shipped over a wide terri¬ 
tory. This stone was used in the construction 
of the state capitols of Indiana, Georgia, Ken¬ 
tucky and Mississippi. Besides the stone indus¬ 
try, which employs about 2,500 people and has 
an annual output valued at $5,000,000, the city 
has cement works, machine shops and foun¬ 
dries. The repair shops of the Southern Indi¬ 
ana Railroad are located here. For its size the 
city has unusually fine buildings, the public 



A BEDOUIN ENCAMPMENT 


BEDLOE’S ISLAND, an island in New York 

Bay, on which stands the famous Statue of Lib¬ 
erty (see Liberty, Statue of). Bedloe’s, named 
for a former owner, covers thirteen and one- 
half acres and lies one and one-half miles 
southwest of the Battery. It belongs to the 
United States government and was formerly 
occupied by Fort Wood. The Liberty statue 
was erected on the site of this fort. 

BEDOUINS, bed'ooinz, the name for peo¬ 
ple of the tent, are Mohammedans of the 
Arab race, inhabiting chiefly the deserts of 
Arabia, Syria, Egypt and North Africa. Pa¬ 
tient and enduring, they lead a wandering 
existence, associating in families under “elders,” 


buildings, schools and churches being built of 
the local stone. Bedford has a Federal build¬ 
ing, a Carnegie Library, Bedford College and 
an academy. w.g.b. 

BEDLAM, a word used in modern speech in 
the sense of wild uproar or confusion. It has 
an interesting derivation, being a corrupted 
form for Bethlehem, a name formerly applied 
to an old hospital for lunatics, in Southwark, 
London. The full name of this institution is 
Hospital of Saint Mary of Bethlehem. In 
olden days the patients of this hospital were 
exhibited like so many wild beasts, the public 
paying so much each to see them, and the less 
violent inmates were compelled to wander 
about the streets as beggars. The present hos¬ 
pital is a modern institution. 


or “sheiks,” or in tribes under “emirs.” They 
are regularly shepherds, herdsmen and horse- 
breeders, but because of prolonged summer 
droughts, they raid on one another for self- 
support, and plunder unprotected travelers, 
whom they consider trespassers. They are 
ignorant of writing and books, so trust to mem¬ 
ory or imagination, which latter finds play in 
their song and story. They are undersized, and 
though active, are not strong, living chiefly on 
rice, vegetables, honey, locusts or even lizards 
at times. The ordinary dress of the men is a 
long shirt, girt at the loins, a black or red and 
yellow turban for the head, and sandals. The 
women wear loose trousers, a long shirt and a 
large dark-blue shawl covering the head and 
figure. See Arabia. 















BEE 


647 


BEE 



EE. Almost anyone hearing the 
word bee thinks instantly of just two species— 
the honeybee, Isaac Watts’ “little busy bee” 
that “improves each shining hour,” or Emer¬ 
son’s “burly, dozing bumblebee,” the “ani¬ 
mated torrid zone.” For these two are most 
commonly seen and heard in the gardens and 
cloverfields of summer, and it is the former 
that supplies man with one of his most popu¬ 
lar luxuries. But these two species make up 
a very small part of the great group of insects 
known as bees—a group which ranks as the 
highest of the insects (unless the ants are thus 
considered) and is as interesting as any of 
the forms of higher life. Authorities declare 
that there are about 5,000 species of bees, 
some of them small and insignificant, some so 
like flies or wasps that they are almost un¬ 
recognizable; but all possessed of an intelli¬ 
gence, an ingenuity that seems incredible in 
such small creatures. Most of these kinds of 
bees live a solitary and not a social communal 
life like that of the honeybee and bumblebees. 
Much that is told of bees sounds like the mer¬ 
est “nature-faking,” but it has back of it real 
knowledge, based on generations of study. 
Care must always be taken, however, as in 
the study of any form of animal life, not to 
impute the motives and reasoning powers of 
human beings to these creatures of lower order. 
Much that seems like the result of calculated 
intelligence is in reality inherited and unrea¬ 
soning instinct. 

Distinguishing Characteristics. With the 
ants and wasps, bees belong to the great order 
of membrane-winged insects, known to scien¬ 
tists as the Hymenoptera. Each member of 
this order—unless it be of the wingless species 
like some ants—has four wings, and a bee 
may be by this fact infallibly distinguished 
from any of the two-winged, bee-mimicking 
flies. Bees themselves differ from all other 
membrane-wings by having feathery hairs on 
the head and thorax, thickened hind feet, and 
mouth parts so modified that nectar may be 
gathered from the flowers. It is this charac¬ 


teristic which has given rise to the division of 
all bees into two groups—the short-tongued 
bees, which can find their food only in the 
shallow, open flowers, and the long-tongued 
bees, which can penetrate to the bottom of the 
deepest tubular blossoms. There are also other 
interesting adaptations of organs to special 
use. In some bees, which burrow into the 
ground or into wood, the jaws have grown 
into sharp, digging tools, while in others the 
jaws form a sort of spoon wherewith wax may 
be moulded. 

The eyes of bees are large and compound— 
that is, made up of hundreds and hundreds 
of little eyes; and it is probable that no insect 
has better sight. The wonderful ability to re¬ 
turn to the home spot from a far-distant place, 
exercised so unswervingly that “a bee line” 
has become proverbial for the shortest dis¬ 
tance between two points, seems to depend 
not so much on a sense of direction, as in birds, 
but on a keen sense of sight. It seems pos¬ 
sible that bees can distinguish colors, too, as 
they seem to show a preference for certain 
colored flowers. Their antennae, which they 
use as “feelers” and as a means of communi¬ 
cating with each other, are probably their 
organ of smell as well, but just where their 
“ears” or hearing organs are located cannot be 
determined. That they can hear seems certain, 
however. 

What Bees Eat. A bee will feed upon 
moistened sugar if it can get nothing else, but 
it far prefers the dainty, perfumed nectar of 
flowers, certain bees showing an especial lik¬ 
ing for certain flowers. And when bees want 
the honey from flowers they are very deter¬ 
mined in their efforts to get it. If a flower 
is too narrow to allow them entrance they use 
their strong cutting jaws to open a way for 
themselves. Nor is honey the only thing bees 
take from flowers. The young, which are not 
little bees, but tiny grubs, or larvae, are not 
fed on honey but on “bee bread,” which is but 
the pollen the flower-visiting bees carry home 
on their thighs. This they roll into a compact 





















BEE 


G48 


BEE 


little mass and press down into the cells where 
the young are. 

For all that the flowers do for them the bees 
pay well by one very important service which 
they perfbrm. Many a flower would never 
come to maturity—never yield seed from which 
its kind may be reproduced—did not the bees 
visit it. As it pushes down into the blossom 
to find the nectar always hidden in the deep¬ 
est corner, the bee brushes off on its hairy legs 
the pollen, that insignificant, red or brown or 
yellow dust which is more important than all 
the gaily colored petals; and on entering an¬ 
other flower it shakes off a part of this on the 
pistil, thus fertilizing the flower (see Cross- 
Fertilization). Now if the bee buzzed into 
all flowers helter-skelter, just as they come— 
a rose, a four-o’clock, a nasturtium—it could 
not fulfill this important mission, for a rose 
cannot be fertilized with pollen from a pansy 
nor a lily with that from a morning-glory. 
But a bee is a systematic worker, visiting in 
succession all the flowers of one kind which it 
can find before it passes on to another. 

Very wonderful indeed is the study of flow¬ 
ers in their relation to bees and other insects, 
bringing as it does the realization that not 
only the nectar but the beautifully-shaped and 
tinted petals have been developed just to at¬ 
tract the pollen-carriers. Certain flowers, as 
the snap-dragon, cannot be fertilized by flies, 
and are therefore so made that a fly cannot 
enter them and steal their hone} r without do¬ 


ing them any service. The curiously-shaped 
petals are closed until the heavy bumblebee 
alights on the ledge or ‘flip,” when its weight 
opens up the blossom and lets it slip in. 

Kinds of Bees. The commonest and most . 
serviceable classification of bees is not made 
along structural lines, but according to their 
methods of life, and with this as a test they 
are divided into two groups—the solitary bees 
and the social bees. In the former class, each 
family lives b}^ itself, and does its own work, 
and though often several families build their 
homes or nests close together, there is no 
community life or specialization in the labor. 
In these solitary bee families there are, as in 
most other insects and all higher forms of 
life, but two kinds of individuals—male and 
female. Best known and most interesting of 
the solitary families are the carpenter-bees, 
large and small, and the mason bees. See 
Carjpentcr-Bee; Mason Bee , in subtitle below. 

The social bees, which stand at the very 
summit of bee life and often appear to have 
real intelligence and not mere instinct, live 
in communities governed by strict laws and 
conducted with the greatest orderliness. Social 
bees alone have the power of secreting wax, 
the solitary bees making their nests by boring 
into the ground or into wood and walling off 
cells with mud or cut-up leaves. Of the social 
bees there are but two families, the bumble¬ 
bee and the honeybee, each of which is fully 
described below. 


The Honeybee 


This is the only insect which makes any 
contribution to the food of man. It is the 
most highly developed and intelligent of the 
insects, and none other except the ant can 
compare with it in its wonderful community 
life. The ant does have, apparently, all the 
rules and regulations necessary to maintain a 
well-ordered social life, but it does not build 
so elaborate a home or store its food so sys¬ 
tematically. 

The well-known hive-bee is not native to 
North America, but was brought from Europe 
by the early colonists and has made itself per¬ 
fectly at home. In the eastern hemisphere it 
has been known and appreciated for thousands 
of years. The eighteenth chapter of the book 
of Judges tells of the finding by Samson of a 
“swarm of bees and honey in the carcass of a 
lion,” and of the fantastic riddle which he 
evolved out of the circumstance; and the 


classic literature of Greece and Rome has 
numerous references to honey. In those early 
days sugar was unknown, and the honey fur¬ 
nished by the half-domesticated bees took its 
place. What its importance was among an¬ 
cient peoples may be seen from the frequent 
use of the expression, “a land flowing with 
milk and honey,” to describe a fertile and 
attractive country. 

But if bees are not native to America, and 
were brought thither, in a domesticated state, 
how are the wild honeybees, which fasten their 
combs to overhanging rocks and to limbs of 
trees, to be accounted for? These, it has 
been determined positively, are not native 
species which have never been domesticated, 
but “reverted” swarms, descendants from some 
which escaped long ago from their man-made 
hives. 

For physical features and modes of life 


BEE 


649 


BEE 


which are common to all bees, see the begin¬ 
ning of this article; also, Bumblebee and Soli¬ 
tary Bees, including Carpenter-Bee and Mason 
Bee, following this section. 

Forms of Honeybees. The honeybees, like 
the bumblebees, which with them make up the 
so-called social group as distinguished from 
the solitary bees, consist not merely of males 
and females. They include a third form as 



(a) The male; (fr) the queen ; (c) the worker, 
or neuter. 


well, known as neuters, or workers, and it is 
not possible to say that any one of the three 
is most important. Most numerous and 
smallest are the workers, which are but unde¬ 
veloped females. These little creatures, about 
half an inch in length, have some of the most 
curious modifications of structures to fit them 
for their work which are to be found in all the 
insect world. For one thing, each worker has 
a curious honey-bag which corresponds to a 
bird’s crop, in which the nectar is stored from 
the time it is taken from the flower until the 
bee reaches the hive. There it is forced out, 
and placed in the cells or “combs,” but in the 
meantime something has happened to change 
its flavor, for honey has a distinctive taste, 
different from that of the flower nectar. Just 
what it is that the bees do to their burden 
of nectar to give it the exquisite honey flavor, 
no one has ever been able to find out. The 
worker has on its hind legs pollen baskets, 
into which it thrusts the pollen stolen from 
the blossoms; it then transports it to the hive. 
Another remarkable feature consists of the 
glands for the secretion of wax and the wax 
plates on which it is spread out and hardened. 
The worker has a straight needle-like sting. 

The males are larger than the workers, and 
their bodies are more hairy. Their eyes are 
many times as large, and their wings are much 
stronger, but they have none of the special 
structures by which the workers are fitted for 
their tasks, for the males do not work. Be¬ 
cause of the characteristic deep buzzing sound 
which they make as they fly they are com¬ 


monly known as drones, and this has come to 
be a term of reproach applied to any one who 
is not willing to do his share of work in the 
world. 

Longer than the workers or the males, but 
slimmer than the latter, is the perfect female, 
or queen. This royal name applied to her is 
likely to give rise to the idea that the queen 
is the ruler of the bees, but such is not the 
case. She is the egg-laying female, and be¬ 
cause the swarms could not increase without 
her she is carefully looked after by the work¬ 
ers, but she has no special privileges, nor is 
one permitted to live in the hive when she is 
not needed. Since each hive needs but one 
queen, a second one that develops must either 
find her way elsewhere, be stung to death by 
the old queen, or be suffocated by the work¬ 
ers. The queens, like the males, have no pol¬ 
len baskets or wax pockets, but unlike the 
males, they have stings, which are curved and 
not straight like those of the workers. Since 
the queen does not wander from the hive, 
it is not her sting but that of the worker with 
which many a stroller in country places has 
been made unpleasantly familiar. 

The queen, it is believed by some authori¬ 
ties, never uses her sting except against a 
rival queen in the same hive, but the workers 
protect themselves and the honey stores which 
they are carrying home against other insects 
and against birds. The wound is very painful, 
owing in part to the backward-pointing stiff 
hairs on the sting, in part to the poison which 
is injected, and a sufficiently great number 
of bees can actually sting to death a large 
animal. Kipling in his Jungle Book tells how 
the united efforts of the “bee people” turned 
back the dingoes, or wild dogs, which were 
sweeping over the jungle. 

Life in the Hive. Honeybees live in large 
colonies or societies, known as swarms, which 
consist of from 10,000 to 60,000 individuals. 
In all this number there is but one full-grown 
queen, and the males may number several 
hundred, but with the coming on of the win¬ 
ter season these are all stung to death by the 
workers, who make up the great mass of the 
swarm. 

Construction oj Comb. Well-ordered, indeed, 
is the life of the community. No bee ever tries 
to assume the rights and duties of another; no 
bee, apparently, ever tries to escape its own 
duties. Just what part each has to play may 
be best seen by a survey of the activities of 
a swarm which has just found its home m 





BEE 


650 


BEE 


a new hive. It is a clean, empty place, con¬ 
taining nothing but wooden frames on which 
comb may be built. And this comb is the 
very first requisite in the new home. Accord¬ 
ingly, a group of workers, or several groups, if 
the swarm be large, withdraw to a corner and 

form a hanging clus- _ 

ter, each bee holding 
to those above it by 
its hooklike feet. At 
once they begin to 
secrete a liquid wax, 
which hardens in 
scales on the wax- 
plates of their ab¬ 
domens and is car¬ 
ried off by other 
workers to be built 
into six-sided cells. 

Nothing about the 
work of bees is more 
shaping of these cells 



BEGINNING OF THE 
COMB 


wonderful than the 
Mathematicians declare 
that the greatest ingenuity could not work out 
a method of placing and shaping these which 
would more effectually combine economy of 
space and material with the necessary strength. 

Egg-Laying. When a number of cells have 
been made, the queen begins to lay eggs, and 
her method is most systematic. From cell to 
cell she goes, pokes in her head to make sure 
that a cell is empty and ready, and then glues 
an egg fast to the bottom. Not every cell 
is filled, for some are needed for the storing 
of honey and pollen. One unfailing instinct 
the queen possesses. There are two sorts of 
cells, the regular-sized ones for the eggs which 



DEVELOPMENT OF A HONEYBEE 


are to hatch into workers, and the larger cells 
for those which are to develop drones, and 
never does the queen mistake and drop the 
wrong egg into a cell. 

The life of a queen is generally three or 
four years, and all during that time she is 
laying eggs, for she is the mother of every bee 
in the hive, and as the other classes do not 
live as long as she does, there must be a con¬ 


stant supply of young bees coming out to 
take the place of the failing ones. Drones 
live through a whole season, but the tireless 
workers last only about six weeks. When 
they weaken and drop no sympathy is shown 
them, but they are hustled out of the hive 
and left to die, for the bees are perfect com¬ 
munists and consider no individual as any¬ 
thing. But the queen, while she must labor 
hard to keep up the population of her colony, 
is too wise to produce workers always at the 
same rate. In the summer when honey is 
plentiful and many are needed to care for it, 
she works very fast, laying sometimes as many 
as 3,000 eggs in a day, but in winter, when the 
food supply is running low, she produces com¬ 
paratively few. All the time that she is jour¬ 
neying about the hive depositing her eggs, 
she is accompanied by eight or ten workers, 
her “ladies in waiting,” who surround her in a 
circle, each one with its head toward her. 
Evidently hive etiquette, like that of a court, 
does not permit the turning of one’s back 
toward the queen. Some authorities hold that 
it is not the queen who is so wise about laying 
drone eggs and worker eggs each in their 
proper cells and about regulating the popula¬ 
tion, but that her special bodyguard of work¬ 
ers directs all her actions. 

Other Industries of the Hive. Bees have 
been domesticated for so long that close ob¬ 
servation of them has been possible, and most 
of their activities are fairly well known. Noth¬ 
ing, it seems, is neglected in their wonderful 
community, where no one bee has any more 
authority than any other, but it seems impos¬ 
sible to discover whether certain companies 
are delegated to attend to certain duties, or 
whether all share alike. There is, as stated 
above, honey comb to make and honey and 
pollen to gather. “Bee gum,” technically 
known as propolis, a sticky substance with 
which they strengthen cells and patch up holes, 
must also be brought in, and honey-filled cells 
must be sealed up. Then, too, the hive must 
be kept clean, and a number of bees are al- 
ways active carrying out broken wax, dead 
bees and refuse of all sorts, while others stand 
at the door as guards and touch with their 
antennae, or feelers, every bee which tries to 
enter, to make certain that it really belongs 
to the swarm. How they can be certain is 
not known, but some infallible instinct evi¬ 
dently tells them. Strangest of all, a large 
squad have as their function the furnishing of 
the fiir in the hive. They take their stand 





































BEE 


651 


BEE 


near the entrance, and with rapidly fanning 
wings keep the air in motion. This not only 
provides ventilation but evaporates from the 
flower nectar in the cells a part of its water 
content and thickens it into honey. 

Development and Care of Young. But the 
most important duty of the workers is the 
care of the young, for the queen mother pays 
no attention to them. The oval egg, about 
one-twelfth of an inch in length, hatches in 
three days, and at the bottom of the cell 
there lies a little white grub—the bee in its 
larval state. The wormlike larvae are so 
helpless that the workers have to force food 
into their mouths, and the first food that they 
receive is the special “bee-jelly,” a pre-digested 
substance forced out from the stomachs of 
the workers. Later they are also given “bee- 
bread,” a mixture of honey and pollen, but 
after about five days, when each young bee 
almost fills its cell as it lies curled up in it, 
they refuse food, and the workers seal up the 
cell, using not the pure wax with which they 
cap the honey cells, but a porous mixture of 
wax and pollen through which the larvae may 
obtain air. 

Within the sealed cell the little larva spins 
its very fine silky covering and lies dormant 
for about two weeks; then the young bee, 
fully developed, gnaws a hole in the cap and 
crawls out. If the new bee is a male, or 
drone, it has no tasks to perform, and may, 
after trying its gauzy wings by short flights, 
go forth and frolic in the sunshine; but if it 
is a worker, it speedily learns the meaning of 
duty. For a time she is a nurse, caring for 
the undeveloped young; then she learns to 
make comb, to clean house and to help ven¬ 
tilate. Finally, after she has been a winged 
creature for about a week, she makes her first 
flight, and from that time on helps in the 
honey-gathering. 

Developing New Queens. As the swarm 
grows all the time because of the constantly 
emerging young bees, it begins to be too small 
for its quarters, and the wonderful little crea¬ 
tures know well the way out of the difficulty. 
First, they must develop a new queen, or, 
since it is not safe to risk disappointment in 
such an important matter, several new queens. 
No special eggs are laid for this purpose, but 
a special cell must be provided. The walls 
are torn down between a cell which already 
contains a worker egg or a very young larva 
and several surrounding cells, so that one 
very large one is formed, quite different in 


appearance from either worker cells or drone 
cells. When the larva is ready to be fed it 
is given bee-jelly exclusively, and no bee- 
bread, and the difference in feeding is what 
produces, apparently, the queen; for when, 
seven days after the acorn-shaped cell has 
been capped, there issues a young bee, it is 
a slim, graceful queen. After she has learned 
her way around the hive she starts on a tour 
of inspection with just one object—to discover 
other queen cells. If she finds such she breaks 
them open and stings to death the undevel¬ 
oped queens within. 

Swarming. But there is still the old queen, 
and rivalry between them is keen. Perhaps 
they may fight and one or the other of them 
be killed, and the whole process of queen- 



A SWARM ON A TREE BRANCH 

development has to be gone through once 
more; but more commonly the bees swarm, 
as it is technically called. All the hive is in 
vast excitement. Few workers go forth for 








BEE 


652 


BEE 


honey or perform their other duties, and a 
constant buzzing is to be heard. Then on a 
bright, warm day one of the queens, usually 
the old one, issues from the hive, followed 
by a part, sometimes more than half, of the 
swarm, and after a short flight settles on some 
object, frequently the limb of a tree. Scouts 
are sent out to find a new dwelling place, and 
the bee-keeper may lose his swarm unless he 
has ready at hand a new hive which they can 
be induced to enter. Here they set up house¬ 
keeping on precisely the same methods as in 
the old hive. 

Meanwhile the new queen, having surveyed 
her domain, issues for a flight, but the workers 
know that she will return, and do not follow 
her. Very high into the clear air she flies, 
and the males, who are hovering over the 
fields, see her and follow, but so lofty is her 
flight that only the strongest can keep up 
with her. The mating takes place high in the 
air; the drone dies within a few minutes, and 
the queen comes back to the hive, never to 
leave it again except for swarming. As many 
as three successive swarms may issue from a 
hive in one season, but a bee-keeper tries to 
prevent frequent swarming, for new colonies 
have to spend so much time storing up honey 
to feed the young that they have little to 
spare for the gathering of the surplus which 
makes the bee-keeper’s profit. 

Wintering. The drones, as stated above, are 
killed at the approach of winter, that the}^ 
may not need to be fed on the stored-up 
honey. Not nearfy so many eggs are laid, and 
all the activities of the hive slacken. But 
bees do not hibernate in the sense of remain¬ 
ing dormant during cold weather, and they 
must therefore eat, but not nearly so plenti¬ 
fully as during more active seasons. A fairly 
large bee colony should have at the beginning 
of the winter from twenty-five to thirty pounds 
of sealed honey if it is to remain in good con¬ 
dition until spring. 

Bee-Keeping. Brought from Europe cen¬ 
turies ago, bee-culture has made great strides 
in North America, where millions and millions 
of pounds of honey are sold annually. The 
large proportion of this is produced in the 
large apiaries, as places for the keeping of bees 
are called, but many people keep a few hives 
to provide themselves with a delicious luxury 
and to have the pleasure of studying the in¬ 
teresting insects. No longer are hives of the 
old regulation “beehive” shape common; 
square boxes with removable frames have 


been found to be far more satisfactory. The 
lower part of the hive is given up to brood- 
cells and those in which the bees store honey 
for their own use, but above is a shallower 
story, known as the super, into which are fitted 
“section-holders” which hold in place the little 
square boxes or frames in which comb-honey 
is placed on the market. Not until the stor¬ 
age cells in the brood-chamber are filled should 
the bees be allowed to begin storing honey in 
the section-boxes. In each of these little 
squares, at the center of the top as it stands 
on edge, is placed a small piece of comb as a 
foundation or suggestion to the bees as to 
where to start. 

The raising of bees for commercial purposes 
is not a simple matter of placing a hive in a 
suitable place and a swarm of bees within it. 
The bee-keeper must learn innumerable things 
about the habits of the little creatures and 
the method of handling them. He must know 
how to prevent the development of queens 
and the resultant swarming at wrong seasons; 
how to induce his bees at just the right time 
to begin storing in the supers, how to protect 
them from enemies (see below), and from the 
winter cold. Numerous books have been writ¬ 
ten to teach the principles of bee-keeping, and 
an attractive one of the smaller, less technical 
sort is Anna B. Comstock’s How to Keep 
Bees. Nothing but really keeping bees, how¬ 
ever, can satisfactorily teach. Hives made 
almost entirely of glass may be procured, and 
through the transparent sides the interested 
observer can watch all the motions of the busy 
little socialists, tracing a bee, from the time 
it enters the hive, through all its varied 
activities. 

Bee Enemies. In winter, when the bees are 
torpid, mice sometimes enter the hive and 
feed upon wax, honey and bees, but the worst 
enemj 7 is much smaller and more inconspicu¬ 
ous. This is the larva of the wax moth, which 
does its work in darkness and silence, digging 
through the cells, wasting the honey and de¬ 
vouring the young, undeveloped bees. Some¬ 
times a whole swarm is ruined by this pest, 
for as the old bees die out there are none to 
take their places. There seems to be no way 
of guarding against these wax moths except by 
keeping the hives in good repair so that the 
egg-laying females cannot find their way 
inside. 

But disease is a worse enemy of bees than 
any animal or insect pest. Two diseases, known 
as European and American foul brood, affect 


BEE 


653 


BEE 


the larvae, and do millions of dollars worth 
of damage each year. The onlj r safe method 
of dealing with these diseases consists in re¬ 


moving the bees from the infected hive to a 
new one, and destroying the infected comb 
and larvae. v.l.k. 


The Bumblebee or Humblebee 


This is the wild bee with the deep, loud 
br-r-ruming hum. It possesses the most pain¬ 
ful sting of all the bees. It is well known in 
most parts of the world, particularly in tem¬ 
perate regions, and in the northern hemisphere 
it often reaches the Arctic Circle. 

What It Looks Like. The bumblebee looks 
much like the little honeybee, but is much 
larger and its body is thick and very hairy, 
often colored in bands. Unlike the honeybee, 
it has two spines on the hind legs. The fe¬ 
male bees are larger than the male. The 
workers sting severely; being wild, and not 
cared for as is the honeybee, bumblebees need 
this weapon of self-defense, for mice and many 



THE BUMBLEBEE 

(a) The bumblebee, about natural size; (b) 
position when a,bout to alight on a flower; (c) 
eggs; (cl) larvae. 

larger animals destroy their nests, stealing the 
honey and the brood. Boys, too, delight in 
honey-plunder, and are often stung for such 
deeds. 

Where and How It Lives. Under the ground 

in deserted nests of mice, in hollow trees or 
in openings in rocks, bumblebees live in small 
colonies of fifty to 200, where half of the bees 
are workers, or neuters, the rest females and 
males. They are not so orderly or perfect in 
their family life as the honeybees, as may 
be seen in the roundish, oval, scattered cells 
of different size found in a single nest. Some 
of these cells are used more than one year. 
Bumblebees collect honey and store it in the 


old cells, and when flowers are plentiful and 
the stores of honey large, new cells of wax 
are built. But at the end of the season the 
males and workers die, and only a few females, 



NEST OF THE BUMBLEBEE 

lie has none of the aristocratic instincts of his 
relative, the honeybee. 

each destined to be a queen, survive. During 
the winter the queen bee sleeps beneath 
leaves or moss. In the earU spring she awak¬ 
ens and immediately gathers a store of old 
honey and pollen, in which she lays eight or 
ten eggs. Continuing to collect food, she lays 
eggs for one brood after another. As the eggs 
hatch the larvae (young) eat the surrounding 
food, and grow rapidly. When fully grown 
they spin a silken wall about them which the 
old bees strengthen by a layer of wax, and in 
these cells the early broods develop into 
workers. They immediately assist in building 
cells and gathering honey. Later broods pro¬ 
duce females and males, and eggs laid after 
the last of July produce the large females, or 
queens. 

What Is Its Use? The honey of the bum¬ 
blebee is strong-flavored and not desirable for 
commercial use, and the sting of this bee is 
long remembered; so many think it just as 
well to kill it. But the bumblebee is useful. 
It aids in the cross-fertilization of plants, and 
is the only insect which can fertilize the clover. 
Bumblebees were taken to Australia and New 
Zealand especially for that purpose, for with¬ 
out them clover could not be successfully 
grown in those countries. 

The Guest Bumblebee. In the nest of the 
bumblebee will always be found a cell with 







BEE 


654 


BEE 


& 


OUTLINE AND QUESTIONS ON BEES 


Outline 


(1) 

( 2 ) 

(3) 

(4) 

(5) 


1. Distinguishing- Characteristics 

Membrane-winged insect 
Feathery hairs on head and thorax 
Thickened hind feet 
Tongue adapted to gathering nectar 
Senses 

(a) Sight 

(b) Touch 

(c) Smell 

(d) Hearing 


II. What They 

(1) Honey 

(2) Bee-bread 


Flat 


III. Cross-Fertilization of Plants 

(1) Method 

(2) Systematic visiting of flowers 

(3) Modifications of flower structure 

IV. Classification 

(1) Social bees 
(a) Honeybee 

1. Historical 

2. Classes of individuals 

(a) Workers 

1. Largest class 

2. Smallest form 

3. Undeveloped female 

4. Performs all work 

(b) Males 

1. Larger than workers 

2. Hairy body 

3. Performs no tasks 

4. Killed at approach of 

winter 

(c) Females or queens 

1. Largest body 

2. Lays all eggs 

3. Has sting 

3. Community life 
(a) Wax-secreting 


( 2 ) 


(b) Comb-building 

(c) Egg-laying 

1. How eggs are placed 

2. Number laid 
Development of young 

(a) Egg 

1. Size 

2. Shape 

3. Hatches in three days 

(b) Larva 

1. Grub-like 

2. Fed by worker 

(c) Young bee 
Development of queen 

(a) Same egg as worker 

(b) Difference in food 

(c) Hostility to other queejis 
Swarming 
Wintering 
Bee-keeping 
(a) Best kind of hive 

1. Brood-cells 

2. Supers 
Enemies of bees 

(a) Insect 

(b) Disease 
(b) Bumblebee 

1. Structure 

(a) Size 

(b) Color 

(c) Sting 

2. Community life 

(a) Ready-made nest 

(b) Wax in cells 

(c) Only females live through 

winter 

(d) Formation of new colony 

3. Fertilization of flowers 

4. Guest bumblebee 
Solitary bees 

(a) Carpenter-bee 

(b) Mason bee 


5. 


6 . 

r* 

i. 
8 . 


9. 


Questions 

What does the scientific name of the order to which bees belong mean? 
How can bees be told from other insects of this order? 

Where do bees rank among the insects as to intelligence? 

What kind of eyes have bees? 

What is their favorite food? 

What are the young fed on? 

Are bees an injury or a benefit to the flowers they visit? 

What system of visiting have they that has its effect on the flowers? 

















BEE 


655 


BEE 



OUTLINE AND QUESTIONS ON BEES—Continued 

Into what two great classes are bees divided? 

Name the most important solitary bees. 

To which class does the honeybee belong? The bumblebee? 

What curious difference is there in the number of classes of individuals in the 
two great groups? 

Did the American Indian know anjffhing about honeybees? 

What is a neuter? 

What is a drone? Why is it given that name? 

Which classes of honeybees have stings? 

How does the queen compare in size with the workers and drones? 

Is she the ruler of the hive? 

What is her special function? 

How many queens does one swarm have? 

Which class of honeybees builds the comb? Which secretes the wax? 

How long does a queen bee live? How long does a worker live? 

Is there a difference between a worker egg and a drone egg? Between a worker 
egg and a queen egg? 

How many eggs can a queen lay in a day? 

How long does it take the eggs to hatch? 

How are queens developed? 

Why do not the thousands of bees in a hive die for lack of air? 

What are the larvae (young) of the honeybees fed on? 

How long after the egg is hatched is it before the fully developed bee appears? 
Which is most numerous class of honeybees? 

Why do bees swarm? 

Will they swarm without a queen? 

What happens to honeybees in the winter? 

What kind of hive is now considered best for honeybees? 

How does it happen that some sections of honeycomb are entirely filled with 
honey, while others have honey alternating with egg cells? 

What are the worst enemies of honeybees? 

What does a bumblebee look like? 

Can a bumblebee sting? 

Is it a wild bee or a domesticated bee? 

Where does it make its nest? 

Can it secrete wax? 

Are bumblebee queens as jealous of each other as are honeybee queens? 

What happens to bumblebees in the winter? 

Is the honey made by bumblebees good to eat? 

Why should bumblebees ever be introduced into new territory? 

What uninvited guest does the bumblebee have? 

Why is the carpenter-bee given its name? 

Describe the way it builds its nest. 

Can the mason bee make wax? 

Of what does it construct its home? 

What striking difference is there between the honeybee workers and the ant 
workers? 

Why can it be said that an ant colony is much more permanent than a bee colony? 
How do we know that people have been acquainted with honeybees for a very 
long time? 












BEE 


65G 


BEECH 


a very strange guest. It looks like a bumble¬ 
bee, but it is not one, although a near rela¬ 
tive. It lives on the honey gathered by the 
workers, but does not a single thing to pay 
for its keeping. It is merely a parasite, or 


something which lives wholly through the ef¬ 
forts of other living things (see Parasite). 
But no quarrels are caused by its presence, 
and some have thought it to be a degenerate 
type of the true bumblebee. v.l.k. 


“ Solitary ” Bees 


Carpenter-Bee, a solitary bee as large as the 
largest bumblebee. Each mother carpenter- 
bee builds her own nest and provides the food 
for her young. She burrows into wood for a 
short distance and then makes a tunnel for 
a foot or more lengthwise of the grain. Be¬ 
ginning at the bottom, the bee lays her eggs, 
each in a separate cell one above another, 
and all are filled with a plentiful supply of 
food. One by one the eggs hatch and the 
young remain in their cells and wait; when 
the last one is hatched, the mother leads her 



HOME OF THE CARPENTER-BEE 


family out for a flight in the sunshine. There 
are a few kinds of small-sized carpenter-bees. 

Mason Bee, a pretty little bee which belongs 
to the class of “solitaries,” or those which live 
not in communities, but by families. The 
mason bee either hollows out a tunnel in 
pithy wood or makes a nest in some con¬ 
venient ready-made hole, as a snail shell or 
a little hollow in the rocks; but in any case 
she earns her name by her method of con¬ 
structing egg cells. These she makes of moist 
clay, in which are embedded little stones, 
sticks and leaves, and she works so skilfully 
that the inside of the cell is perfectly smooth. 
In each cell is placed one egg and a store of 
bee-bread, of honey and pollen, whereon the 
grub-like young may feed. v.l.k. 

Consult Roots’ A B C of Bee Culture; Cow¬ 
an’s The Honeybee; Its Natural History, Anat¬ 
omy and Physiology. 


A Booklet on the Bee 

There is nothing in all their school 
work that children enjoy more than 
the making of illustrated booklets, and 
when the subject is such a fascinating 
one as the bee, the pleasure is in¬ 
creased. The following outline is 
merely suggestive, but will give a good 
idea of how attractive a booklet may 
be made. Use two sheets of paper 
9x12 inches, or larger, and fold once, 
making eight pages: 

% 

Cover page—Border at top and bottom 
of six-sided figures, representing 
cells. 

Title, The Honeybee, made of hexag¬ 
onal drawings. 

Design, old-style hive or sleep, repre¬ 
senting industry. 

Name of school and pupil’s name at 
bottom. 

Page two— (Blank). 

Page three—Essay, The Bee. 

Illustrations : Worker, queen, drone, 
larva. 

Page four—Essay, The Relation of 
Bees to Flowers. 

(a) What the flower gives the bee. 

(b) What the bee gives the flower. 
Illustrations: apple blossoms, wild 

rose, clover. 

Page five—Copy of short poem on the 
bee. 

Illustrations : Hive ; bee on the wing. 

Page six—Essay, Honey. 

(a) In the comb. 

(b) Strained honey. 

(c) Commercial value 

(d) Food value. 

Illustrations: Section of comb, jars 
of strained honey. 

Page seven—An original page to dis¬ 
tinguish your booklet. 

Page eight—Quotations about the bee. 
Illustrate. 


m 


BEECH, a forest tree, beautiful in summer 
because of its spreading symmetrical branches 
and thin, silky leaves; in autumn because of 
the rich gold to which its leaves turn with the 
frost; and in winter by reason of its smooth 
































































BEECH 


657 


BEECHER 


gray trunk and its wealth of shining brown 
twigs with their polished leaf buds. Europe 
has one species and North America another, 
the two differing chiefly in size, for while the- 
American beech attains a height of from fifty 
to seventy-five feet, that of Europe may be 
100 or 120 feet. The beech has one advantage 
over many other trees—its seedlings grow 
well in dense shade and are thus able to 
spring up in sufficient numbers to choke out 
other trees. 

The flowers of the beech are of two kinds, 
both small and inconspicuous, and it is by 
those hidden near the ends of the twigs that 
the bur-sheathed nuts are produced. These 



THE BEECH 

The form of the tree, as seen in winter, the 
prominently-ribbed leaf, and beechnuts, the fruit 
of the tree. 

little three-cornered nuts, which drop from the 
burs with the coming of frost, are very pleas¬ 
ant to the taste, but not nearly so many of 
them are eaten by people as by squirrels, 
swine and poultry. Swine thrive especially 
well on them, and in older daj^s in England, 
before the beech woods were thinned out, 
great herds of swine were fed on them. The 
nuts also furnish a pleasant-tasting oil, and 
when dried and powdered may be made into 
a wholesome bread. 

The hard, brittle wood is liable soon to de¬ 
cay if exposed to the air, but under water it 
lasts well, and is accordingly much used for 
piles or dams. It is an excellent firewood, and 
furnishes in addition a most suitable material 
for carpenter’s planes, small articles of furni¬ 
ture, clothespins and wooden shoes. Thirty- 
one states, all east of the Rocky Mountains, 
produce beech lumber, Michigan ranking first 
in the production. Altogether, however, these 
states produce in a year only about 500.000,000 


board feet. In Canada beech is least impor¬ 
tant commercially of all the trees, its chief 
use being for firewood. a.mc c. 

BEECHER, Henry Ward (1S13-18S7), one of 
the most effective and powerful pulpit orators 
that the United States has produced. He was 
born in Litchfield, Conn., the third son of 
Lyman Beecher, also a great preacher, and he 
was the brother of 
Harriet Beecher 
Stowe (which 
see). As a child 
he was diffident 
and sensitive, 
loved the ocean 
and was only pre¬ 
vented from go¬ 
ing to sea by his 
admission to the 
Church in 1826. 

He studied the¬ 
ology under his 
father’s instruc¬ 
tion in Lane Sem¬ 
inary, for a time 
was pastor of a Presbyterian church in Law- 
renceburg, Ind. (1837-1839), and from 1839 to 
1847 preached in Indianapolis. In 1847 he 
took charge of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, 
a new church with but nine members; and 
there his rapidly-growing congregation heart¬ 
ily sympathized with him in his efforts for 
reform, especially in his work for the aboli¬ 
tion of slavery and for temperance. 

Beecher was original in choice and treat¬ 
ment of subjects for his sermons, and his de¬ 
livery was eloquent, dramatic, pathetic and 
witty. Tender-hearted and charitable himself, 
any form of injustice called from him bitter 
denunciations. He was a Republican and 
aided the cause of that party by pen and 
speech, taking a specially active part in the 
campaign of 1856. During the War of Seces¬ 
sion he visited England, and there showed his 
wonderful power over men by controlling 
clamoring mobs and forcing them to listen to 
him. He did much to enlist British sympa¬ 
thy for the Northern rather than the South¬ 
ern cause. During his life in Brooklyn he 
contributed much to the Independent, of which 
he became editor in 1861; he also edited the 
Christian Union and was a frequent contrib¬ 
utor to the Ledger. Among his many pub¬ 
lished works are a novel entitled Norwood; 
Lectures to Young Men and A Circuit of the 
Continent. 



HENRY WARD BEECHER 













BEEF 


658 


BEEF 


BEEF, the world’s favorite meat, derived 
from cattle. That it was an important article 
of man’s diet in very early times we know 
from the hero-stories in the Odyssey and the 
Iliad, and the Bible tells us that it was occa- 


keep much longer. Corned beej is cured by 
salting. Canned beej is eaten principally in 
out-of-the-way corners of the world, where 
fresh beef cannot be sent; it frequently con¬ 
sists of otherwise unmarketable scraps. Extract 



Ash. 1.0 



Ash, 9J 


CROSS-SECTION OF A CUT OF BEEF 
(a) Fresh beef constituents; ( b ) the composition of dried beef. 


sionally eaten even before the days of Abra¬ 
ham. Though to-day it is a staple food in 
Canada and the United States and the more 
prosperous European countries, it is a luxury 
and quite rare in many others. As the great 
cattle ranges of the world are quite rapidly 
being converted into grain fields, beef may 
soon become too expensive for every-day con¬ 
sumption. 



(1) Neck 

(2) Chuck 
( 3 ) Ribs 

(4) Shoulder 
(5 ) Fore shank 
(6) Brisket 
( 7) Cross ribs 
(8) Plate 


( 9) Navel 

(10) Loin 

(11) Flank 

(12) Rump 

(13) Round 

(14) Second cut, 

round 

(15) Hind shank 


The above cuts are so named in Bulletin 28 
of the United States Department of Agriculture. 


Beef is very nourishing, as the first illustra¬ 
tion shows. It is eaten in a number of forms. 
Fresh beej must be consumed soon after it 
is killed, and is of course the best. Dried beej 
(or jerked beej as it is called in England) will 


oj beej, if properly made of those elements of 
the meat which dissolve in hot water, is a 
stimulant, but not very nourishing. Beej tea, 
composed of juices extracted by pressure, may 
be, on the other hand, quite nourishing. 

Steaks, Roasts, and Other Cuts of Beef. In 
preparing a carcass the butcher first dresses 
it, then splits it along the backbone into 
halves, and usually into hindquarters and fore¬ 
quarters. The second part of the illustration 
shows a half-beef as you might see it hang- 
ing in the butcher shop, the lines showing 
where the butcher will afterward cut it. The 
numbers are here explained; where the use 
of a part is not told it is an inferior cut suit¬ 
able for stews, gravies, soups, corned beef, etc.: 

(1) Neck. (The tongue is the only eatable 
part of the head.) 

(2) Chuck, an inferior quality of roast or 
steak. 

(3) Ribs. The prime roasts are from the 
ribs nearest the loin. 

(4) Shoulder clod. 

(5) Fore shank. 

(6) Brisket, (7) Cross ribs, (8) Plate and 

(.)) Na\ el, are most frequently eaten as corned 
beef. 


(10) Loin, steaks. Short steak is nearest the 
ribs, flank steak next the flank, and rump steak 
next the rump, Sirloin steak is between the 
short steak and the rump. The tenderloin is 
underneath all. 

(11) blank, and (12) Rump, usually corned. 

(13) Round, steak. The inside of the leg is 
more tender than the outside. 

(14) Second cut round. 

(15) Hind shank, soup bones. 


I 1 oi detailed description of the world’s meat 
industry, see Meat and Meat-Packing. See 
also, Diet ; Food. n w ’ 
































BEELZEBUB 


659 


BEET 


BEELZEBUB, be el' ze bub, a word meaning 
the god of flies, is the name by which the 
Philistines of Ekron worshipped their chief 
god. The word was originally written Baalze- 
bub and probably referred to Baal (which 
see). As used in the New Testament, Beelze¬ 
bub means the worst of the evil spirits. Jesus 
said, “And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, 
by whom do your children cast them out?” 
(Matt. XII, 27.) 

BEER, a malt liquor used as a beverage. 
The liquor may be made from nearly all kinds 
of mealy grains that will ferment. However, 
barley is the one most used. The process of 
making beer is fully described in these vol¬ 
umes under the heading Brewing. 

Kinds of Beer. As beer is a name applied 
to all malt liquors, it includes several differ¬ 
ent kinds. The one most generally used in 
Germany and the United States is lager beer. 
This is a light beer which is stored for a time 
before being used, in order to allow it to ripen 
and mellow. Ale is a carefully-made kind of 
beer much used in England; it is stronger than 
lager and lighter in color. Porter is a dark, 
strong English beer, while stout is a strong 
porter. Beer is sometimes brewed from other 
substances, as the names ginger beer, root beer, 
etc., indicate. 

History of Beer. There is authority for 
saying that beer was brewed and drunk in 
very ancient times. The Egyptians must 
have been familiar with it several thousand 
years ago, as the process of making it is shown 
in detail on their wonderful monuments. The 
Greeks obtained their knowledge of it from 
the Egyptians, and from them it spread to 
other peoples along the Mediterranean. When 
the Romans invaded Britain about the time 
of the Christian Era, they found the inhab¬ 
itants brewing a sort of ale from barley. In 
the thirteenth century the Normans had laws 
regulating its sale. To-day large quantities 
are drunk all over the civilized world. Per¬ 
haps the people of Germany and the United 
States are the greatest beer drinkers. Nearly 
two billion gallons were consumed in the lat¬ 
ter country in the year 1916. See Alcoholic 
Drinks. j.f.s. 

BEERSHEBA, be ur she’ bah, a city on the 
southern boundary of the Promised Land of 
the Hebrews. Since Dan was on the north¬ 
ern boundary, from Dan to Beershcba was a 
common form of expressing the extent of the 
country. The expression is still in common 
use, but with an entirely different application. 


“From Dan to Beersheba” is now a sort of 
slang phrase meaning within the outermost 
limitations, meant to exaggerate an effort that 
has been or must be made. The ancient city 
is now but a heap of ruins. The word means 
well of the oath, so named because there 
Abraham made a covenant with Abimelech. 

BEESWAX, beez'wax, a solid, fatty sub¬ 
stance secreted by bees and obtained from the 
honeycomb. Before swarming bees eat honey 
freely, for it is needed to produce wax for 
comb-building. For every pound of wax pro¬ 
duced ten to twenty pounds of honey must be 
consumed. The process by which the wax is 
prepared for commercial use is not generally 
understood. The comb is boiled, and the 
melted wax, rising to the surface, is dipped 
off. On cooling, it becomes solid. As thus 
obtained, beeswax is of a dark yellow or 
brownish color, containing numerous impuri¬ 
ties, which can be removed by melting and 
filtering. Most of the beeswax placed upon 
the market is bleached. It is used in small 
quantities by seamstresses, and by housewives 
for their flatirons, also in the manufacture of 
candles, the preparation of ointments and ce¬ 
ments and in modeling. See Bee; Wax. 

BEET, a garden vegetable of which the 
entire plant may be eaten, both roots and 
leaves. Originally only the leaves were eaten, 
as “greens,” but gradually cultivation increased 
the size and sweetness of the roots until now 



THREE VARIETIES OF BEETS 
Mangel, common beet and sugar beet. 


it is rather as a root vegetable than as a leaf 
vegetable that it is grown. The edible parts, 
usually turnip-shaped, vary in color from white 
to dark red, the red variety being preferred, 
and they are prepared for the table by sev- 





BEETHOVEN 


660 


BEETHOVEN 


eral hours’ boiling. They are then served hot, 
with butter, or are pickled or used as a salad. 
Beets have a high water percentage and a 
correspondingly low food value, though the 
starch and sugar which they contain make 
them more valuable than cabbage, for instance. 

During recent years renewed attention has 
been given to cultivating and refining the 
leafy tops of beets, and the excellent Swiss 
chard has resulted. The coarse varieties of 
beets, known as mangels, are extensively grown 
as food for cattle. See Chard. 

Sugar Beets. The most important use of 
beets, however, is in the manufacture of sugar, 
about three-fifths of all the sugar produced in 
the world coming from this source. Germany, 
Austria, Russia and France are the leading 
countries in the industry, but the cultivation 
of the sugar beet is rapidly spreading in the 
United States. This beet closely resembles 
the varieties ordinarily raised in gardens, ex¬ 
cept that it is usually of light color; and it 
thrives best in a cool temperate climate, hav¬ 
ing a reasonable supply of moisture. It has 
been successfully raised in California, Michi¬ 
gan and Utah, but Colorado is the leading 
state in its production; while in Canada, On¬ 
tario far surpasses anj r other province. In the 
United States the annual production is about 
4,000,000 tons, valued at close to $20,000,000, and 
in Canada about 148,000 tons, valued at $906,- 
000. Practically all of this crop is made into 
sugar, not more than one or two per cent be¬ 
ing used as forage; and one ton of beets will 
make about 240 pounds of sugar. See Sugar, 
subhead Beet Sugar. 

BEETHOVEN, ba' to ven, Ludwig von (1770- 
1827), one of the most notable of German 
musical com¬ 
posers, and the 
supreme master 
of modern music 
for the orchestra. 

He was born at 
Bonn, and re¬ 
ceived his first 
lessons in music 
from his father, 
a tenor singer, 
who is said to 
have beaten mu¬ 
sic into the boy. 

Under teachers 
of great name and ability he made rapid prog¬ 
ress, and his talent was so marked that he was 
sent in 1792 to Vienna, to study under Hadyn. 


In or near that city the greater part of his life 
was spent, and there he composed the works 
that have given him immortal fame. He was a 
great pianist as well as a great composer, win¬ 
ning recognition for his playing before his 
age fully appreciated his genius in musical 
composition. The latter, indeed, was the re¬ 
sult of long years of patient, careful study 
and perseverance. 

The life of the great musician was not one 
of the happiest. He had probably the great¬ 
est misfortune to bear that can come to a 
composer, the loss of hearing. Yet he bore 
this affliction with admirable courage, and, 



BEETHOVEN’S BIRTHPLACE AT BONN 

though totally deaf before reaching middle 
age, he continued to give to the world the 
benefits of his genius. His compositions, be¬ 
gun when he was eleven years of age, consist 
of nine symphonies, a number of concertos, 
sonatas for the piano and for the piano and 
violin, the opera Fidelio, an oratorio, The 
Mount of Olives , string quartettes, masses and 
songs. With him the development of orches¬ 
tra music reached its highest point; he also 
surpassed any of his predecessors in giving 
warmth and poetic color to the sonata and the 
symphony. The latter form he brought al¬ 
most to perfection, and his Fifth and Ninth 
symphonies are among the most beautiful 
works ever composed. His own statement, 
"Music is the only spiritual entrance to a 
higher world of knowledge,” expressed the 
high ideals he held of his art. 



BEETHOVEN 


























BEETLE 


661 


BEETLE 


The Moonlight Sonata. One evening as 
Beethoven and a companion were hurrying 
through the streets of Bonn they heard, through 
the open window of a humble dwelling, the 
lovely strains of the Sonata in F. As they 
stopped to listen there came a cry of despair, 
“Oh! If I could but hear some really good 
musician play this wonderful piece.” Enter¬ 
ing the cottage, they found the player to be 
a young blind girl. Beethoven sat down at 
the old piano and played as if inspired, but 
the blind girl, who listened with awed delight, 
knew not that it was the great Beethoven 
until he struck the opening bars of the Sonata 
in F. Suddenly the candle flickered and went 
out and the music ceased. Beethoven’s friend 
stepped to the window and opened the shut¬ 
ters, and as the beautiful moonlight flooded 
the room he began to improvise a tender 
melody that seemed the embodiment of the 
silvery light that transfigured everything it 
touched. The great composer then hastened 
home to put the music into form. He named 
it the Sonata in C Sharp Minor, but lovers 
of its exquisite melody will always call it the 
Moonlight Sonata. b.m.w. 

BEETLE, bee' t’l, the common name of the 
largest order of insects in the world, of which 
no fewer than 150,000 species have been 
studied and described, over 12,000 of them in 
America, north of Mexico. The name beetle 



PARTS OF A BEETLE 


(a) Mouth parts (f) Femur 

( b ) Head (y) Tibia 

(c) Compound eye (h) Tarsal segments 

(cl) Antenna ( i ) Abdomen 

(e) First, second, third 
thorax 

means biter, .and has reference to the strong 
mouth parts, which are well adapted to seiz¬ 
ing and tearing their prey, but it is the scien¬ 
tific name Coleoptera, meaning sheath-wing.s, 
which indicates their distinctive characteristic. 
Some beetles are so tiny that they can scarcely 
be seen, and some are startling-looking crea¬ 


tures as much as four inches in length; some 
are very flat and others almost as round as 
balls; some are long and slim, others circu¬ 
lar; and there are the greatest variations in 
color, from sober black or brown to brilliant 
reds and greens and metallic blues. All are 
distinguished, however, by the horny fore¬ 
wings which cover and hide the membranous 
hind wings when the insect is at rest, and pro¬ 
tect the soft back. The under part of the 
body, too, has a thick, horny armor, and there 
is no doubt that this “shell,” easily crushed 
though it is, has had much to do with making 
the beetles the most numerous of insects; for 
the stiff and prickly substance is not especially 
agreeable to birds, which would otherwise 
greedily devour them. 

Life History. No other insects have been 
studied as widely and as carefully as have the 
adult beetles, and they have always been 
favorite objects with collectors because their 
hard outer covering makes it possible to pre¬ 
serve them in perfect shape with very little 
trouble; but the earlier stages of beetle-life 
are comparatively little known. It is certain, 
however, that all beetles have what is known 
as a “complete metamorphosis”—that is, there 
are four stages in their development. First 
comes the egg laid by the female in such a 
location that the newly-hatched young will 
have food ready at hand. The next form is 
the larva, usually a disgusting-looking, soft, 
white grub, which differs from the caterpillar, 
or butterfly larva, in that it lives for three or 
four years in that state, before it becomes a 
dormant pupa. Either in a rude cocoon of its 
own making or in a burrow, the pupa rests 
quietly for a period which varies from two to 
three weeks to as many years, and when it 
emerges it is a full-grown beetle. 

Habits. Few places on the earth are free 
from beetles, which live in the water, either 
salt or fresh, and on the land, underground and 
at the surface, while some species live as para¬ 
sites on other animals. Of course there are 
modifications of structure to meet all these 
different modes of life, as well as to adapt the 
beetles for securing the particular food which 
they prefer. Some live on vegetable matter, 
and certain of these species, both as larvae and 
as full-grown beetles are very harmful to crops 
(see Potato Bug). Others live on animal food, 
some of them catching insects alive, others 
preferring decaying matter, and these latter, 
in their office of scavengers, render valuable 
service to man. Two of the most helpful 










BEETLE 


662 


BEGONIA 



Outline and Questions on 
the Beetle 


I. Variety of Species 

(1) Most numerous of insects; 150,000 

species 

(2) Over 12,000 species in North Amer¬ 

ica 

(3) Various sizes, shapes and colors 

II. Distinctive Characteristics 

(1) Strong mouth parts 

(2) Sheath-wings 

(3) Protective, horny covering 

III. Life History 

(1) Complete metamorphosis 

(a) Egg 

(b) Larva 

(c) Pupa 

(d) Fully developed beetle 

(2) Habits 

(a) Food 

(b) Harmful beetles 

(c) Helpful beetles 

Questions 

Why do young collectors find beetles 
attractive objects of study? 

Why should children be taught not 
to kill ladybirds? 

What characteristic of beetles is 
shown in their common name? In 
their scientific name? 

Sketch the life history of a beetle. 
Why do not birds find beetles desir¬ 
able food? 

What shows the adaptability of these 
insects? 

What is meant by a “complete meta¬ 
morphosis”? 

What European beetle has been 
brought to America and carefully cul¬ 
tivated here? Why? 

About how many species are there in 
the United States and Canada? 

What great difference is there be¬ 
tween the larva existence of a beetle 
and that of a butterfly? 

Are beetles on the whole harmful or 
helpful? 

How long does the pupa stay in its 
cocoon ? 

Name four important species of 
beetle. 

With how many of those listed here 
are you familiar? 

Do all species of beetles eat the same 
kind of food? 

In what country was the scarab 
looked upon as sacred? 

What peculiar habit has given the 
burying beetle its name? 



beetles are the ladybird, which feeds upon 
plant lice and thus saves many a garden plant 
from destruction, and the European Calosoma 
beetle, which both as larva and as winged 
adult preys on the destructive larvae of the 
gypsy moth. Into certain sections of North 
America which are particularly troubled with 
gypsy moths this European beetle has been 
introduced, arid has proved a most effective 
preventive measure. On the whole, however, 
beetles do more harm than good. a.mc c. 


Related Subjects. The best-known species 
of beetles are treated in these volumes under 
the following headings: 


Blister Beetle 
Burying Beetle 
Carpet Beetle 
Click Beetle 
Cockchafer 
Deathwatch 
Grain Beetle 
Hercules Beetle 


June Bug 
Ladybird 
Potato Bug 
Scarab 
Stag Beetle 
Water Beetle 
Weevil 


BEGIN, bay' zhaN, Louis Nazaire, Cardinal 
(1840- ), a Canadian Roman Catholic 

prelate, archbishop of Quebec, and created 
cardinal on May 25, 1914, at the last con- 
sistory held by Pope Pius X. Cardinal Begin 
was born at Lewis, Que., attended the sem¬ 
inary of Quebec, was graduated from Laval 
University in 1862, and after two 3'ears of 
study at the French Seminary in Rome was 
ordained a priest in 1865. He was for sixteen 
years professor of theology at Laval Univer¬ 
sity, and then for four years was the head 
of the university’s normal school. He became 
bishop of Chicoutimi in 1881 and archbishop 
of Quebec in 1898. In addition to the dis¬ 
tinction which his position gives him, Cardinal 
Begin is known as a writer on religious topics. 
Among his books are The Rule of Faith, The 
Infallibility of the Sovereign Pontiffs and The 
Catholic Faith. 

BEGONIA, bego'nia, a group of juicy- 
stemmed herbs which in temperate climates 
are favorite house plants. Their fleshy, waxy 
leaves, oddly one-sided, sometimes displaj' 
beautiful shades of color, and the flowers are 
often showy. They have a waxy look, also, 
and those of the common varieties range in 
color from pink to deep red, one flower often 
showing several shades. The carefully culti¬ 
vated kinds grown in greenhouses sometimes 
have wonderfully developed flowers, from four 
to six inches in length and of the deepest 
orange color. One advantage of begonias as 
house plants is that they are easily grown 
from “slips,” either leaf or stem cuttings tak- 


















BEIRUT 


663 


BELFAST 


ing root without difficulty and producing vig¬ 
orous new plants. 



BEGONIAS 


BEIRUT, or BEYROUT, ba'root, has sur¬ 
passed all other cities in Asiatic Turkey in 
commercial and industrial growth. It is the 
capital of a province of the same name and the 
chief seaport of Syria, and is located sixty 
miles northwest of Damascus, at the base of 
the mountains of Lebanon. The term briar 
root, applied to pipes, is generally supposed to 
be a corruption of Beirut, which at one time 
exported great quantities of wood suitable for 
pipe making. Its chief exports now are olive 
oil, cereals, sesame, tobacco and wood; its 
manufactures are silk and cotton, and articles 
of gold and silver. In ancient times Beirut 
was a large and important Phoenician city, 
but for centuries the city was passed from 
ruler to ruler until 1763, when the Turks took 
possession. It was bombarded and taken by 
the British in 1840, but was again restored to 
Turkey. Population, 150,000. 

BELASCO, betas' ko, David (1862- ), one 

of the best-known American theatrical man¬ 
agers of modern times, and a playwright of 
some distinction. He was born in San Fran¬ 
cisco, and in that city began his career as an 
actor at the age of fourteen. Finding that he 
had rather unusual talent in adapting plays 
for the stage, he turned his attention to dra¬ 
matic writing, and throughout a long period has 
won success in three fields—as a playwright, 
theatrical manager and producer E. H. Soth- 
ern, Blanche Bates, Mrs Leslie Carter and 
David Warfield are among the famous people 


of the stage who have been under his manage¬ 
ment, and the Republic and several Belasco 
theaters of New York City are important play¬ 
houses that passed into his control during a 
period of less than a dozen years. 

The name of Belasco is especially associated 
with stage realism, for it is his belief that a 
stage setting should correspond in the smallest 
details with the scene which is being repre¬ 
sented, whether it be a restaurant, an opium 
den, a second-hand clothing shop or a drawing 
room. In the spring of 1915 he joined with 
Charles Frohman in the production of an old 
success, The Celebrated Case, several of the 
best players of the world being engaged for 
the revival of this play. Plans for future 
productions of a similar strong character were 
interrupted by the death of Mr. Frohman on 
the Lusitania, the great ship that was torpedoed 
and destroyed by a German submarine in the 
War of the Nations, in June, 1915. Among 
the successful plays written by Belasco are 
The Girl 1 Left Behind Me (with Franklin 
Fyles), The Heart of Maryland, Zaza, Naughty 
Anthony and The Girl of the Golden West. 
The latter was one of his most successful 
efforts. 

BELEM, baleN', a name sometimes used 
for Para, a city of Brazil, under which title it 
is described in these volumes. 

BELFAST, Ireland, the center of the linen 
industries, is the capital of the province of 
Ulster, on the borders of the counties of 
Down and Antrim. It is the first city in Ire¬ 
land in population, manufactures and trade, 
because it is advantageously situated on Belfast 
Lough where the River Layan flows into the 
lake. It is 113 miles north of Dublin, with 
a harbor which is one of the best in the 
United Kingdom. Although there are some 
unsightly slums, the city is for the most part 
well laid out. The town hall is a notable 
building, erected in 1906 at a cost of $1,500,000. 
The ship-building industry is steadily increas¬ 
ing in importance, and the city has manufac¬ 
tures of machinery, distilleries, flour mills, tan 
yards, chemical works and more power looms 
and spinning mills than are contained in all the 
rest of Ireland. The linen made in Belfast has 
been a superior article for many years. 

Belfast has been the center of resistance to 
Home Rule for Ireland, and clashes between 
political and religious factions have caused fre¬ 
quent riots, sometimes resulting in bloodshed. 
Population in 1911, 386,947. See Linen; Home 
Rule. 













BELGIUM 


664 


BELGIUM 




..THE STORY OR BELGIUM 




A chateau, near Dinant ^ 


Coat of Arm; 


□ 


'—*-- r i f f 'g. 

Historic houses, Bruges 


ELGIUM, one of the smallest coun¬ 
tries in Europe, but one that has stood in the 
very front rank among the states of the world 
by its achievements in all the arts of peace, 
progress and civilization. Belgium attained 
this position in a very short time, for not until 
1830 did it become an independent country. 
But the Belgian nation is not a new nation. 
The people that inhabit this country have a 
long history and have played a prominent part 
in the development of the civilization of 
Europe. Caesar, in commenting on the valor 
of his various enemies, gave first place to the 
Belgae (Belgians). Its noblemen, such as God¬ 
frey of Bouillon and Baldwin of Flanders, were 
leaders of several of the Crusades (which see). 
The first industrial activity in Northern Europe 
was developed in the cities of this country. 
The guild system of the medieval towns orig¬ 
inated first in Flanders, and was introduced 
afterwards into England, France and Germany. 
Belgium had long been famous for its historic 
cities, its beautiful medieval buildings and its 
priceless art treasures. Its art, the expression 
of the ideals of the people, is indeed unique. 

After a successful revolution in 1830 Bel¬ 
gium was recognized as an independent country 
by the Great Powers. The extent and boun¬ 
daries of the country to 1914 were determined 
by the Treaty of London, signed April 19, 1839, 
in which the Great Powers, namely, Great 
Britain, France, Prussia, Austria, and Russia 
guaranteed the independence and neutrality of 
Belgium. Before the Franco-German War of 
1870, both France and Prussia, at the request 
of England, pledged themselves to respect this 
neutrality. 

Since Belgium gained its independence it has 
developed an extensive manufacturing industry 
and an enormous trade. From being at that 
time a poverty-stricken nation, it developed 
into one of the lending nations of the world, 
joining in that capacity such old banker-nations 
as the English, French and Dutch. For many 
years its surplus capital was invested in enter¬ 
prises all over the world. 


The progress of the country had been steady 
and continuous until the fateful day in August, 
1914, when the War of the Nations broke out. 
Suddenly Belgium, that had no part in any 
European quarrel and had absolutely nothing 
to gain by taking up arms, was confronted with 
the choice of either granting the demand of 
Germany to pass through the country, as an 
easy way of invading France, or of protecting 
its independence and neutrality. Although a 
small nation, Belgium, true to the lofty politi¬ 
cal idealism and the spiritual traditions of its 
people, chose the latter course. 

Under the guidance of its ruler, King Albert, 
Belgium decided to fight in defence of its 
honor, its historic heritage of freedom, and 
the right to be mistress in its own house (see 
Albert). But the country had to pay a heavy 



LOCATION MAP 

price lor this decision, for it became once 
more the battle-ground of Europe, the early 
scene of the greatest and most destructive war 
in human history. Its beautiful country has 
been devastated, its villages razed to the 
ground, many of its historic monuments and 
art treasures destroyed, its ancient seats of 
learning rendered desolate, and its people 
driven from their homes to seek refuge in 
foreign lands. No greater tragedy has ever 







































BELGIUM 


665 


BELGIUM 



befallen a nation. And just as 
we value the portrait of a man 
or woman taken at some crit¬ 
ical period of life, so it would 
be of special interest to have 
the picture of this nation on the 
eve of the greatest crisis in its 
existence. 

Location. Belgium, together 
with Holland, lies across the 
central plain of Europe near its 
narrowest point. It has a sea 
coast on the North Sea of 
forty-two miles, and the land 
frontiers measure 793 miles. 
Of this distance 384 miles lie 
on the border of France, 269 
miles join Holland, eighty miles 
border the grand duchy of Lux¬ 
emburg, and sixty miles adjoin 
Germany. Geographical situa¬ 
tion has shaped the character 
and destiny pf the people of 
Belgium more than those of 
any other people in the world. 
For trade purposes it forms the 
natural meeting ground of the 
nations of Western Europe, but, 
unfortunately, on account of 
its position, it has been again 
and again their battle ground. 
Belgium has been called “the 


Belgian milk-cart 


Brussels 


Windmill near 


\ ? 
^ jN 
































BELGIUM 


G66 


BELGIUM 


cockpit of Europe/’ and history has shown that 
any conflicts, in which the leadership of the 
continent was sought, whether by Spain or 
France, by the Iiapsburgs or the Hohenzollerns, 
were fought on its territory. Among the great 
contests fought on its soil prior to the twen¬ 
tieth century may be mentioned the famous 
and decisive battles of Neerwinden (1693), 
Fleurus (1690), Ramillies (1706), Oudenarde 
(1708), Fontenoy (1745), Jemappes (1792), 
Waterloo (1815). For recent battles see War 
of the Nations. 

Area and Population. Belgium, with an area 
of 11,373 square miles and a population of 
7,423,784 inhabitants in 1910, is the most 



COMPARATIVE AREAS 
Belgium compared with Maryland and Delaware. 

densely-populated country in Europe. It had 
in the year named about the same population 
as Pennsylvania, which, however, has an area 
nearly four times as large. Belgium contained, 
before the War of the Nations, 653 persons 
to the square mile, and is therefore credited 
with an average density of population twenty- 
one times larger than that of the United States, 
where the average density is 30.9 persons to 
the square mile. The most densely-peopled 
provinces are Brabant and East Flanders, 
where the average density is 1,158 and 957 per¬ 
sons to the square mile, respectively. The 
neighboring state of Holland has an area eleven 
per cent larger and a population twenty-one 
per cent smaller. When Belgium became a 
separate state in 1830, it had 3,785,814 inhab¬ 
itants, so that it has nearly doubled its popu¬ 
lation during the period. The estimated pop¬ 
ulation in 1912 was 7,571,377 inhabitants. 

Inhabitants and Languages. The inhabitants 
of Belgium belong to two different races, known 
as Flemings and Walloons, and they speak two 
different languages. The Flemings, occupying 
the northern part, are of Teutonic origin and 
speak Flemish, which is a Dutch dialect. The 
Walloons occupy the southern part and speak 


French, or rather Walloon, a dialect of French. 
According to the language spoken, the popula¬ 
tion in 1910 was divided as follow’s: Flemish, 
3,220,662; French, 2,833,324; French and Flem¬ 
ish, 871,299; French and German, 74,993; Ger¬ 
man only, 31,435; those who speak all the three 
languages, 52,547. The fact that the people 
are of two different ethnical stocks and speak 
two different languages has had an important 
bearing upon the political problems that have 
agitated Belgium since 1831, and German}? - , 
after its occupancy of the country in 1914, took 
all possible political advantage of this condi¬ 
tion. French was the official language until 
1870, when Flemish, as the result of a vigorous 
agitation on the part of the Flemings, "was put 
on a footing of equality with French. Belgium 
is now a bi-lingual (two-language) country, and 
nearly all the cities and provinces have two 
names, one Flemish and the other French. 

Religion. The constitution of Belgium 
guarantees full religious freedom. With the 
exception of about 30,000 Protestants, mostly 
foreigners, and about 15,000 Jews, the people 
are Roman Catholics. There is no state 
Church, but the state grants a small contribu¬ 
tion towards the pay of the clergy of all de¬ 
nominations. Belgium is divided into six dio¬ 
ceses, presided over by the archbishop of 
Malines, who is the primate of Belgium, and 
the bishops of Liege, Namur, Tournai, Bruges 
and Ghent. The archbishop of Malines, the old 
and venerable Cardinal Mercier, pluckily de¬ 
fended the rights of his flock following the 
dark days of the German invasion in 1914. 

Physical Features. The surface of the 
country resembles an inclined plane, and the 
land rises by a succession of stages from the 
sea coast to the low mountains of the Ar¬ 
dennes on the southeast. Looking inwards 
from the sea across Belgium, there is seen a 
narrow belt of dunes on the coast, then a strip 
of reclaimed territory, almost level with the 
sea and protected by d}?kes, known as polders. 
Following this comes a broad central region, 
composed of sandy soil and extending from 
west to east almost across Belgiym. The east¬ 
ern portion, including parts of the provinces 
of Antwerp and Limburg, consists of sterile 
heaths and arid wastes, and is known as the 
Campine. The western portion is the cele¬ 
brated Flemish plain, which is described below. 
The surface then rises gradually until the val¬ 
leys of the Meuse and Sambre are reached. 
This region contains one of the best military 
routes leading from Holland and Germany into 





BELGIUM 


G67 


BELGIUM 


I'ranee, and here were situated the fortresses 
and important strategic points of Liege, Na¬ 
mur, Mons and others, that have been the 
object of numerous and famous sieges. South 
of these rivers extends the plateau of Ardennes, 
reaching an average altitude of 1,400 feet and 
containing fine and extensive woods, mostly of 
beech. 

The Flemish Plain. Its Historic Cities. The 
most interesting part of Belgium is the Flemish 
plain, that represents to-day a wonderful tri¬ 
umph of human industry over nature. The 
sandy soil is nearly barren, yet the incessant 
labor of its inhabitants has transformed it into 
one of the most populous, best cultivated and 
most productive areas in the whole world. 
The Flemish plain has played an important 
role in the civilization of Europe, and here 
are situated many old cities with their relics 
of ancient fame and their records of past 
greatness. The old city walls are usually gone, 
but the town halls, the guild halls and the bel¬ 
fry, the possession of which was for a medieval 
town the greatest of chartered privileges, re¬ 
main. Some of these cities are but the ghosts 
of their former greatness. But the belfry still 
rises in their midst, chiming the hours and 
quarters over streets that are now quiet and 
pigeon-haunted, but that were formerly filled 
with bustling crowds surging to the sound of 
its tocsin. Such a city is Bruges, the belfry 
of which is immortalized by Longfellow in the 
well-known lines: 

In the market place of Bruges 

Stands the belfry old and brown ; 

Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, 

Still it watches o’er the town. 

Such cities also are Malines, Termonde, Ypres. 
The famous hall of the cloth workers’ guild at 
Ypres, built early in the thirteenth century, 
was one of the finest examples of Gothic archi¬ 
tecture at its best. But it was something more; 
it was the earliest and noblest piece of archi¬ 
tecture designed for a civic purpose in Bel¬ 
gium, and perhaps in Europe. It was here 
that the guilds were first organized (see Guild). 
The Germans burned this building in 1914. 
In these cities of Belgium the first free munici¬ 
pal life was established, and here the first 
industrial activity in the north of Europe was 
developed. In other cases modern industrial 
revival has been effected upon the ancient sites. 
Such cities are Ghent and Antwerp; and, in 
other parts of Belgium, Brussels and Liege. 

Rivers. Belgium is watered by the Scheldt 
with its chief tributary, the Lys, in the north, 


and by the Meuse and its chief tributary, the 
Sambre, in the south. All these rivers rise in 
4 ranee, while the main rivers, the Scheldt and 
the Meuse, have to pass through Holland 
before reaching the sea. This fact has greatly 
retarded the development of Antwerp and of 
other towns. In West Flanders, the river 
\ser, which receives the little Yperlee, runs 
into the sea at Nieupoort. Besides these there 
are other small streams flowing in all parts 
of the country, so that Belgium is exceedingly 
well supplied with rivers. 

Agriculture. Belgium is typically, but not 
wholly, a country of very small farms, espe¬ 
cially when compared with the United States 
and Canada. But the intensive system of 
agriculture has attained a high degree of per¬ 
fection, and the production per acre, regard¬ 
less of the fact of a thousand years of cultiva¬ 
tion, is the highest in Europe. Of its total 
area of 7,369,000 acres, 4,340,000 acres were 
under cultivation, 1,303,000 acres were forests 
and 476,000 acres were fallow and uncultivated, 
in 1913. Belgium yields per acre more oats, 
barley, potatoes, flax and tobacco than any of 
its neighbors, Great Britain, France, Germany, 
Holland or Denmark. Except Denmark and 
Holland none of the above countries has as 
many cattle and pigs to the square mile. In 
proportion to its size it feeds a greater number 
of persons than any of its neighbors. All this 
agricultural wealth is raised on small farms 
ranging from one and one-half to twelve and 
fourteen acres in size, which are not owned by 
the men who till them, but are rented at a 
high price. For this reason the Belgian agri¬ 
cultural classes do not enjoy any such pros¬ 
perity as falls to the lot of the peasant pro¬ 
prietors of Holland and Denmark. Of later 
years the inhabitants, with their accustomed 
painstaking industry, have reclaimed for agri¬ 
cultural purposes tens of thousands of acres 
in the sandy Campine district, while fertile 
pasture lands now replace the old marshes in 
the northwestern part of the country. 

Mining. The mineral wealth of Belgium is 
very great; size for size, it is greater than 
that of any other country in the world. The 
chief products are coal, zinc, lead and iron. 
The coal fields cover an area of over 550 square 
miles and extend across the country along 
the rivers Sambre and Meuse. The chief coal- 
bearing districts are around Mons, Charleroi 
and Liege. A new and extensive coal-field has 
been discovered in the Campine district, and 
has been worked since 1906. The output of 


BELGIUM 


GCS 


BELGIUM 


coal, which is of excellent quality, averages 
about 23,000,000 tons a year, valued at $76,000,- 
000. Other minerals are zinc, with a production 
of 206,000 tons, valued at $27,000,000; lead, 
with a production of 50,000 tons, valued at 
$9,000,000; and silver from lead, with a pro¬ 
duction of 580,000 pounds, valued at $6,500,000. 
These figures represent production in normal 
times; by comparing them with the similar 
products in the United States we are better 
able to realize their magnitude. In the United 
States the yearly production of zinc averages 
337,000 tons; of lead, 436,000 tons; and of 
silver, 70,000,000 ounces. The metals are found 
chiefly in the Ardennes region. 

Numerous quarries of marble, granite and 
slate are worked, and their products reach an 
average value of $12,500,000 yearly. 

Manufactures. Belgium is normally one of 
the greatest manufacturing countries in Europe. 
Coal and iron are the bases of modern industry 
and, as we have seen, Belgium possesses them 
in abundance. The iron and steel manufac¬ 
tures are on a large scale. The production of 
pig iron in 1913 amounted to 2,500,000 tons; 
of manufactured iron, to 335,000 tons; of steel 
ingots, to 2,500,000 tons; and of steel rails, to 
1,903,000 tons. When one notes that the 
United States produces about 30.000,000 tons 
of pig iron, a better idea of the enormous pro¬ 
duction of this little country is gained. Ma¬ 
chinery of all kinds, firearms, tinware, nails, 
wire, brass, are some of the chief metal manu¬ 
factures, and these are produced at Liege, 
Malines, Namur, Ghent, Charleroi, Mons and 
Brussels. Brussels and Ghent are the centers 
of an important jewelry manufacture. 

Flanders, the center of the flax industry, has 
for centuries been noted for the superior qual¬ 
ity of its linens. The manufacture of woolen 
and cotton goods is very extensive. It is car¬ 
ried on in all parts of the country, but the chief 
seats of the industry are at Liege, Venders and 
Ghent. Lace is one of the most widely known 
of Belgian manufactures. Much of this is made 
by hand in the homes of the people, and the 
same can be said about weaving and the manu¬ 
facture of gloves. One of the characteristics 
of the industry of Belgium is the great number 
of articles made in the homes of the people or 
in small shops, which employ only a few hands. 
These subsist side by side with large establish¬ 
ments where the latest machinery is used. 

Belgium is one of the leading glass manu¬ 
facturing countries in the world. Porcelain and 
other varieties of pottery ware of high grade 


are manufactured at Tournai, Mons, Ghent and 
Brussels. Belgium has also become of late 
years one of the principal beet sugar manufac¬ 
turing countries of Europe. Other manufac¬ 
tured products are leather, chemicals, paper, 
beer, tobacco and furniture. 

Commerce. This little kingdom carries on in 
normal times an immense foreign trade. In 
fact, only the United States, Great Britain, 
Germany, France and Holland export and im¬ 
port greater totals. Belgium nearly quadrupled 
its trade between 1880 and 1914; its trade in 
1913 was twice as large as that in 1900. The 
total value of the trade of Belgium in 1912 
was 2,270 million dollars, of which nearly 1,000 
million dollars were imports for home con¬ 
sumption, 600 million dollars exports of Bel¬ 
gian produce; 470 million dollars represented 
transit trade. In order to realize the magnitude 
of these figures we will again compare them 
with those of the United States, which were 
1,788 million dollars imports and 2,071 million 
dollars exports in 1914. Germany, France, 
Great Britain, Holland and the United States, 
in the order named, are the leading countries 
connected with the foreign trade of Belgium. 
During the fiscal year 1913-1914 the United 
States exported to Belgium merchandise worth 
$61,219,000, and imported from that country 
merchandise worth $41,000,000. 

Transportation. Belgium has an unrivaled 
system of transport facilities, consisting of rail¬ 
ways, navigable rivers, canals and good roads. 
With its 5,400 miles of railroads, Belgium has 
a greater railway mileage compared to its 
size than any other country. The railways 
are owned by the government, and the fares 
are the cheapest in the world. There are in 
Belgium 1,240 miles of navigable waterways, 
rivers and canals, which reach all the principal 
towns of the country, and are also connected 
with the canal and river systems of Holland, 
Germany and France. The Flemish plain espe¬ 
cially is intersected by a network of canals. 

The chief seaports are Antwerp and Ostend. 
A early seventeen million tons of shipping en¬ 
tered and left Antwerp j^early, before 1914. 
Good roads, most of them macadamized or 
paved with stone, traverse all parts of the 
country. 

Education. Official elementary education is 
created and organized by the communes (see 
Commune) ; there must be at least one school 
in every locality. Elementary education, which 
has been mostly in the hands of the Church, 
has been almost as backward as in Spain or 





































































































































































































BELGIUM 


670 


BELGIUM 


Italy. Illiteracy, although still great, is dimin¬ 
ishing rapidly; the number of persons who 
could not read or write formed over thirteen 
per cent of the total population in 1910. The 
struggle of the Roman Catholic clergy to obtain 
control over the elementary schools has been 
one of the burning questions in the politics of 
Belgium for a great many years. Higher edu¬ 
cation is provided by the state universities at 
Ghent and Liege, and the free universities at 
Brussels and Louvain; each of these contains 
good technical schools for arts, manufactures, 
engineering and mines. Belgium has a good 
number of high schools, as well as a great num¬ 
ber of special schools. 

Government. Belgium is governed under the 
constitution adopted in 1831, which has justly 
been admired. This constitution has been 
taken as a model by several European nations 
that have gained their independence during the 
nineteenth century. The Belgian constitution 
guarantees to the citizen equality before the 
law, security of person and property, freedom 
of the press, religious freedom and the right of 
association, all liberal principles that many 
European nations gained much later than 1831. 

Belgium is a constitutional monarchy, the 
crown being hereditary in the direct male line; 
the king must be a Roman Catholic. The ex¬ 
ecutive power is vested in the king, assisted 
by a Cabinet appointed by him, which must 
possess the confidence of the legislative cham¬ 
bers, which consist of a Senate and a Chamber 
of Deputies. The deputies, 186 in 1913, are 
elected directly by the people for four years. 
The senate consists of 120 members, who are 
elected for eight years. All registered voters 
are obliged to vote; failure to vote is punish¬ 
able by law. 

For administrative purposes Belgium is 
divided into nine provinces. These provinces 
are not artificial divisions, like the depart¬ 
ments of France, but are based to a great 
extent on historical grounds. They are admin¬ 
istered by governors appointed by the king, 
assisted by elected councils. But the chief 
unit of local government is the commune 
(which see). Each commune is administered 
by an elective council and a mayor. In a 
country like Belgium, where the communal 
life was developed early and where the glorious 
traditions of the towns are so cherished, the 
power and prestige of the mayor is very great. 
Very often in national crises the joint appeal 
of the mayors of the chief cities has exercised 
a greater influence upon the people than any 


other agency. When Belgium was invaded by 
the Germans in 1914 the mayors of the cities 
showed that the trust placed upon them was 
not mislaid. They all made a plucky fight 
for the defense of the rights of the people, 
very often under conditions of great risk to 
their personal safety. 

Army. Belgium had only a small army, that 
was recruited by voluntary enlistment until 
1909, when a light form of conscription was 
introduced. The peace strength of the army 
in 1913 was 44,000 men and 3,540 officers. In 
addition to the regular army there is a gen¬ 
darmerie of about 3,800 men, and a voluntary 
civil guard of about 180,000. It was estimated 
that the army in war time would reach about 
350,000 men, but there were only about 100,000 
available for the national defense at the begin¬ 
ning of the War of the Nations. 

Belgium possessed several fortresses that 
were considered among the strongest in Europe. 
Among them were Liege and Namur, which 
guarded the passage of the Meuse at important 
strategic points. But the pivot of the national 
defense was Antwerp, with its great fortified 
camp and its number of detached forts. Before 
the War of the Nations, Antwerp was consid¬ 
ered an impregnable fortress, but all former 
ideas about the value and use of fortifications 
have since been greatly altered. 

History. From the time of the ancient 
Belgae, whom Caesar in his Gallic Wars called 
his most valiant foes, and from whom Belgium 
took its name, the territory comprising the 
modern country shared the fortunes of the 
other provinces of the Netherlands. It was 
subject in turn to Rome, France, Germany, 
Spain and Austria; these earlier periods are 
treated under the subhead History in the arti¬ 
cle Netherlands. 

Differences did exist, however, between the 
people of the northern and those of the south¬ 
ern part of the Netherlands, and these tended 
to become constantly more and more marked. 
The inhabitants of the southern country were 
an agricultural and manufacturing people; 
those of the northern primarily commercial. 
The doctrines of the Reformation penetrated 
the entire Netherlands, but they found no 
permanent hold in the southern country, which 
remained true to the Catholic Church. In the 
north, however, the Reformation triumphed. 

In 1579 a formal division occurred, the 
Northern, or Dutch, Netherlands declaring its 
independence, while the southern provinces, 
those comprising modern Belgium, remained 



BELGIUM 


671 


BELGIUM 



BELGIUM UNDER THE ROMANS 

First conquered by Julius Caesar, 57-52 b. c., it remained a part of the Roman Empire for 
about five hundred years. 


under Spanish rule. This Spanish domination 
was far from favorable to the progress of the 
country, for industry was stifled and many of 
the most enterprising citizens left for other 
countries. In 1598 Philip II of Spain made 
Belgium a separate state under the rule of his 
daughter Isabel and her husband, the Archduke 
Alfred, and during its brief period of inde¬ 
pendence the country prospered. On the death 
of Albert without heirs in 1621, Belgium re¬ 
verted to Spain, and from that time on was 
known as the Spanish Netherlands. 

For many years Belgium was in a most un¬ 
fortunate position. Spain, which was steadily 
declining in power, was continually at war 
with France, and of many of these struggles 
Belgium was the battle ground. Belgian terri¬ 
tory, too, was constantly changing hands, as 
one or another of the countries was victorious. 
Naturally, this troubled condition made in¬ 
ternal prosperity and progress impossible. In 
1713 the War of the Spanish Succession was 
closed by the Treaty of Utrecht, by the terms 
of which Belgium passed to Austria (see Suc¬ 
cession Wars). The exhausted countiy did 
not immediately recover from the effects of 
Spanish misrule, but during the governorship 
of Charles of Lorraine, brother-in-law of Maria 
Theresa, which lasted from 1741 to 1780, it 


became really prosperous. For a few r years 
during this period France gained control of 
almost all Belgium, which was, however, re¬ 
stored to Austria in 1748 by the Treaty of Aix- 
la-Chapelle. 

Independence Achieved. During the French 
Revolution and the Napoleonic era the Nether¬ 
lands fell into French hands, and in the re¬ 
adjustment of European affairs which took 
place at the Congress of Vienna (1815) Bel¬ 
gium and Holland were united as a single 
state. The old differences seemed to have 
increased rather than diminished, and the Bel¬ 
gians particularly objected to the union because 
more concessions were made to the Dutch than 
to them. In 1830, therefore, when the spirit 
of revolution was strong in Eijrope, Belgium 
revolted and set up an independent govern¬ 
ment, choosing as king a son of Louis Philippe, 
the King of France. He declined, and Prince 
Leopold of Saxe-Coburg was elected king in 
1831 as Leopold I. His policies were wise, and 
the new state prospered, passing without up¬ 
heaval through the revolutionary period of 
1848. Leopold II came to the throne in 1865, 
and won for himself a place in history by his 
part in founding the Congo Free State. At his 
death in 1909 he was succeeded by his nephew, 
Albert, a man of serious purpose and progress- 









BELGIUM 


672 


BELGIUM 



Outline 


(1) 

( 2 ) 

(3) 

(4) 


( 1 ) 

( 2 ) 


( 1 ) 

( 2 ) 


30' north 
6' east 


(3) 


( 1 ) 


( 2 ) 


(3) 


(4) 

V. 

( 1 ) 


I. Location 

Latitude, 49° 30' to 51 
Longitude, 2° 33' to 6' 
Boundaries 

Effects of position on history 

(a) Trade ' 

(b) Warfare 

II. Size 
Comparative 
Actual area 

III. Physical Features 

Coast 

Surface 

(a) Coastal lowlands 

(b) The Campine 

(c) The Flemish plain 

(d) Highlands 
Drainage 

(a) Abundance of rivers 

IV. The People 

Races 

(a) Flemings 

(b) Walloons 

(c) Other peoples 

1. Germans 

2. French 
Languages 

(a) Two official tongues 
Education 

(a) Decreasing- illiteracy 

(b) Elementary schools 

(c) Higher institutions 
Religion 

Industries and Communication 

Agriculture 

(a) Intensive farming 

(b) Chief crops 

(c) Live stock 


( 2 ) 

(3) 

(4) 

(5) 


Mining 

(a) Chief minerals 

(b) Production compared with that 
of other countries 

Manufacturing 

(a) Iron and steel manufactures 

(b) Textile industries 

(c) Other manufactures 
Commerce 
(a) Recent growth- 
Transportation 

la) Excellent railway facilities 

VI. Government 

(1 ) Its constitution 

(2) The ruler and his cabinet 

(3) Legislature 

(4) Local government 

(5) Chief cities 

(6) Public debt 

VII. Defense 

(1) Army 

(2) Fortresses 

VIII. History 

(1) In ancient times 
( 2) Part in Crusades 

(3) The rise of the guilds 

(4) Long connection with Netherlands 

(5) Separation in 1579 

(6) Unfortunate conditions under Span¬ 

ish domination 

(7) Napoleonic era 

(8) Reunion with Netherlands 

(9) Independence 

(10) Steady progress 

(11) Belgium’s part in the W T ar of the 

Nations 


Questions 

Which state in the American Union does Belgium most closely resemble in size? 

If the populations of the two were exchanged, how much more densely would 
the American state be populated than it is at present? 

How does Belgium rank among the countries of Europe as regards crop pro¬ 
duction per acre? 

What phase of the educational question has entered largely into politics? 

How did the ancient inhabitants of Belgium rank among the Gauls as to 
bravery? 

How does the language situation in Belgium differ from that in England, for 
example? 



















BELGIUM 


673 


BELGIUM 


Outline and Questions on Belgium—Continued 

What is the most valuable output of the mines? 

How did the country prove its progressiveness in making its constitution? 

W hy could not the inhabitants of Belgium and Holland be contented under one 
government? 

Name five important battles that have been fought on the soil of Belgium. 

What effect has the location of the rivers had on the development of Antwerp? 

How many countries have a greater railroad mileage in comparison with their 
size? 

Where was the government of the country established during the War of the 
Nations? 

What relation was there between ancient Flanders and modern Belgium? 

What were the guilds, and what part did Belgium play in their development? 

How many nations surpass Belgium in bulk of commerce during normal times? 

What was the most strongly-fortified city in the country? 

What attitude did the country wish to maintain in the War of the Nations? 

How does it happen that the Flemish plain, naturally an unfertile region, is 
one of the most densely-populated territories in the world? 

What ornamental wares are manufactured in Belgium? 

What was the strength of the army in time of peace? 

What did the Congress of Vienna have to do with the history of the country? 

What phase of financial activity proved the prosperity of the countr} 7 -? 

What are polders, and why are they necessary? 

In what two ways are a number of industries earned on in Belgium? 

How do you account for the fact that the mayors are so much more important 
here than in most countries? 

What was the effect of Spanish rule on Belgium? 

When was the neutrality of the country guaranteed, and by what nations? 

To what Church do most of the people belong? 

What two mineral resources have made possible the development of great 
manufactures? 

When before 1830 was the country independent? 

How did the population in 1912 compare with that in 1830, when the country 
became independent? 

Why are not the Belgian farmers as prosperous as those of Holland? 

Who are the Flemings? The Walloons? To which race of people is each most 
nearly allied? 

Compare the production of zinc and lead with that of the United States. Which 
is larger in proportion to area? 

Why is the country called “the cockpit of Europe”? 

What has been the difference in the history of Bruges and that of Antwerp? 

How many men was Belgium able to put into the field to defend herself at 
the outbreak of the War of the Nations? 

Who was the first king of the new country? What was the most important 
achievement of his successor? 

Where is the Campine, and of what does it consist? 

To how many countries has the territory composing Belgium belonged in the 
course of its history? 

How many kings has the country had since its final declaration of independence? 

Who was king at the outbreak of the War of the Nations? 













BELGIUM 


674 


BELGIUM 



AJ .r 


BATTLEFIELDS OF BELGIUM 


On the soil of Belgium French, British, Austrian, German and Spanish armies at various 
times have met in historic encounters. Of these the battle of most far-reaching consequence was 
probably that of Waterloo, which decided Napoleon’s fate. 


ive ideas, destined to become the idolized 
leader of his people in their greatest crisis. 

The War oj 
1914■ In the Eu¬ 
ropean war be¬ 
ginning in August, 

1914, which in¬ 
volved nearly all 
the potvers of the 
continent, Bel¬ 
gium expected to 
remain neutral, 
as its neutrality 
had been guaran¬ 
teed bv treaty in 

i o o n " tt GENERAL VON BISSING 

1839. However, , . _ , 

German commander in Bel- 
at the outset of gium during the War of the 

the struggle Ger- Nations * 

many demanded permission to pass through the 

country, for strategic reasons, in its campaign 


against France. Belgium disputed the passage 
of the German army and fought at Liege to 
turn back the invaders. Its defense of its 
rights was heroic, but the little Belgian army 
was pushed back by the force of numbers. 

The heroic defense of Liege retarded the 
German advance, but within a month the 
Germans had occupied practically the whole of 
Belgium, except Antwerp and the coast. In 
October Antwerp, which had been considered 
an impregnable fortress, also was taken, after 
a ten-day bombardment. The government of 
Belgium, which had first been transferred from 
Brussels to Antwerp, was then transferred to 
Ostend, and then to Havre, in France. e.h. 

Other Items of Interest. Long ago, in the 
days of Philip II, who lived in,the sixteenth 
century, Belgium was so thickly settled that 
Philip said the whole country w 7 as only one 
large town. 
























BELGIUM 


675 


BELIZE 


The battle ground of Waterloo is about nine 
and one-half miles from Brussels. It is marked 
by a Heroes’ Mound two hundred feet in 
height, on the top of which there is a huge lion. 

Two of the really great painters of Europe, 
Rubens and Van Dj'ck, and a number of minor 
ones belong to little Belgium. 

The Latin Monetary Union, to which Bel¬ 
gium, France. Italy and Switzerland have be¬ 
longed since 1865, was organized at the sugges¬ 
tion of Belgium. It makes the franc the basis 
of the coinage system. 

In the sixteenth century Antwerp was the 
richest and most splendid city in the world, 
its harbors often sheltering more than two 
thousand ships. 

Browning’s How They Brought the Good 
News from Ghent to Aix is a dramatic poem 
which has its scene laid in Belgium and men¬ 
tions no fewer than ten towns. The incident 
is a fanciful one, for there is no such event in 
history. 

Before the outbreak of the War of the Na¬ 
tions in 1914, Belgium took from the United 
States over forty per cent of its exports of lin¬ 
seed oil cake and meal—more than 300,000,000 
pounds annually. 

In normal years the deep-sea fisheries of 
Belgium are valued at about $1,000,000, about 
one-seventh as much as those of Massachusetts. 

Most of the countries of Western Europe 
have a far larger emigration than immigration, 
but in Belgium the opposite has always been 
true. 

If there be no male heir to the throne, the 
king has the privilege of nominating his suc¬ 
cessor, with the consent of the legislative 
chambers. 


There are no publications relating to Belgium 
from American presses, but English books are 
available. Consult Holland’s The Belgians at 
Home; Smyth’s The Story of Belgium; Scuda¬ 
more’s Belgium and the Belgians. 


Related Subjects. The reader who is inter¬ 
ested in Belgium will find the following articles 
helpful: 

CITIES AND TOWNS 


Antwerp 

Bruges 

Brussels 

Ghent 

Li6ge 


Louvain 

Malines 

Namur 

Ostend 

Ypres 


Coal 

Glass 

Iron 

Lace 

Lead 


LEADING PRODUCTS 

Linen 

Pottery 

Silver 

Steel 

Zinc 


Meuse 


RIVERS 

Scheldt 


HISTORY 

Aix-la-Chapelle, 

Treaties of 
Congo 
Gaul 

Succession Wars 

BELGRADE, bel grayd', the capital of Ser¬ 
bia, situated on a promontory formed by the 
confluence of the Danube and the Save rivers. 
It is a strongly fortified city, and no other 
fortress in Europe has witnessed more battles 
than have been waged round the walls of 
Belgrade. In ancient days it formed a strong 
outpost, protecting the West against the ad¬ 
vancing Turks who named Belgrade ‘'the home 
of wars for the faith.” With varying fortunes 
the city was a buffer, constantly changing own¬ 
ers, now captured by Turks, now relieved by 
Austria, and it was not until 1866 that the city 
was finally handed over to the Serbians. 

Modern Belgrade dates from its evacuation 
by the Turks. An ancient mixture of East and 
West has quickly grown into a modern city 
with wide, clean streets, fine buildings, electric 
lighting, and electric street cars. The educa¬ 
tional institutions are of the best, and there 
are a royal palace, many churches, a cathedral, 
national and public libraries and modern bus¬ 
iness houses. It carries on extensive commerce 
and has manufactures of machinery, cloth, 
boots, cigarettes, carpets, silk stuffs, pottery 
and cutlery. During the preliminary stages of 
the War of the Nations, beginning in 1914, 
Belgrade was captured by the Austrians, but 
was quickly retaken by the Serbians. For 
some months thereafter Belgrade was almost 
forgotten in the rush of events in Belgium, 
France and Russia. Late in 1915, however, an 
Austro-German invasion of Serbia occurred, 
and the Serbians were again driven out of their 
capital, October 9, 1915. Population, previous 
to the war, 90,890. See Serbia. 

BELIZE, be leez ', a city that has been noted 
for more than three hundred years as the 
center of the mahogany and logwood trade of 
the world. It is the chief seaport and the 
capital of British Honduras, in Central Amer¬ 
ica, and it is situated at the mouth of the 
southern arm of the Belize River. It has a 
harbor available for small vessels, but ocean¬ 
going steamers have to anchor a mile or more 
from the river mouth and land their cargoes 
by lighters. Besides mahogany and logwood 
the city exports rosewood, cedar, cocoanuts and 


Utrecht, Peace of 
Vienna, Congress of 
Walloons 

War of the Nations 


BELL 


676 


BELL 


sugar. Population in 1911, 10,478. See British 
Honduras. 

BELL. In modern life there is perhaps no 
sound more familiar than the ringing of a bell. 
Those who trust to the morning alarm clock 
may be awakened by the tinkling of a bell; 
during business hours a bell calls messengers, 



BELLS 

( a ) Ordinary hand bell; (b) modern, of the 
latest style; (c) brass bell, after an old model; 
(cl) a bell of the period of the Renaissance; (e) 
church or school bell of the present day. Its 
parts are named as follows: (1) Tongue, or 

clapper; (2) barrel; (3) sound bow; (4) yoke; 
v5) shoulder. 

and in some cases signals the time to com¬ 
mence and to stop work. The deep-sounding 
bell summons worshippers to church; the “cur¬ 
few tolls the knell of parting day.” So familiar 
is a bell that many articles, such as flowers, 
which would be hard to describe otherwise, are 
plainly visualized by the expression “bell¬ 
shaped.” 

Ancient Bells. Before the Christian' Era, 
bells as we know them now probably did not 
exist. Bars of metal and instruments shaped 
like cymbals were used for the purposes of 
announcing meetings. The modern cup-shaped 
instrument dates from the fourth century, and 
apparently was first used for the purpose of 
summoning the devout to worship. That the 
bell has always been closely associated with 
religious exercises is shown by its use in the 


pronunciation of excommunication from the 
Church by bell, book and candle, and by the 
tolling of bells to announce death. Bells were 
introduced into France in 550, and into Eng¬ 
land about a century later. One of the oldest 
bells existing in Great Britain is preserved at 
Belfast, and is known as “the bell of Saint 
Patrick’s will.” It is six inches high, five 
inches broad and four deep, and is thought to 
date from about 652. 

The original Latin word for bell is campana, 
from which we derive the modern campanile, 
meaning bell tower (see Campanile). In the 
thirteenth century it became customary to 
make large bells and place them in special 
towers, where they were sounded by being 
struck with a metal rod or by being swung 
so as to be struck by a metal clapper sus¬ 
pended within the hollow of the bell. In 1400 
a notable bell weighing six and one-half tons 
was made in Paris, and from that time the 
size of bells increased. 

Famous Bells. The largest bell in the world 
is the “Tsar Kolokol” of Moscow, weighing 
193 tons. It was never rung, however, as it 
was cracked in the making and a piece eleven 
tons in weight broke off (see illustration). 
The most famous bell in the United States is 
the Liberty Bell, which pealed forth the news 
of the signing of the Declaration of Inde¬ 
pendence and the birth of a nation (see Lib¬ 
erty Bell). “Big Ben,” in the Westminster 
clock tower of the Houses of Parliament in 
London, weighs thirteen and one-half tons and 
was made in 1858. It is recorded that on one 
occasion during its fifty-seven years of staid 
time-sounding Big Ben boomed forth thirteen 
strokes at the hour of midnight, and numerous 
pieces of fiction have centered their plot around 
the alleged incident. The cathedral of Notre 
Dame, Montreal, Canada, has a bell weighing 
fourteen and one-half tons. The great bell of 
Cologne cathedral, cast from the metal of 
cannon captured from the French in 1870, 
weighs twenty-seven and one-half tons. In 
Burma there is a pagoda with a bell weighing 
eighty tons. All of these bells of great size 
and weight are sounded by being struck; they 
are not movable. 

How Bells Are Made. Ancient bells were 
made in pieces, riveted together, but it is now 
customary to mold them in a single piece from 
molten metal. Bell metal, as it is called, con¬ 
sists of a mixture of copper and tin in propor¬ 
tions of four parts of copper to one of tin. A 
mold is made of baked clay, the melted metal 



































































































































BELL 


677 


BELL 


is poured into it and allowed to cool. The clay 
mold is then destroyed and the bell is com¬ 
plete. A very large bell may require several 
weeks to cool thoroughly. 

Uses of Bells. In addition to its original 
use as a summons to worship, the swinging 
bell has for centuries been employed for numer¬ 
ous important purposes. In the feudal daj^s 



THE GREAT BELL OF MOSCOW 

of England a bell at evening signified it was 
time to “cover the fire” and was called tho 
cur jew; this custom is immortalized in Rose 
Hartwick Thorpe’s poem, Cur jew Must Not 
Ring To-night, a tragic incident of the Crom¬ 
well era. In pioneer days of America a bell 
pealed warning of Indian attacks. At sea, time 
is marked by the sounding of a bell, and buoys 
sometimes carry bells to warn ships off danger¬ 
ous coasts. In England even at the present 
day a “town crier” is sent around in small 
communities to announce sales or other im¬ 
portant events, and he rings a bell to attract 
attention. f.st.a. 

Bell, Nautical. On board ship time is 
marked by the striking of a bell every hour 
and half hour, and the term bells is used 
exactly as one says o'clock on land. The day 
at sea is divided into six periods of four hours 
each, termed watches, commencing at midnight. 
Half an hour after midnight one bell is struck; 
at one o’clock it is two bells; at two, jour bells; 


at three, six bells; at four, eight bells. Then 
the round commences again, eight bells being 
sounded every four hours. The odd number 
of strokes denotes the half hour. 

BELL, Alexander Graham (1847- ), an 

American scientist, celebrated as the inventor 
of the first successful telephone. Everyone 
realizes the importance of this instrument, but 
only the business man, who may wonder how 
business w T as ever 
carried on in the 
days before the 
telephone, appre¬ 
ciates what a mir¬ 
acle-worker its in¬ 
ventor really was. 

Bqll’s first tele¬ 
phone was pat¬ 
ented in 1876 and 
was exhibited at 
the Centennial 
Exposition. Its 
possibilities were 
evident, but it 
was far from be¬ 
ing a perfect instrument. The inventor never 
ceased his experiments upon it, and by suc¬ 
cessive improvements brought it to such a 
point that in January, 1915, conversation was 
easily carried on between New York and San 
Francisco. Bell was not the only experimenter 
with long-distance conversation. Elisha Gray 
(which see) also invented a telephone and 
applied for a patent on the same day on which 
Bell sent in his application, but Bell was 
adjudged to have the prior claim, and his rights 
were later sustained against all claimants. The 
Bell Telephone Company has held practically 
the monopoly of telephone business in the 
United States, and it is stated on good author¬ 
ity that a thousand million conversations are 
held over the Bell telephones of the United 
States and Canada annually. See Telephone. 

Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edin¬ 
burgh, Scotland, received his education there 
and in London, and in 1870 moved to Canada 
with his father, who was the inventor of the 
“visible speech” method of teaching deaf-mutes 
to talk. Of the thousands who have profited by 
this system, Helen Keller (which see) is a 
notable example. In 1872 the younger Bell 
became professor of vocal physiology at Boston 
University, and there introduced his father’s 
system. Even after his inventions demanded 
most of his time, he never lost interest in the 
education of the deaf, and wrote various works 



ALEXANDER GRAHAM 
BELL 











































BELL 


678 


BELLADONNA 


which entitled him to rank as an authority on 
that subject. His inventions, besides that for 
which he is chiefly noted, include the photo¬ 
phone, in which sounds are conveyed by a 
• vibratory beam of light; the graphophone, the 
forerunner of the phonograph; and the tele¬ 
phone probe, which detects bullets in the 
human body. 

BELL, John (1797-1869), an American 
statesman, prominent in all the vital move¬ 
ments that preceded the War of Secession. He 
was born near Nashville, Tenn., was graduated 
from what is now the University of Nashville 
in 1814, was admitted to the bar at the age 
of nineteen, and when but twenty was elected 
to the state senate. So able did he prove 
himself in that body that in 1827 he was sent 
to Congress, where he served until 1841, becom¬ 
ing known for his outspoken support of a pro¬ 
tective tariff. In 1832 he vigorously supported 
Jackson in his campaign for the Presidency, 
and two years later was made Speaker of the 
House. President Harrison appointed him to 
his Cabinet in 1841 as Secretary of War, but 
at Harrison’s death and the succession of 
Tyler, Bell and the others of the Cabinet 
resigned. 

From 1847 to 1859 he was in the United 
States Senate, where he favored Clay’s com¬ 
promise measure of 1850, voted against the 
Kansas-Nebraska Bill and opposed the repeal 
of the Missouri Compromise. The Constitu¬ 
tional Union party (which see) nominated him 
for President in 1860, and in the ensuing elec¬ 
tion Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky gave 
him their electoral votes (see electoral map, in 
article Lincoln, Abraham). For a time he 
opposed the secession of Tennessee, favoring a 
policy of armed neutrality for that state, but 
later he actively supported the Confederate 
cause, though he took no part in the war. 

BELL, Robert (1841- ), a Canadian geolo¬ 

gist who made the first surveys of many of the 
rivers and lakes of Western Canada, including 
Great Slave Lake, Lake Nipigon and part of 
Lake of the Woods, Lake Winnipeg, and the 
Athabaska, Slave, Nelson and Churchill rivers. 
After studying at McGill University, he joined 
the staff of the Geological Survey in 1857, when 
he was only sixteen years old. For half a cen¬ 
tury thereafter the reports of his geological 
and topographical surveys were the chief 
sources of information about the West. He 
was geologist on an exploring expedition to 
Hudson Bay in 1884, and in 1897 surveyed the 
south coast of Baffin Land and reached the 


great lakes in the interior. The value of Bell’s 
work was recognized by his appointment as 
director of the Dominion Geological Survey, 
by the award of honorary degrees from McGill, 
Cambridge and other universities, and by mem¬ 
bership and office in many honorary scientific 
societies. 

BELLACOOLA, bel' la koo' la, a tribe of In¬ 
dians which has suffered much from contact 
with white settlers. Their home is now in 
British Columbia. They were once a strong 
and important tribe, extending their range into 
the Northern United States, displaying unusual 
skill as fishermen and building great houses 
which were marvels of strength and ingenuity. 
Diseases introduced by the white men, however, 
have killed them off until now but a few hun¬ 
dred remain. 

BELLADONNA, bel'la don'a, or DEADLY 
NIGHTSHADE, a bushy herb of the night¬ 
shade family and a native of Europe and Asia, 
poisonous in all its parts, but cultivated ex¬ 
tensively because of its healing properties. In 



BELLADONNA 
(a) Branch; (b) fruit. 


the United States the plant is grown in gardens 
because of its showy flowers as well as for use 
in medicine. The roots and leaves yield a 
drug known as belladonna, that is widely used 
for the relief of asthma, bronchitis, and whoop¬ 
ing cough, colic and other intestinal troubles, 
while plasters or liniments made from bella¬ 
donna are applied externally to soothe the 
pains of inflammation and neuralgia. Bella¬ 
donna is also valued highly by oculists because 
of its paralyzing effect on certain muscles of 
the eye, which causes the pupil to expand and 
greatly aids the doctor in his examination and 
treatment of the eye. No one but a competent 
oculist should ever apply belladonna to the 
eye, and the use of this drug by persons who 
hope to add beauty to the eye by increasing 


BELLAIRE 


679 


BELLEFONTAINE 


its brilliance cannot be too strongly condemned. 
In fact, no belladonna preparation should ever 
be used for any purpose except under the direc¬ 
tion of a physician. 

The plant grows to a height of from two to 
six feet, and bears drooping, bell-shaped purple 
flowers, broad, oval leaves and large black 
berries. Could it speak it would probably say, 
“Touch me not,” for persons are known to 
have died from eating its. berries, and even 
breaking off a spray may cause eye trouble. 
Children, especiall}^ should be warned against 
touching the plant. Vinegar is a simple remedy 
in cases of poisoning, but a physician should, 
if possible, be summoned immediately. 

Once upon a time Italian ladies used the 
juice of belladonna as a face ointment, and 
from this custom, as well as from its use in 
beautifying the eye, came its name, which is 
the Italian for fair lady . 

BELLAIRE, belair' , Ohio, a manufacturing 
and trading city located in the valley of the 
Ohio River. It is in Belmont County, on the 
eastern state boundary, which is the Ohio 
River. The city covers an area of nearly three 
square miles. In 1910 the population was 
12,946; in 1914 it was 13,896. Americans pre¬ 
dominate; foreign-born include principally Ger¬ 
mans, Bohemians, Hungarians and Slavs. 

Bellaire is four miles south of Wheeling, 
W. Va.; Pittsburgh, Pa., is ninety-seven miles 
northeast, and Columbus, the state capital, is 
137 miles west. The Baltimore & Ohio Rail¬ 
road, built to the city in 1854, crosses the river 
over a fine iron bridge. Other lines running 
into the city are the Pennsylvania, built in 
1849, the Ohio River & Western, built in 1880, 
and the Wabash, built in 1907. River com¬ 
merce, handling coal, stock and freight of all 
kinds, is extensive. The important manufac¬ 
tures include machinery, glass, steel, iron, 
enamel ware, farm implements and stoves. 
The monthly pay roll of the Carnegie Steel 
Company at Bellaire averages $85,000. Near 
the city are large deposits of coal, iron, lime¬ 
stone, fire clay and cement. Natural gas and 
coal, easily obtained from the surrounding 
country, make the cost of manufacturing excep¬ 
tionally low. 

Among the many handsome buildings of the 
city are the post office, built in 1914 at a cost 
of $125,000, four large banks and a city hospital. 
The city library is conducted in connection 
with the public schools, which have in addition 
to the regular courses a commercial depart¬ 
ment. Bellaire was settled about 1795, incor¬ 


porated as a village in 1858 and received a city 
charter in 1874. w.l.m. 

BELLBIRD, the name of several species of 
birds whose notes sound like the tolling of a 
bell. The most famous of these is a South 
American songster of glossy white plumage. \ 
which dwells among the dense forests of the 
Amazon region. Its 
clear, melodious notes, 
which carry for a long 
distance, may be heard 
at mid-day. To some 
travelers these seem 
like the blow of the 
blacksmith’s hammer on 
the anvil. A remarkable 
feature of this bellbird 
is a fleshy projection about an inch in length, 
growing from the base of the beak, black in 
color and dotted here and there with starlike 
tufts of small feathers. It hangs down loosely 
at the side of the beak, except when the bird 
becomes excited and when it utters its bell¬ 
like tones. Then the projection slowly extends 
sometimes to a length of five inches, but does 
not, as was formerly supposed, assume an erect 
position. 

The name is applied in Australia and New 
Zealand to two members of the honey-sucker 
group, birds which feed on the nectar of flowers. 
The New Zealand bellbird utters notes that 
sound like the tinkling of a silver bell. 

BELLEFONTAINE, bcl jon' tain. Ohio, the 
county seat of Logan County, is situated in the 
western part of the state about midway be¬ 
tween the northern and southern state lines. 
Columbus, the capital, is fifty-six miles south¬ 
east, Lima is thirty-three miles northwest and 
Cincinnati is 113 miles southwest. The Toledo 
& Ohio Central, two divisions of the Cleveland, 
Cincinnati, Chicago & Saint Louis (Big Four) 
railways and an electric line serve the city. 
Bellefontaine was settled in 1806, was organized 
as a town and became the county seat in 1820 
and was incorporated as a city in 1835. The 
name is taken from the French, and means 
beautiful fountain; it was suggested by several 
springs of clear water, spurting at the base of 
the elevation on which the city is built. In 
1910 the population was 8,238; it increased to 
8,915 in 1914. The area is less than three 
square miles. 

The site of Bellefontaine is on the highest 
point of land of the state, 1,550 feet above sea 
level. In the vicinity is Lewiston reservoir, 
with an area exceeding 13,000 acres and a 



THE AMAZON 
BELLBIRD 


BEELEROPHON 


680 


BELLINGHAM 


capacity of four and a half billion cubic feet. 
Drinking water is supplied the city by artesian 
wells drilled into limestone to a depth of about 
200 feet. The leading manufactures are iron 
and steel bridges, automobiles, mattresses and 
comforts. The large shops of the Big Four 
railroad are located here. Bellefontaine has a 
Carnegie Library and three parks. c. of c. 

BELLEROPHON, be ler' o fon, a mythological 
Greek hero, the son of Glucus, king of Corinth, 
and the slayer of the dreadful, three-headed 
Chimaera. He was sent by the king of Argos 
to the Lycian king with a sealed message asking 
his death, and to accomplish this he was sent 
to kill the fire-breathing monster. He was 
assisted by the goddess Minerva, who gave him 
the golden bridle with which he secured the 
winged horse Pegasus (which see). Mounted 
upon this steed, he was able to attack the mon¬ 
ster from above and slay him. 

Seeing that Bellerophon was a favorite of 
the gods, the king gave him his daughter in 
marriage and made him heir to his throne. 
Legend says that in his later years Bellerophon, 
made proud by his good fortune, attempted to 
mount upon Pegasus to the home of the gods, 
and that Jupiter, angered by his boldness, 
caused him to be dashed to the earth. Lame 
and blind, he dragged out his few remaining 
years in misery. Hawthorne has told the story 
of Bellerophon’s great victory delightfully in 
The Chimaera, omitting the later mournful 
part of the tale: 

He whose blind thought futurity denies, 

Unconscious bears, Bellerophon, like thee 

His own indictment; he condemns himself. 

BELLES-LETTRES, bel let' r, an expression 
applied in a somewhat indefinite way to those 
forms of literature that appeal to the emotions 
and the imagination. Belles and lettres are two 
French words meaning beautiful and letters, 
which, taken together, mean fine literature or 
polite literature. Poetry, fiction, literary criti¬ 
cism, dramatic writings and certain forms of 
history would be included in the term, as dis¬ 
tinguished from the more practical or prosaic 
forms of literature, such as scientific treatises. 
There is, however, no hard and fast rule gov¬ 
erning the use of the term. The first English 
writer to employ this expression was Jonathan 
Swift, w r ho in 1710, made use of it in the peri¬ 
odical called The Tatler. 

BELLEVILLE, bel' vil, the county town of 
Hastings County, Ontario, on the Bay of 
Quinte, an arm of Lake Ontario, and at the 
mouth of the Moira River. It has a fine harbor 


which accommodates the largest steamers which 
ply on the Great Lakes. The city is on the 
Grand Trunk, Canadian Northern and Cana¬ 
dian Pacific railways, 112 miles northeast of 
Toronto and fifty-one miles w r est of Kingston. 
It is a noted dairying center, and manufactures 
butter in large quantities. There are also 
cement works, hardware factories, foundries and 
boiler works, flour and paper mills, potteries, 
shirt, furniture and soda-w’ater factories. Belle¬ 
ville has excellent public schools, and is the 
seat of the provincial institute for the deaf 
and dumb; of Saint Agnes College, for women; 
and Albert College, with separate departments 
for men and women. The latter is one of the 
oldest educational institutions in the province. 
It was founded by the Methodists in 1757, and 
was for many years a university, but now pro¬ 
vides only secondary instruction. Belleville is 
also known for its beautiful churches and as 
the home of Sir Mackenzie Bowell. Popula¬ 
tion in 1911, 9,876; in 1916, estimated, 12,000. 

BELLEVILLE, III., an important manufac¬ 
turing city with a population, chiefly of Ger¬ 
man descent, of 21,139 in 1914. It is the county 
seat of Saint Clair County, situated in the 
southwestern part of the state, about fourteen 
miles southeast of Saint Louis. Excellent rail¬ 
way accommodations are provided by the Illi¬ 
nois Central Railway, constructed to the city in 
1860, and the Louisville & Nashville Raihvay, 
built in 1870. Electric lines connect with Saint 
Louis and adjacent towns. The city was 
founded in 1814, and was incorporated as a 
city in 1850. The name “Belleville” is of 
French origin and means beautiful city. The 
area of the city is about nine square miles. 

Belleville is situated in the midst of an 
agricultural and coal-mining region, and has 
a large trade in flour and general produce. Its 
industries include foundries, machine works, 
nail mills, stencil works and carbon work. Here 
is located one of the largest rolling mills in the 
West. Besides the public school system, a con¬ 
vent, two business colleges and a Carnegie 
Library serve the educational needs. There are 
three banks, two hospitals, a Roman Catholic 
cathedral, an Elk’s hall and a post office, the 
latter erected in 1913 at a cost of 860,000. 

Falling Springs, in the vicinity, is a favorite 
resort for excursionists; it has a waterfall and 
presents a delightful view of high bluffs, f.s.b. 

BELLINGHAM, bel' ing am, Wash., the 
county seat of Whatcom County and the near¬ 
est United States shipping point to Alaska. It 
is on the east shore of Bellingham Bay, which 



BELLINI 


681 


BELLOWS 


is part of Puget Sound, in the extreme north¬ 
western part of the state and is on the Nook- 
sack River and on the.Great Northern and 
Northern Pacific railways. It is also the ter¬ 
minus of the Bellingham & Northern Railway 
(now a part of the Chicago, Milwaukee & Saint 
Paul system), a line sixty-two miles long, con¬ 
necting with Mount Baker goldfields and the 
agricultural country of Nooksack Valley. Bell¬ 
ingham is the home port of a number of coast¬ 
wise and trans-Pacific steamship lines. The 
area of the city is about twenty square miles. 
The population, largely American, was 24,299 
in 1910 and 29,937 in 1914. 

Bellingham has an excellent harbor. The 
great natural wealth of the surrounding coun¬ 
try consists of salmon, lumber, minerals, clay, 
limestone and sandstone beds. A gravity plant 
installed by the city at a cost of $1,000,000 
brings water from Lake Whatcom, a high nat¬ 
ural reservoir two and a half miles southeast. 
Electric power is obtained from the falls of 
the Nooksack River. In Bellingham are some 
of the largest salmon canneries in the world. 
These companies operate their own ships to 
Alaska and by way of the Panama Canal to 
New York City. Lumber interests, saw and 
shingle (especially cedar) mills, logging com¬ 
panies, wood-working factories, salmon, fruit 
and vegetable canning, milk condensing and the 
manufacture of cans and cement, represent the 
important commercial interests of Bellingham. 

Among the more prominent buildings are the 
city hall, a Federal building, erected in 1913 at 
a cost of $280,000, the Y. M. C. A., two Car¬ 
negie libraries and two hospitals. The largest 
state normal school, an industrial school and 
several business colleges are located here. 
There are four city parks, Elizabeth, Larrabee, 
Cornwall and Whatcom Falls. Snow-capped 
peaks, Mount Baker, the largest, to the south 
and east, the cascades and falls of the river, 
magnificent pine forests and the ocean islands, 
all contribute to the beautiful scenery of this 
region. 

Bellingham Bay is thought to have been 
given its name by Vancouver in 1792, in honor 
of Sir Henry Bellingham. Along the shore 
there were once four separate settlements which 
have united in the present city. In 1903 Bel¬ 
lingham, named from the bay, was founded by 
the consolidation of Whatcom and Fairhaven. 
A city charter was obtained in 1904. w.f.c. 

BELLINI, belle' ne, Giovanni (1430 or 1431- 
1516), the greatest figure in early Venetian 
painting, and the most important member of a 


family of Italian painters who flourished dur¬ 
ing the early Renaissance. Giovanni received 
his first lessons in painting from his father, 
Jacopo Bellini, a distinguished portrait painter. 
His fame rests chiefly on his religious paint¬ 
ings, many important examples of which sur¬ 
vive. One of his numerous Madonnas hangs 
in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, 
and there are others in private collections; his 
Christ on the Cross and Transfiguration are in 
Venice; and the National Gallery of London 
possesses his Agony in the Garden. 

His early works seem to have been painted 
under the influence of profound religious feel¬ 
ing, and show great severity of treatment, but 
his later canvases exhibit a blending of noble 
form and soft, rich color that is characteristic 
of Venetian painting at its best. He was 
commissioned to paint several great altarpieces 
for churches in Venice, and he assisted his 
brother Gentile in the decoration of the ducal 
palace at Constantinople. All of his paintings 
in the latter city were destroyed by fire, and 
this was the fate also of his work on the decora¬ 
tion of the great council hall at Venice. Bellini 
was also distinguished as a painter of portraits; 
one of his masterpieces, the portrait of Doge 
Loredan, is now in the London Gallery. His 
influence on the art of his time was profound, 
and among the throngs of pupils who studied 
with him were Giorgione and Titian. 

BELLE ISLE, bel' He, Strait of, the body of 
water separating the island of Newfoundland 
from the mainland to the north and west. 
This strait, which is about eighty miles long 
and about twelve miles wide, is the northern 
entrance from the Atlantic Ocean into the Gulf 
of Saint Lawrence. The passage through the 
strait is made not without danger, but as the 
route is the shortest from Montreal and Que¬ 
bec to England, it is usually followed by ocean 
liners. 

At the eastern end of the strait is Belle Isle, 
the island, .which lies nearly midway between 
the Newfoundland and Labrador shores. The 
island has an area of fifteen square miles. At 
its southern end, which steamships pass, is a 
great lighthouse whose signal light is visible 
for nearly thirty miles. 

BELLOWS, a wind-making machine, used 
to fan flames to intensify their heat, or to 
operate a reed organ or pipe organ. The bel¬ 
lows of a blacksmith shop has two compart¬ 
ments formed by three boards and soft but air¬ 
tight leather sides. By a simple arrangement 
of weights and levers which move the upper 


BELL-SMITH 


682 


BELT 


and lower board, air is first drawn into the 
under compartment, then into the upper and 
then forcibly expelled through a nozzle facing 
the forge. The advantage of two compart- 



HAND BELLOWS 


ments is a continuous current of air, but small 
bellows, consisting of one chamber, with a valve 
at the bottom and a nozzle through which the 
air is expelled by pressure, are operated by 
hand to quicken the burning of fires in open 
hearths and grates. See Blowing Machine 

BELL-SMITH, Frederick Marlett (1846- 
), a Canadian painter, equally successful 
in portraits and landscapes. Among his prin¬ 
cipal paintings are Queen Victoria’s Tribute to 
Canada, for which Her Majesty gave personal 
sittings, Landing oj the Blenheim, in the 
national collection at Ottawa, and Lights oj a 
City, in the Ontario collection at Toronto. For 
many years he has made annual visits to the 
Rocky Mountains, and his sketches of moun¬ 
tain scenery are among his best work. Though 
born and educated in London, England, he 
made his home in Canada after 1867, when he 
settled at London, Ont. He was for seven 
years teacher of drawing in the schools of that 
city, and then from 1889 to 1891 was director 
of the Toronto Art School. For thirty years 
he was also director of fine arts at Alma Col¬ 
lege, Saint Thomas, Ont. Bell-Smith was a 
charter member (1867) of the Society of Cana¬ 
dian Artists, and in 1886 became an associate 
of the Royal Canadian Academy of Artists. 

BELMONT, the name of a family of Amer¬ 
ican financiers, two of whose members, father 
and son, achieved distinction in national life. 

August Belmont (1816-1890) was born in 
Germany and was sent to the United States in 
1837 as representative of the banking house of 
the Rothschilds. He was Austria’s consul- 
general at New York from 1844 to 1850 and in 
1854 he became American minister to Holland. 
In addition to a business career which would 
usually demand all of one’s time, he took an 
active interest in politics, being chairman of 
the national Democratic committee for twelve 
years, and he was also an eager sportsman and 
a, collector of paintings, 


August Belmont (1853- ), son of the 

above, also became a prominent capitalist, ris¬ 
ing to posts of officer and director in many 
large railway, banking and manufacturing cor¬ 
porations, including the consolidated traction 
lines of New York City. Like his father, he 
became interested in Democratic politics. In 
1910 he married Eleanor Robson, a leading 
actress. 

BELOIT, beloit', Wis., a manufacturing 
center in Rock County, situated on the Rock 
River, close to the southern state line, about 
midway between the eastern and western state 
borders. Chicago is ninety miles southeast. 
Railway transportation is provided by the 
Chicago, Milwaukee & Saint Paul and the Chi¬ 
cago & North Western railways; an electric 
line is in operation to Janesville. Beloit was 
settled in 1824 and was chartered as a city in 
1856. The population increased from 15,125 in 
1910 to 17,122 in 1914. The area is less than 
five square miles. 

The city occupies both banks of the river, 
at the point where it receives the waters of 
Turtle Creek. In its territory it is noted as 
the seat of Beloit College (Congregational), 
founded in 1846. Abundant water power is 
derived from the river for manufactures, the 
largest plants being engaged in making wind¬ 
mills, gasoline engines, paper and paper-mill 
machinery and scales. It has one of the largest 
wood-working plants and the oldest rye-flour 
mill in the United States. 

BELSHAZZAR, belshaz' ar, the king of 
Babylon who saw the “handwriting on the wall” 
which was interpreted by the prophet Daniel 
(Dan. V). Belshazzar was the last of the 
Babylonian kings, and he reigned with his 
father Nabonidus. He was killed in the storm¬ 
ing of Babylon by Cyrus, according to the 
account in Daniel, on the night in which he 
saw the writing on the wall. 

The following stanza contains the opening 
lines from a favorite song of Sunday school 
children, which graphically describes this epi¬ 
sode: 

At the feast of Balshazzar and a thousand of his 
lords, 

As they drank from golden vessels, as the Book 
of Truth records, 

In the night, as they reveled in the royal palace 
hall, 

They were seized with consternation— 

’Twas the hand upon the wall. 

BELT or BELTING, a flexible leather or 
rubber band, or like material, passing around 
wheels, pulleys or drums for the purpose of 











BELUCHISTAN 


683 


BENEDICT 


transmitting motion or power from one to 
another. The term belt is commonly applied 
to the broad, flat bands or woven material. 
Chains and ropes may also be employed, but 
these are generally classed as chain drives and 
rope drives. The two ends of the material of 
which a belt is to be made are joined securely 
together to produce what is called an endless 



BELT AND SHAFTING 

The belt may be shifted to larger or smaller 
wheels, to increase or decrease speed. 

belt. Each manufacturer and machinist may 
have his own favorite way of effecting the joint, 
but the principle is the same in all. 

In lacing, the joint may be made by running 
the lace through a series of holes as in lacing 
a shoe, care being taken when crossing the lace 
to do so on the top, or the side farthest from 
the surface of the wheel. Another method is to 
lace through two series of holes without cross¬ 
ing, the two ends of the lace being tied together 
on the upper surface. Metal rivets present an 
even surface, but are more liable to breakage 
than lacing. A combination of lacing and 
cement has grown in favor, for it produces a 
more permanent joint than any other method. 
Imperfect lacing is often the cause of trouble 
and power waste. A well-adjusted, properly- 
jointed belt may be kept in use for thirty 
years, if treated with proper care. Joints of 
belts are usually tested to stand a certain 
pressure per square inch, but in actual opera¬ 
tion a belt should not be called upon to bear 
more than one-third of the stated maximum 
pressure. 

BELUCHISTAN, be lu chi stahn', another 
form of the word Baluchistan (which see). 

BENARES, ben ah' rez, the headquarters of 
the Hindu religion in India, situated on the 
right bank of the holy Ganges River, 390 miles 
northwest of Calcutta. The Hindus regard it 
as the holiest place on earth, created at the 
beginning of the world, eternal; those who are 
sufficiently blessed to die there are sure of 
instant admittance to paradise, 


In reality, Benares is a very busy, flourishing 
city, capital of the Benares district of the 
United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, and 
decidedly modern for an Eastern city. But, 
as in all Indian cities, there is a deep under¬ 
current of oriental religious life, and the city 
contains 1,500 temples which are visited by 
vast numbers of pilgrims. Sacred cattle are 
found roaming at will through many parts of 
the city, and many of the temples are haunted 
by numbers of sacred monkeys. The inhabi¬ 
tants eye askance all Europeans, fearing and 
quick to resent any imaginary slight to their 
religious or racial prejudices. 

Benares carries on a large trade in cotton, 
silk and woolen goods, and is famous for orna¬ 
mental brass work known as Benares-ware. Its 
stores contain the fine shawls, embroidery and 
jewelry of the East and the most modern of 
Western inventions. The streets are narrow 
and crowded, but during recent years many 
sanitary improvements have been made. Popu¬ 
lation, 203,800. 

BENEDICT, ben' e dikt, the name of fifteen 
Popes, of whom the last will probably be 
ranked by future historians as most important. 

Benedict XV (1854- ), Giacomo Della 

Chiesa, became Pope at a troublesome time, 
shortly after the outbreak of the gigantic War 
of the Nations in 1914. He was born at Pegli, 
Italy, on November 21, 1854, was ordained 
priest in 1878, and in 1887 became secretary to 
Cardinal Rampolla, then the Papal secretary 
of state. In 1907 he became one of the Advis¬ 
ers to the Holy Office, and later in the same 
year was appointed Bishop of Bologna. On 
May 30, 1914, he was created cardinal, and a 
few months later, after the death of Pope Pius 
X, was chosen Pope on September 3, in a 
conclave which lasted only four days. This 
was the shortest conclave in the history of the 
Papacy, and no other Pope has been chosen 
after so short a service in the office of cardinal. 

Pope Benedict came to his high office after 
a brief but thorough training. While secretary 
to Cardinal Rampolla he was intimately con¬ 
nected with the negotiations between the 
Papacy and the European powers, thus acquir¬ 
ing a knowledge of facts and diplomatic meth¬ 
ods which stood him in good stead in the deli¬ 
cate situations growing out of the War of the 
Nations. Repeatedly during that great conflict 
he endeavored to bring peace to the war- 
torn countries, but his kind offices were rejected. 
Similarly, the Pope’s administration of the see 
of Bologna, one of the most important in 












BENEDICT 


684 


BENEFIT OF CLERGY 


Italy, proved invaluable experience for the 
administration of the supreme office which he 
was later called upon to fill. A man of aristo¬ 
cratic birth and training, a noted scholar, fa¬ 
mous for his fearlessness and moral courage, 
Pope Benedict is certain to occupy a prominent 
place in the history of his time. 



HIS HOLINESS POPE BENEDICT XV 


Other Popes of the Name. Of the other 
Popes of the name, from Benedict I, Pope from 
574 to 578, to Benedict XIV, Pope from 1740 
to 1758, several are worthy of mention. 

Benedict VIII, who was raised to the Papal 
chair in 1012 and ruled until 1024, had to con¬ 
tend for his right to the office with the anti¬ 
pope Gregory VI, but was confirmed in his 
possession of it by the Emperor Henry II. His 
later reign was disturbed by contests with the 
Saracens, but Henry remained his friend and 
helped him to gain possession of the island of 
Sardinia. One of his interdicts was directed 
against marriage of the clergy. 

Benedict IX, nephew of the preceding, was 
first chosen Pope in 1033, and lived until 1056. 
Within that time, however, he was never Pope 
for more than eight months at a time, for he 
was constantly being deposed by one power 
or another. Four times he was reinstated, but 
in 1048 was permanently superseded and retired 
to a convent, where he died. 

Benedict XIV (1675-1758) is worthy to rank 
with the very ablest holders of the Papal 
throne. After having served as bishop of 
Ancona, archbishop of Bologna and cardinal, 


he became Pope on the death of Clement XII 
in 1740. He distinguished himself especially 
by the interest he took in education and 
archaeological matters, establishing several 
chairs in the University of Rome, founding 
academies and directing the excavation of vari¬ 
ous Roman antiquities. Himself a man of 
uprightness and sincerity, he labored for reform 
among the clergy. His chief work is On the 
Beatification and Canonization oj Saints, con¬ 
sidered an authority on the subject. g.w.m. 

BENEDICTINES, ben e dik'tinz, a religious 
Order of men, so named because of their adher¬ 
ence to the rule of life dictated by Saint Bene¬ 
dict. His idea was that each monastery should 
be a separate organization and should, for the 
monk, take the place of the family. The first 
monastery of the Order was established by 
Benedict at Monte Cassino, in the Appenines, 
in the year 529. The Order spread rapidly, 
and in the next century the Benedictines were 
foremost in implanting Christianity and civili¬ 
zation in the West. During the Dark Ages 
these monasteries were the only places where 
the followers of the Church could find meeting- 
places of retreat from the social classes, and 
the Order at this time was very influential in 
preserving some of the traditions which the 
bishops had succeeded in keeping alive. 

The Benedictines have always been noted for 
their piety and for their encouragement of 
learning. Within their monasteries no branch 
of art or industry known at that time was neg¬ 
lected, and many of the books written before 
the invention of printing were made there. 

BENEFIT ASSOCIATIONS. See Fraternal 
Societies. 

BENEFIT OF CLERGY, the privilege en¬ 
joyed by the clergy of the medieval Church by 
which they were exempted from the juris¬ 
diction of the ordinary courts and were respon¬ 
sible only to their bishops or Church courts. 
Originally, this exemption applied only to the 
clergy, but it was later extended to all clerks; 
and since everyone who could read and write 
even a little was considered a clerk, the privi¬ 
lege was much abused. A lajmian could receive 
the benefit of clergy only once, however, and 
before obtaining his liberty was branded on the 
thumb, a punishment which later was com¬ 
muted to whipping, imprisonment or banish¬ 
ment. The benefit of clergy was abolished in 
1827. One of Kipling’s finest stories is entitled 
Without Benefit of Clergy, but he uses the 
phrase in an entirely different sense from the 
form above. 






ELECTION OF POPE BENEDICT XV. 


Announcing successor of Pope Leo 
XIII from balcony of Saint Peter’s. 




















BENGAL 


685 


BENGAL 


BENGAL, bcngawl', one of the three pres¬ 
idencies or large governing units of India, the 
others being Bombay and Madras. Few other 
regions in the world are more densely-popu¬ 
lated, for Bengal has in its relatively small 
territory of 78,669 square miles 45,500,000 peo¬ 
ple, or 578 to the square mile. If half of the 
total population of the United States or twelve 
times the number of people in all Canada were 
compelled to live within the single state of 
Nebraska, conditions would be almost exactly 
the same. Certainly it would not seem pos¬ 
sible to the crowded North Americans under 
such circumstances that they could support 
themselves by farming, for it is generally con¬ 
sidered that wide areas are necessary for that 
industry, yet Bengal is distinctively agricul¬ 
tural. Over half of its area is under cultiva¬ 



tion and as the soil in the Ganges and Brah¬ 
maputra valleys is very fertile, large returns 
are received for labor, even though methods 
are most primitive. The most important crop 
is rice, to which almost three-fourths of the 
cultivated area is given over, and rice is the 
principal food of the people. The other prod¬ 
ucts include wheat, barley and millet, oil seeds, 
opium, indigo, sugar cane and several varieties 
of fiber plants. 

Formerly, when Bengal had poor transporta¬ 
tion facilities and knew little of machine-made 
articles from beyond the sea, there were impor¬ 
tant native manufactures. In particular, deli¬ 
cate cotton and silk fabrics were woven. But 
to-day cheaper textiles from Great Britain can 
be brought over the everywhere-present rail¬ 
roads or procured from the factories in the 
larger Bengalese towns, and hand-weaving has 
largely decreased. 


Geographical Features. Bengal lies at the 
head of the Bay of Bengal and comprises the 
choicest land of India. Just as Egypt is in¬ 
debted to the Nile for its fertility, so Bengal 
depends on the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, 
which spread the silt they bring from their high 
mountain sources over the plain of which Ben¬ 
gal is chiefly composed. Sometimes the Ganges 
is too generous with its floodings, and in 
places it is confined within embankments. 

Three lines of railways meet at Calcutta, 
the capital of Bengal and the largest city of 
India; and from that center a huge commerce 
is carried on, largely with the United Kingdom. 

History and Government. Bengal had a long 
independent existence before it began to be 
ruled by the Mogul emperors, from which it 
was wrested in 1757 by the English under 
Clive. British rule in Bengal was confirmed 
by Warren Hastings, and the province was 
early recognized as one of the most valuable 
parts of India. The name has been applied to 
widely-varying stretches of territory, and before 
1905 included far more than it does to-day. 
The province was so large as to be unwieldy, 
however, and in that year the eastern part was 
united with Assam to form a new province of 
Eastern Bengal and Assam. Discontent re¬ 
sulted, for the people felt that the British gov¬ 
ernment was trying to discourage any national 
feeling; and in 1912 a new adjustment was 
made. Eastern Bengal was reunited with Ben¬ 
gal proper, and on the west Bihar, Chota, 
Nagpur and Orissa were erected into a new 
province, while Bengal was raised to the rank 
of a presidency. 

The chief executive of Bengal is a governor, 
appointed by the government in London, who 
has as his aids two members of the India 
Civil Service. The legislative department con¬ 
sists of an assembly of fifty-two members. Cal¬ 
cutta, once the capital of all India, remains 
the capital of Bengal, while Darjiling, the 
“city above the clouds/’ is the summer resi¬ 
dence of the governor. See India. a.mc c. 

BENGAL, Bay of, the northern portion of 
the Indian Ocean, lying between India and 
Burma. It receives the waters of the Ganges, 
Brahmaputra and Irrawaddy rivers, and on or 
near its shores are the important towns of 
Calcutta, Madras and Rangoon. In the east¬ 
ern part of the bay are the Andaman Islands, 
on which a prison colony is maintained by the 
Indian government. Off the coast of Burma is 
a chain of islands containing active volcanoes 
which frequently erupt great quantities of mud, 




BENGALI 


686 


BEN LOMOND 


sometimes sufficient to form fresh islands, 
which after a time are washed away by the 
sea. 

BENGALI, bengah' le, one of the modern 
languages of India, spoken by about 50,000,- 
000 people in Bengal. Related to the Sanskrit, 
it is written in characters derived from that 
language, and it also possesses many words 
borrowed from the Sanskrit. The name Ben¬ 
gali is an English form, its native form being 
Banga-Bhasa. Its grammar bears a resem¬ 
blance to the modern Persian and to some 
degree to the English. Of the several Bengali 
dialects, that spoken at Calcutta is the stand¬ 
ard. Bengali literature dates from the begin¬ 
ning of the fifteenth century; the greatest 
name in its history is that of Rabindranath 
Tagore, the poet who received the Nobel prize 
for literature in 1913. He writes in English, 
however, as well as in Bengali. See Sanskrit 
Language and Literature; Tagore, Rabin¬ 
dranath. 

BENGOUGH, bengoff', John Wilson (1851- 
), a Canadian caricaturist, journalist and 
poet, and also known as one of the leaders 
of the single tax movement. He was born 
in Toronto, and after receiving a grammar 
school education began the study of law, which 
he soon dropped for journalism. In 1873 he 
established in Toronto a humorous weekly 
called The Grip, most of whose illustrations 
were drawn by himself. For nearly twenty 
years this paper held a unique place in Cana¬ 
dian life, and Bengough’s good-humored, yet 
sometimes sharp, wit exposed the weaknesses 
of many Canadian statesmen. After 1892 he 
contributed to various Canadian and English 
newspapers, and also devoted much of his time 
to lecturing in Canada, Great Britain, Aus¬ 
tralia and the United States. He has written 
some excellent verse, and is the author of the 
famous election song, Ontario, Ontario. Among 
his publications are Popular Readings, Orig¬ 
inal and Selected; Caricature History of Can¬ 
adian Politics; Motley: Verses Grave and Gay. 
The Up-to-Date Primer, A First Book of 
Lessons for Little Political Economists, is a 
humorous exposition of the single tax theory. 
He was appointed an associate of the Rojml 
Canadian Academy of Arts upon the forma¬ 
tion of that institution in 1880. 

BEN-HUR, a novel by General Lew Wallace, 
of which over 1,000,000 copies have been sold. 
The dramatic version produced in 1899, nine¬ 
teen years after the book first appeared, was 
also very popular, and the spectacular features, 


particularly the magnificent chariot race which 
Ben-Hur won against terrible odds, later made 
it a striking and successful moving-picture 
play. 

The scene of the story is laid in the time of 
Christ, and its hero is a young Jew, Ben-Hur, 
who by reason of the enmity of Messala is 
wrongly convicted of a crime and sentenced to 
slave in the Roman galleys. His adoption 
by the Roman commander Arrius; his return 
to Palestine to seek his mother and sister; the 
furious contest with his old enemy in the 
chariot race, and his final conversion to Chris¬ 
tianity make a powerful dramatic story. 

BEN'JAMIN, the youngest and favorite son 
of Jacob, and a brother of Joseph. No finer 
story was ever written than that of Joseph and 
Benjamin, beginning with Genesis XLII. The 
name means son of my right hand. 

He became the founder of the Benjamites, 
who in the march through the Wilderness had 
the honor of being placed next to the Taber¬ 
nacle. The land assigned the Benjamites was 
between that of Ephraim on the north and 
Judah on the south. The territory was small 
but important, since it was the key to the 
entrance to the Promised Land from the east. 
The Benjamites were famous warriors, and the 
tribe contained many men noted for their skill 
in the use of the left hand. The Benjamites 
were nearly destroyed in a war which they 
waged against all the other tribes of Israel 
(see Judges XIX-XXI), but later they recov¬ 
ered their strength and at the division of the 
kingdom united with Judah. 

BENJAMIN, Judah Philip (1811-1884), an 
American lawyer and statesman, commonly 
known during the War of Secession as “the 
brains of the Confederacy.” His parents were 
English Jews and he was born in the West 
Indies, but when still a child was taken to 
Wilmington, N. C. After studying at Yale he 
was admitted to the bar in New 7 Orleans in 
1832, and soon rose to a high rank in his pro¬ 
fession. Elected to the United States Senate 
in 1852, he was active in the Southern cause 
and with the secession of Louisiana in 1861 
withdrew from the Senate. His pronounced 
ability as Attorney-General and as Secretary of 
State in the Cabinet of the Confederacy won 
him the name referred to above. At the close 
of the war he went to London, where he built 
up a large practice and acquired an enviable 
reputation. 

BEN LOMOND, ben lo' mund, a mountain in 
the west-central part of Scotland, made famous 


BENNETT 687 

by Sir Walter Scott’s Lady oj the Lake. It 
is just east of Loch Lomond and is the southern 
extremity of the Grampian Mountains, the 
Central Scottish Highlands. On the north side 
of Ben Lomond is a precipice 2,000 feet high. 

BENNETT, the family name of two of the 
most prominent and successful American jour¬ 
nalists, father and son. 

James Gordon Bennett (1795-1872) was the 
founder and editor of the New York Herald 
and originator of many of the modern devices 
of journalism. Foreign correspondents, finan¬ 
cial articles, full reports of important speeches, 
prompt and lively accounts of every-day 
events—these were unknown before his time, 
but other editors immediately adopted them. 

Bennett was born at Newmills, in Scotland, 
and studied for the Roman Catholic priesthood, 
but the reading of Franklin’s Autobiography 
interested him in America, and he emigrated 
in 1819. In Halifax and later in Boston he 
earned a scanty living on various journals; in 
1832 he went to New York and at intervals 
attempted to found a paper of his own, always 
without success until 1835, when on May 6 
there appeared the first number of the New 
York Herald. It was issued from a cellar, this 
little four-page penny paper, but its editor was 
a born journalist and knew how to interest and 
hold the public, whether he always pleased or 
not. At first he wrote the entire paper, and 
sold it as well, but soon began to employ 
reporters and newsboys, and to introduce the 
features mentioned above. Financially the 
paper was a great success, earning for its pro¬ 
prietor, in his later } r ears, almost $750,000 
annually. If Bennett himself was not always 
liked, if his opinions were not always respected, 
it was because he deliberately chose to increase 
the prominence and the circulation of his 
paper at the expense of his personal influence. 

James Gordon Bennett, Jr. (1841- ), his 

son, succeeded to the proprietorship of the 
Herald, but directed the affairs of the paper 
largely by cable, as he preferred to live in Paris. 
The chief innovation which he introduced was 
the publication of London and Paris editions 
of the Herald. Although he lives in Europe, 
Mr. Bennett keeps in intimate touch with his 
New York paper, sometimes cabling editorials 
on vital American topics. From his youth he 
has been intensely interested in yachting, and 
has won various races. Bennett, at his own 
expense, sent Henry M. Stanley to Africa to 
hunt for Livingstone, and equipped the Jean¬ 
nette for its Polar expedition. He was also one 


BENNINGTON 

of the founders of the Commercial Cable 
Company. 

BENNETT, [Enoch] Arnold (1867- ), 

an English writer whose realistic novels have 
won him a popularity which few present-day 
novelists have succeeded in gaining. Most fa¬ 
mous are his stories of the “Five Towns,” which 
include Anna oj the Five Towns, The Old 
Wives’ Tale, Clayhanger, Hilda Lessways and 
The Matador oj the Five Towns. These 
depend for their interest not on exciting events 
or romantic situations but on the realism with 
which they set forth the every-day lives of 
commonplace people and the insight into 
human nature which they show. Longer than 
most novels of the day, they yet succeed in 
holding their reader to the end, once his 
interest is aroused. 

Bennett was born at Hanley, one of the Fiye 
Towns, studied at the University of London, 
and worked as a magazine editor until the 
increasing popularity of his writings allowed 
him to give up other work. Some of his essays, 
as The Human Machine and How to Live on 
Twenty-jour Hours a Day were widely read. 
He is also the author of the successful play 
Milestones. 

BEN NEVIS, ben ne' vis, which in Gaelic 
means mountain oj snow, is the tallest peak in 
Great Britain. It rises 4,406 feet above the sea, 
at the south end of the Caledonian Canal in 
Inverness, and at its summit on clear days 
practiced observers can see nearly to the North 
Sea, one hundred miles away. 

BENNINGTON, Vt., a village in the south¬ 
western part of the state, the name of which 
has been made famous by an important battle 
of the Revolutionary War, fought about five 
miles distant, on August 16, 1777. On that 
day nearly 2,000 “Green Mountain Boys” under 
General John Stark defeated in succession two 
divisions of the British army commanded by 
Burgoyne, who had dispatched the troops to 
Bennington to seize a store of supplies. The 
English suffered a loss of over 200 killed and 
700 captured; the Americans, only fourteen 
killed and forty-two wounded. The battle had 
results of first importance. It not only seri¬ 
ously weakened Burgoyne but encouraged the 
colonial troops to continue their campaign 
against him, and his surrender two months later 
at Saratoga is generally regarded as the turning 
point in the war. 

Bennington township, consisting of the three 
incorporated villages of Bennington, North 
Bennington and Bennington Centre, is the 


BENTON 


688 


BENZENE 


County seat of Bennington County. It is situ¬ 
ated thirty-five miles northeast of Albany, 
N. Y., and fifty-two miles southwest of Rut¬ 
land, Vt., on the New York Central Railroad. 
Special interest attaches to the place because 
of its picturesque location at the foot of the 
Green Mountains and its association with 
colonial and Revolutionary history. Seth War¬ 
ner and Ethan Allen made Bennington their 
home, and its citizens had much to do with the 
formation of Vermont as a separate state. The 
state soldiers’ home is located at Bennington 
village, and in Bennington Centre a monument 
over 300 feet high has been erected to com¬ 
memorate the famous battle. The township is 
a manufacturing center, with a large output of 
knit goods, woolens, hosiery, collars and cuffs. 
Township matters are under the control of a 
bpard of selectmen, while each village manages 
its own local affairs. Population of the town¬ 
ship in 1910, 8,698. e.s.h. 

BENTON, Thomas Hart (1782-1858), an 
American statesman, for thirty years United 
States Senator for Missouri and an influential 
factor in every important public question. He 
was born near Hillsborough, N. C., began to 
stud}'' at the Uni¬ 
versity of North 
Carolina but re¬ 
moved to Ten¬ 
nessee, and in 
1811 was admitted 
to the bar in that 
state. While in 
the Tennessee 
legislature, to 
which he was 
elected in 1809, 
he became ac- 
q u a i n t e d with 
Andrew Jackson, THOMAS HART BENTON 
and in the War of 1812 he joined Jackson’s 
staff. In 1813 a quarrel between these friends 
led to one of those shooting affrays so common 
in the frontier country, and both were injured. 
Not until years afterward were the two reunited 
in friendship. 

After attaining the rank of lieutenant-colonel 
in the war, Benton removed to Saint Louis, 
where he practiced law and founded the Mis¬ 
souri Inquirer, a newspaper of pronounced pro¬ 
slavery temper. When Missouri was admitted 
to the Union in 1820 he was elected to the 
United States Senate, and then began his gem 
eration-long term. Intensely loyal to the West 
and its needs, he worked for the construction 


of a transcontinental railway and for the open¬ 
ing of the mineral lands to settlement. It was 
in connection with Jackson’s fight against the 
United States Bank that Benton came most 
prominently before the public, winning by his 
ardent advocacy of a gold and silver currency 
the nickname of “Old Bullion.” He also took 
an active part in the Oregon boundary dis¬ 
cussion and the disputes over the annexation 
of Texas, and was entirely in favor of the 
Mexican War. Having lost his seat in the 
Senate in 1850 through his opposition to the 
compromise proposed by Clay, he was elected 
two years later to the House of Representatives, 
but in 1854 he retired from public life and com¬ 
pleted his great book Thirty Years’ View. This 
has become a valuable historical record. 

BENTON HARBOR, Mich., a city in Berrien 
County, in the southwestern part of the state, 
sixty miles northeast across Lake Michigan 
from Chicago. It is inland one and a half 
miles from the lake, with, which it is connected 
by ship canal, and is at the junction of the 
Saint Joseph and Paw Paw rivers. The city 
has the advantages of Saint Joseph harbor at 
the mouth of the canal and has steamboat lines 
to Chicago and Milwaukee. It is served by 
the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & Saint 
Louis, the Pere Marquette and the Michigan 
Central railroads. The population in 1910 was 
9,185; it was 10,302 in 1914. The area is nearly 
three square miles. 

Benton Harbor is in the Michigan fruit belt 
and is one of the largest peach markets in the 
world. In 1915 the total boat and rail fruit 
shipments amounted to 10,000 car loads. The 
exportation of fruit, grain and lumber, fruit 
packing, cider and vinegar making, fruit evap¬ 
orating and manufactories of fruit baskets, 
spray pumps, lumber and furniture are the im¬ 
portant industries. Medicinal water from min¬ 
eral springs found in the vicinity is bottled and 
shipped. Many visitors come directly to the 
springs. 

The city was settled about 1860. It has sev¬ 
eral small parks, several noteworthy bank 
buildings, a Carnegie Library and a public 
hospital. h.g.k. 

BENZENE, ben'zene, or BENZOL, ben' 
zahl, a colorless liquid lighter than water and 
having a pleasant odor, which burns with a 
smoky flame. The lighting power of illuminat¬ 
ing gas is due in a measure to the benzene it 
contains. Benzene readily dissolves fats, resins, 
rubber, sulphur and iodine, and is very impor¬ 
tant because of the great * number of com- 





BENZINE 


689 


BERESFORD 


pounds obtained from it. One of these, nitro¬ 
benzene, has the odor of bitter almonds and is 
used to produce the flavor of almonds in 
essences and perfumery, but its chief use is in 
the manufacture of aniline. Benzene is some¬ 
times called benzol. It should not be confused 
with benzine, which is obtained from the dis¬ 
tillation of petroleum. See Aniline; Benzine. 

BENZINE, ben' zin or ben'zeen, a light 
colorless liquid obtained in refining crude petro¬ 
leum. It has an odor resembling that of kero¬ 
sene, is very inflammable, and evaporates 
rapidly when exposed to the air. When mixed 
with air its vapor is highly explosive, and seri¬ 
ous accidents may occur if a lighted pipe or 
cigar, or a lighted match or lamp is brought 
near benzine exposed to the air. Bringing it 
near a hot stove may also cause an explosion. 
Benzine is used for cleaning type and rollers 
of presses in printing offices, for removing spots 
from clothing, for dissolving fats, oils and 
resins, and in the manufacture of illuminating 
gas. See Petroleum. j.f.s. 

BENZOATE, ben'zo ate, OF SODA, a com¬ 
pound of soda and benzoic acid, used to a 
considerable extent in preserving food sub¬ 
stances that are liable to decay or ferment 
from exposure to the air. The Federal gov¬ 
ernment allows benzoate of soda to be used in 
quantities not larger than one-tenth of one 
per cent, careful investigation by the Referee 
Board of the Department of Agriculture having 
shown that such small quantities are not injur¬ 
ious to health. On account of the prejudice 
existing against it, however, many manufac¬ 
turers of foods prefer to avoid its use. j.f.s. 

BEOWULF, ba' o woolf, an Anglo-Saxon epic 
poem, the most important relic of Old English 
literature. The only existing manuscript of 
this was written about a. d. 1000 and may now 
be seen in the British Museum. The poem 
recounts the adventures of the hero Beowulf, 
especially his delivery of the Danish kingdom 
from the half-human monster Grendel and his 
equally formidable mother, the slaughter of a 
fiery dragon and the death of the hero from 
wounds received in the conflict. The character 
of the hero is attractive through his noble 
simplicity and disregard of self. In imagina¬ 
tive quality and strength this poem compares 
well with the epics of Homer. 

BERBERS, bur'burs, the people of the 
Mediterranean coast of Africa. Their name 
and the word Barbary are probably derived 
from the Greek Barbaros, which meant one 
who babbles —hence, anyone who did not talk 
44 


Greek, that is, a foreigner. Our word bar¬ 
barian is from the same source. 

Berbers are often nearly black, with shiny 
brown hair. They are sparely built, not tall, 
but strong and graceful. They cultivate the 
land after a primitive fashion, and raise many 
sheep, goats and camels. They live usually in 
tents, but are finding their way into towns in 
increasing numbers. There are three distinct 
types, known as Tuaregs, Kabyles and Shil- 
luhs. The Tuaregs are desert wanderers, 
dreaded by all peaceful tribes, and call them¬ 
selves “Amazirg,” meaning the free. The 
Kabjdes and Shilluhs have been brought more 
under the influence of civilization. 

BEREA, be re'a, COLLEGE, a school at 
Berea, Ky., founded in 1855 for the purpose of 
educating both white and negro youths of both 
sexes. It is situated in the Cumberland Moun¬ 
tains and has gained a wide reputation by 
providing courses of study and methods of 
training especially suited to the needs of the 
mountain people of this region. Most of its 
students come from the mountain sections of 
Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia 
and West Virginia. It has a model school, and 
industrial, academic, normal, collegiate, com¬ 
mercial and music departments. Since 1904 
the work for whites and negroes has been car¬ 
ried on in separate institutions, by requirement 
of the state law. 

Berea College is non-sectarian, has about 55 
professors, over 1,700 students, and a library 
of 25,000 volumes. 

BERESFORD, ber' esferd, Lord Charles 
William de la Poer (1846- ), a British ad¬ 

miral who rendered great assistance in raising 
the British navy to a high state of efficiency. 
Entering the navy in 1868, he gave indication 
at once of great ability and proved gallantry in 
action. At the bombardment of Alexandria 
in 1882, while in command of H. M. S. Condor, 
he distinguished himself and received special 
recognition. Entering Parliament soon after¬ 
wards, he devoted his energies to forcing on 
the government a complete reorganization of 
the naval program. In this he was only par¬ 
tially successful, and he brought on himself the 
enmity of the Admiralty, or navy department. 
In 1906, however, he was appointed com- 
mander-in-chief of the Channel Fleet. In 1910, 
his term of command having expired, he was 
again returned to Parliament as member for 
Portsmouth. Owing to his advanced age he 
did not take a command in the War of the 
Nations. 


BERGAMOT 


690 


BERING SEA 


BERGAMOT, bur' ga mot, a small evergreen 
tree whose leaves and flowers resemble those 
of the bitter orange, and whose pear-shaped 
fruit has a smooth rind the color of a lemon. 
The rind yields a greenish-yellow fluid known 
as oil of bergamot, which is chiefly used in 
making perfumery. The tree is cultivated in 
Calabria (Italy) and in France. The name is 
also applied to a number of different pears, 
and in America to several pleasingly-fragrant 
plants of the mint family. 

BERGEN, one of the chief seaports of Nor¬ 
way. It is beautifully situated amidst pictur¬ 
esque scenery, at the head of a deep bay, with 
a background of lofty mountains, 186 miles 
northwest of Christiania. The older portion 
of the city, founded in 1070, is built of wood 
and has several times been ravaged by fire 
and pestilence. The modern town is well built, 
with wide streets and houses of brick and stone. 
It has some fine buildings, among which are 
the cathedral, museum, library and public 
schools. The principal industries are ship¬ 
building and barrel making, and the town car¬ 
ries on an extensive trade in dried fish, herring, 
tar, grain and flour. Although only a little 
north of the latitude of Petrograd, Bergen has 
a much milder climate than that city, owing to 
its sheltered position and the ocean currents 
from warmer latitudes. The rainfall is unusual, 
however, averaging annually about seventy- 
three inches. 

Early in the fourteenth century Bergen be¬ 
came an important member of the Hanseatic 
League (which see). The city was the birth¬ 
place of a number of notable men, among them 
being Ole Bull and Edward Grieg, the musi¬ 
cians, and the poet Holberg. Statues of Hol- 
berg and Bull have been erected by the city. 
In January, 1916, a great fire destroyed a large 
part of the city. Population in 1910, 76,867. 

BERGH, burg, Henry (1820-1888), founder 
of the two American societies that strive to 
prevent cruelty to children and to animals. He 
was born in New York City and educated at 
Columbia University. In 1864 he resigned 
from a position with the American legation at 
Petrograd, then known as Saint Petersburg, 
and soon after his return to America became 
interested in the work of mercy to which he 
devoted the rest of his life. 

Though ridiculed and opposed, he succeeded 
in 1866 in having incorporated, under the laws 
of New York State, the Society for the Pre¬ 
vention of Cruelty to Animals, and two years 
before his death he saw this society estab¬ 


lished in thirty-nine states of the Union, and in 
Canada, Brazil and Argentina. In 1874 he 
rescued a little girl from brutal treatment, 
which led to the founding of the Society for 
the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, now 
established in nearly every state in the Union 
and the Canadian provinces. These societies 
have back of them the powerful arm of the law, 
and can bring about the arrest and punishment 
of those persons who are inhuman in their 
treatment of children or animals. Bergh also 
invented artificial pigeons for the sportsman’s 
gun, and was the first to suggest the use of an 
ambulance for removing injured animals from 
the street. 

BERGSON, Henri Louis (1859- ), a 

French philosopher whose theories have gained 
for him a wide following. Intuition and not 
intellect is to him the trustworthy guide; all 
former philosophies he rejects, at least par¬ 
tially, because intellect had too large a part 
in their construction. Time to him is the great 
reality, but he means by time not just what is 
usually understood. In the ordinary sense of 
yesterday, to-day and to-morrow time does 
not exist, according to Bergson, for the past is 
gone, the present vanishes before one can say 
“It is here,” and the future no one can state 
positively will ever be. But time in the sense 
of pure duration, as one feels it in dreams, is 
the only sure foundation upon which life rests. 

Bergson was born in Paris, of Jewish parent¬ 
age, studied in that city, and by 1900 had be¬ 
come so well known as a teacher that he was 
appointed to the chair of philosophy in the 
College de France. Though he has never 
striven for general popularity, his doctrines 
have gained such a vogue that his lecture 
rooms have been crowded constantly, and peo¬ 
ple have been turned away. In 1913 he visited 
the United States, lecturing at Columbia Uni¬ 
versity, and in 1914 was elected to the French 
Academy. His publications include Time and 
Free Will, a setting forth of the main principles 
of his philosophy; Laughter, an essay on the 
value of the comic; and Matter and Memory, 
a discussion of the relation between body and 
mind. 

BERING, be'ring, SEA, that part of the 
North Pacific Ocean which lies between Alaska 
and the eastern coast of Asia. Bering Strait 
connects it on the north with the Arctic Ocean; 
on the south the narrow Alaskan peninsula and 
the Aleutian Islands separate it from the open 
Pacific. From north to south it is about 1,000 
miles in extent, from east to west 1,500 miles. 



BERING SEA 


691 


BERKELEY 


During winter it contains floating and pack ice, 
and most of the year its waters are covered 
with a dense fog. Of its islands by far the most 



IN HONOR OF VITUS BERING 
The man, and the sea and strait named for him. 


important are the Pribilof, the home of the 
largest fur seal colony in the world. 

Bering Island, on which the explorer for 
whom it w r as named died, is the most westerly 
of the Aleutian chain and lies off the east coast 
of Kamchatka. It is barren, rocky and unin¬ 
habited. Bering Strait is the narrow channel 
which separates North America from Asia at 
their nearest points. At its narrowest place, 
between East Cape and Cape Prince of Wales, 
it is thirty-six miles wide, and were it not for 
the fog which always shrouds the water the 
highlands of Asia might be visible from Amer¬ 
ica. Though Bering explored this strait, it was 
Captain Cook, in 1778, who first thoroughly 
studied it. 

Vitus Bering (1680-1741) was a famous Dutch 
navigator who gave his name to these northern 
waters and islands. The courage which he dis¬ 
played as captain in the navy of Peter the 
Great, during the Swedish wars, led to his being 
chosen to command a voyage of discovery in 
the Sea of Kamchatka. In 1728, and later, he 
examined the coasts of Kamchatka, Okhotsk 
and the north of Siberia, discovering the rela¬ 
tion between the northeastern Asiatic and 
northwestern American coasts. Returning from 
America in 1741, he was wrecked upon the 
island which bears his name, and died there. 

Related Topics. Though not intimately con¬ 
nected with the geography of this section, Ber¬ 
ing Sea has a close relation to the following 
topics: 

Alaska Pribilof Islands 

Bering Sea Controversy Seal 


BERING SEA CONTROVERSY, a dispute 
between Great Britain and the United States 
which centered about the valuable seal fisheries 
on the Pribilof Islands. Since 1867 the United 
States had carefully regulated by license the 
killing of seals on the Pribilof Islands, where 
there is located the largest seal rookery in the 
world (see Fur Seal), and had received a 
bounty of ten dollars for each skin; but after 
1886 unlicensed fleets of Canadians and Amer¬ 
icans were organized to kill the seals during 
feeding time, w T hen they were more than three 
miles from shore, or beyond the jurisdiction of 
the United States government. Many of the 
animals killed were females, and it became 
apparent that the herd under such treatment 
would soon be exterminated. 

In order to restrict unlicensed killing, the 
United States set up a claim that Bering Sea 
was a closed sea, that is, subject to the exclu¬ 
sive jurisdiction of the United States. This 
was protested by Great Britain, and by a treaty 
in 1892 the question was referred to arbitration. 
The tribunal, which consisted of one English¬ 
man, one Canadian, two Americans and one 
representative each of France, Italy and Swe¬ 
den and Norway, reported August 15, 1893, a 
decision which was generally unfavorable to the 
United States. However, it established a closed 
season from May 1 to July 31, forbade the 
killing of seals in the open sea within sixty 
miles of the Pribilofs and prohibited explosive 
weapons. These restrictions proved ineffectual, 
and in spite of almost constant negotiations 
since that time no satisfactory solution of the 
problem has been found, and in consequence 
there is danger that the valuable fur seals will 
be exterminated. 

BERKELEY, burk'li, Sir William (1610- 
1677), a colonial governor of Virginia whose 
faithlessness and obstinacy in dealing with the 
uprisings of the Indians in 1676 caused the 
revolt known as Bacon’s Rebellion (which see). 
He was born near London, studied at Oxford 
and became governor of Virginia in 1641. 
When Cromwell gained control of the British 
government Governor Berkeley offered an asy¬ 
lum in Virginia to loyalists and kept the colony 
loyal to the king until 1652. In that year he 
was compelled to resign, but he was again 
chosen governor in 1660. 

His second term of office was marked 
throughout with dissatisfaction, and his harsh¬ 
ness in punishing the leaders in Bacon’s rebel¬ 
lion displeased even Charles II, who said, “The 
old fool has taken more lives in that naked 














BERKELEY 


692 


BERLIN 


country than I did for the murder of my 
father.” Berkeley was recalled to England by 
the king in 1677, and died soon after reaching 
home. 

BERKELEY, Calif., a residential suburb of 
San Francisco, situated in Alameda County, 
near the eastern coast of San Francisco Bay. 
Adjoining it on the south is Oakland, the 
county seat. The Southern Pacific and Santa 
Fe roads provide excellent railway accommoda¬ 
tions, and electric and ferry lines connect with 
San Francisco, seven miles across the bay; five 
electric lines join Berkeley and Oakland. The 
population, of which three-fourths are native 
Americans, shows a rapidly growing city; in 
1910 it numbered 40,434, and in 1914 had 
increased to 52,105. The area of the city is 
eight and a quarter square miles. 

A bird’s-eye view of Berkeley gives one the 
impression of an immense park dotted with 
attractive homes of modern architecture. It 
has a fine location on the heights, commanding 
a beautiful view of San Francisco Bay and of 
the Golden Gate. There is a water front of 
three miles, offering inducements to manu¬ 
facturers; a new wharf was constructed at a 
cost of $100,000. The city has manufactures of 
refined petroleum, soaps, health foods, eleva¬ 
tors, aeroplane motors and pumps. One of its 
fruit establishments has an annual output of 
$1,100,000; that of a cocoanut-oil plant is 
$750,000, and that of an ink company, $500,000. 
The fisheries are also important. Berkeley has 
a United States post office which was completed 
in 1915 at a cost of $180,000; a $300,000 high 
school building, a $150,000 city hall, a Masonic 
Hall, Newman Hall and an armory building. 


The city is noted as the seat of the Univer¬ 
sity of California, with an enrollment of over 
8,500 students (see California, University of). 
Three theological seminaries, the State Agricul¬ 
tural and Mechanical College, the California 
School of Arts and Crafts, the State Institution 
for the Deaf, Dumb and Blind, Boone Univer¬ 
sity Academy, Snell Seminary for Girls and 
Saint Joseph’s Academy are also located here. 
The library was the joint gift of Mrs. Rosa 
Shattuck and Andrew Carnegie. 

The site which Berkeley now occupies was 
a farming district until it was chosen as the 
seat of the university. It was settled in 1868, 
was incorporated as a town in 1878 and was 
named in honor of George Berkeley, bishop, 
philosopher and author, on account of his 
famous line, “Westward the course of empire 
takes its way.” In 1909 the city adopted the 
commission form of government. w.d. 

BERKSHIRE, burk' shir, HILLS, one of the 
most beautiful resort regions of the Eastern 
United States. These hills are not a separate 
range but are a continuation into Berkshire 
County, Mass., of the Green Mountains of 
Vermont. They attain in Greylock a height 
of 3,535 feet, the greatest altitude in the state. 
The wooded slopes are cut by mountain 
streams, which find their w T ay to the Hoosac, 
the Housatonic and the Deerfield rivers. 
Quaint inns are located in picturesque spots. 
The towns of Pittsfield, Stockbridge', Lenox and 
Great Barrington, besides various summer 
resorts, are situated in this region. The Hills 
provide one of the most delightful motoring 
trips in the eastern part of America, and are 
visited by thousands of tourists every year. 



OF BERLIN 


Unter-den-linden 


Bismarck Memorial 


j h.inimwlil 


g aaMaffl 


JL— Jr ERLIN, the capital city of the king¬ 
dom of Prussia and since 1871 of the German 
Empire. Greater Berlin, which includes Char- 
lottenburg, Spandau and other suburbs, stands 
third in size among the world’s great cities. Its 
population according to the last census (1910) 


is 3,974,300. Only Greater London and Greater 
New York are larger. The city proper, with a 
population of 2,071,257, ranks fifth among the 
world’s cities. Greater Berlin has an area of 
1,376 square miles, but Berlin proper covers 
only twenty-four and one-half square miles. 





















































































BERLIN 


693 


BERLIN 



BERLIN, CENTRALLY LOCATED IN A GREAT EMPIRE 


The city lies in the same latitude as Edmon¬ 
ton, Alberta, and Southern Labrador, but its 
climate and average temperature correspond to 
that of New York. It is as far north of the 
equator as the Strait of Magellan is south 
of it. It is 180 miles from Hamburg and 
eighty-four miles from Stettin, and has water 
communication with both ports through the 
Elbe and the Oder rivers and the canal con¬ 
necting them. It is 427 miles from Vienna, 
674 miles from Paris, 746 miles from London, 

I, 048 miles from Rome, 1,098 miles from Petro- 
grad and 1,699 miles from Constantinople. 

Famous Buildings and Monuments. Berlin is 
famous for its imposing buildings, beautiful 
parks and splendid avenues. The center of the 
social and political life is Unter-den-Linden, 
one of the most famous streets of the world. 
At the eastern end of this broad promenade is 
the royal palace occupied by Emperor William 

II, a rectangular brown sandstone building with 
over 600 rooms. At the western end is the 
famous Brandenburg Gate surmounted by the 
bronze quadriga, or chariot of victory, which 
Napoleon carried off to Paris in 1807. Between 
the palace and the Brandenburg Gate, a dis¬ 
tance of less than a mile, are the French and 
Russian embassies, the University of Berlin, 
the royal library, the opera house, the palaces of 
Emperor William I and Emperor Frederick III, 
the finest hotels and the most elegant shops. 

Of all the public buildings, by far the most 
magnificent is the Parliament building (Reichs- 
tagsgebaude), in a modified classic style. 


Though unattractive in some of its details, it 
is a strikingly-powerful architectural concep¬ 
tion. Also notable is the new cathedral, dedi¬ 
cated in 1905. It is in the Italian Renaissance 
style, with a dome rising to a height of 380 feet, 
the loftiest building in Berlin. Almost equally 
conspicuous is the Emperor William Memorial 
Church, completed in 1895 as a memorial to 
the “Old Ivaiser,” as the Germans still affec¬ 
tionately call the grandfather of Emperor Wil¬ 
liam II. 

Berlin has hundreds of monuments, in all 
parts of the city. Perhaps the most famous is 
Rauch’s equestrian statue of Frederick the 
Great, which is on Unter-den-Linden, near the 
palace. Near by is the national monument of 
Emperor William I. In the Konigs Platz, the 
great square in front of the Reichstag building, 
is the Victory Column, erected to celebrate the 
victories of the Franco-German War of 1870- 
1871. Statues of Bismarck, Von Moltke and 
Von Roon stand not far away. From the Vic¬ 
tory Column it is but a step to the Avenue of 
Victory (Sieges-Allee), a promenade adorned 
with statues of the thirty-two Hohenzollerns 
who ruled in Prussia before the formation of 
the new German Empire. This statuary was 
a gift of Emperor William II to the city. 

Intellectual and Artistic Life. While the 
city, the kingdom of Prussia and the Empire 
have all been spending money freely to make 
Berlin outwardly a great capital, people of 
ability, of brains and of genius, have been 
drawn to it to make it a capital in other 







BERLIN 


694 


BERLIN 


senses. Its university and schools, its art gal¬ 
leries, its orchestras and its theaters, are newer 
than those of cities like Munich, Dresden and 
Leipzig, but are crowding their older rivals for 
first place. The University of Berlin (which 
see), though founded as late as 1810, is already 
the first in attendance among all German uni¬ 
versities. 

In painting and sculpture Berlin holds a lead¬ 
ing place. Its two royal museums and the 
national gallery are filled with ancient and 
modern art treasures, providing excellent oppor¬ 
tunities for study. Museums and galleries in 
other cities are richer in special limited fields, 
but few offer a greater variety of excellence. 
In music Berlin does not yet rival Leipzig, but 
its conservatory and philharmonic orchestra 
have great influence. In theatrical affairs Ber¬ 
lin takes first place, not only in the production 
of modern German dramas, but also in trans¬ 
lations from Moliere, Shakespeare, Ibsen and 
George Bernard Shaw. 

Commerce and Industry. The geographical 
position of the city makes it a natural market 
and distributing point for the agricultural re¬ 
gions of Prussia, Austria and Russia. It is the 
hub of the railway systems of North Germany, 
the great trunk lines (shown on the accom¬ 
panying map) furnishing communication in 
every direction. Commerce is in cattle, wool, 
lumber, coal and grain. Berlin is the center for 
trade in grains, its position corresponding in 
this respect to Chicago in the United States. 
It is also the chief market for speculation and 
legitimate transactions in stocks and bonds, and 
may fairly claim to be the financial center of 
the Empire. 

More than one-half of the city’s working 
population is engaged in manufactures. The 
transformation of iron and steel into useful 
machinery is, perhaps, the greatest industry, no 
fewer than a hundred large firms being engaged 
in this branch alone. Munitions of war, rail¬ 
way supplies, bicycles, steel pens, electrical sup¬ 
plies and sewing machines are important prod¬ 
ucts. The production of Berlin’s breweries now 
rival those of Munich. The city is a publish¬ 
ing center, and also is a leader in the manu¬ 
facture of soaps, lamps, china, pianos, furniture 
and ladies’ cloaks. 

Government. The government of the city 
is partly under the control of the Prussian 
Minister of the Interior, and partly of the local 
civil authorities. All police functions, including 
the regulation of building, crime and passports, 
and the prevention of fire, belong to a branch 


of the Interior Department. The civil author¬ 
ities have jurisdiction over the water supply, 
street lighting and cleaning, drainage, and the 
care of the sick and the poor. There is an 
elected common council of 144 members; the 
heads of the departments form the Stadtrat; its 
thirty-two members are elected by the council, 
but must be approved by the king. The com¬ 
mon council elects the burgomaster (mayor) 
and the chief burgomaster, who need not be 
residents of Berlin at the time of their election. 
They are usually, in fact, men who have dis¬ 
tinguished themselves as mayors of other cities. 
The city sends six members to the imperial 
Reichstag and nine to the Prussian assembly, 
or Landtag. 

History. Of Berlin’s beginnings nothing 
definite is known, but by the fifteenth century 
it was an important community, in the mark 
of Brandenburg. About 1500 it became the 
official residence of the margraves of Branden¬ 
burg, but it was practically wiped out during 
the Thirty Years’ War. Its renewed prosperity 
was due to the Great Elector, Frederick Wil¬ 
liam. By his order public buildings and private 
dwellings were rebuilt, new suburbs were laid 
out and strong fortifications were added. He 
also laid the foundation for its future greatness 
by constructing a canal to connect the Spree 
and the Oder rivers. At his death, in 1688, Ber¬ 
lin had a population of 20,000 people, compared 
with 6,000 in 1648. 

Under the kings of Prussia, the successors of 
the Great Elector, the growth and beautifying 
of the city continued. Frederick the Great 
gave special encouragement to the manufac¬ 
tures of silk and cotton; and Berlin, formerly 
little more than a small garrison town, began 
to take on the character of an industrial center. 
During the nineteenth century it made enor¬ 
mous strides, especially after it became the 
capital of the German Empire in 1871. Most 
of Berlin, in fact, is of nineteenth century con¬ 
struction; the important buildings which are 
old total fewer than a dozen. 

As the capital of the new Empire, Berlin 
presented a sorry spectacle in 1871. Its sani¬ 
tary conditions were worse than those of any 
other large city in Europe. Many of its streets 
were unpaved, and the cobble-stones on the 
remainder were but a slight improvement. 
Open sewers and drains, public pumps and 
underground tenements were characteristic. 
To-day this is all changed, partly because the 
state and the people have worked together to 
make it a great capital. More than anything 



BERLIN 


695 


BERLIN 



Outline and Questions on 
Berlin 


I. Size ami Location 

(1) Rank among world’s cities 

(a) City proper 

(b) Greater Berlin 

(2) Population 

(3) Position with reference to other- 

large cities 

II. Description 

(1) Streets 

(a) Unter-den-Linden 

(2) Public buildings 

(3) Monuments 

(4) Educational institutions 
(a) University of Berlin 

(5) Museums and galleries 

(6) Drama 

III. Commerce and Industry 

(1) Communication 

(2) Trade 

(3) Manufactures 

(a) Machinery 

(b) Brewing 

(c) Other products 

IV. Government 

(1) Functions of the Department of 

the Interior 

(2) Local officials 

(a) Mayors 

(b) Council 

V. History 

(1) Early history 

(2) The Great Elector 

(3) The city’s newness 


Questions 

What is there unusual about the his¬ 
tory of the University of Berlin? 

During what century did the city 
have its greatest growth? 

What is the most noted street in 
Berlin? 

How large a proportion of the peo¬ 
ple earn their living from manufac¬ 
tures? 

Why can it be said that Berlin 
ranks both third and fifth among the 
cities of the world? 

In what English dramatists are the 
people especially interested? 

What change has there been in the 
sanitary conditions of the city since it 
became the capital? 

What place is as far from the equa¬ 
tor on the south as Berlin is on the 
north ? 

With what American city may it be 
compared in respect to its trade in a 
great commodity? 

What is the most imposing build¬ 
ing? 

How did the city commemorate the 
German victories in the Franco- 
German War? 

What ruler laid the foundation for 
the greatness of Berlin? 

What city of North America is in 
the same latitude? 

What is the tallest building in the 


How does Berlin rank among the 
cities of Germany as regards art and 
literature? 



else, the new national spirit of the German 
nation has made this result possible in so short 
a time. Berlin is one of the cleanest and most 
healthful cities in Europe. It is the capital of 
Germany, not merely in a governmental sense. 
As a pleasure resort, as the center of the liter¬ 
ary, artistic and intellectual activities, and as 
the seat of the imperial court, of the parlia¬ 
ment and of the government, as the commer¬ 
cial and industrial metropolis, it is rapidly 
becoming, if it is not already, the concrete 
expression of national life. h.m. 

University of Berlin, an institution of learn¬ 
ing, which, though it does not date back to 
the Middle Ages as do so many of the great 
European universities, has attained a com¬ 
manding position among the universities of the 
world. Plans for founding it were begun during 
the latter part of the eighteenth century, but 
the Napoleonic struggle interfered, and not 
until 1810 was it really established. Its full 
name is the Royal Frederick Wilhelm Uni¬ 
versity of Berlin, for it was founded during 
the reign of Frederick Wilhelm III of Prussia. 
After somewhat more than a century of exist¬ 
ence, it stands as the most prominent uni¬ 
versity of Germany, and during its history it 
has numbered many illustrious scholars among 
its instructors, of whom may be mentioned 
the Grimm brothers, Hegel, Fichte, Ranke, 
Virchow, Mommsen, Niebuhr, Treitschke, 
Helmholtz and Harnack. In its departments 
of theology, law, medicine and philosophy, 
there was, before the outbreak of the War of 
the Nations (1914), a combined enrollment of 
almost 11,000 students. Harvard and Colum¬ 
bia universities both exchange professorships 
with the University of Berlin. Attached to the 
university are the Royal Library, one of the 
largest libraries in the world, housed in a 
beautiful new palace; the technological, agri¬ 
cultural and veterinary institutes; the so-called 
“institute for research”; and other institutes of 
learning. 

Consult Siepen’s Berlin; Shaw’s Municipal 
Government in Continental Europe. There are 
no books printed in America relating particu¬ 
larly to Berlin, but the above English books are 
available. 

BERLIN, a town in Ontario, since 1916 
known as Kitchener (which see). 

BERLIN, Congress of, an assembly of repre¬ 
sentatives of the powers of Europe which 
emphasized the fact that Turkey in Europe 
was not to become the prey of any one nation, 
and that questions relating to it were to be 
settled in conference. By victories in the 


















BERLIN DECREE 


696 


BERLIOZ 


Russo-Turkish War of 1878 Russia gained the 
power practically to dictate terms of peace to 
Turkey, and the Treaty of San Stefano plainly 
looked toward the annihilation of Turkey in 
Europe. This roused the jealousy of the other 
powers, and in June, 1878, representatives from 
Germany, Austria, France, England, Italy, Rus¬ 
sia and Turkey met at Berlin to modify the 
objectionable terms. Seldom has a more illus¬ 
trious body of statesmen met for any purpose, 
and they did their work thoroughly, denying 
Russia much which the Treaty of San Stefano 
had conceded. 

That treaty had created Bulgaria and East¬ 
ern Rumelia an independent state; however, 
the Congress of Berlin allowed self-government 
to Bulgaria, under Turkish auspices, but made 
Eastern Rumelia merely a Turkish province. 
Bosnia and Herzegovina remained nominally 
under Turkish sovereignty, but Austria-Hun¬ 
gary was made administrator of their affairs; 
Montenegro, Serbia and Rumania w T ere con¬ 
firmed in their independence, and Great Britain 
was made practical owner of Cypress. All in 
all, the Congress of Berlin did much to make 
the map of Europe what it remained through¬ 
out the rest of the century. It was disturbed 
but little until the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 
1913, although in 1908 Bulgaria proclaimed 
itself a sovereign state. 

BERLIN DECREE. See Continental Sys¬ 
tem. 

BERLIN, N. H., noted for its large paper 
mills, is situated in Coos County, about mid¬ 
way between the geographical center and the 
northern border of the state, on the Andros¬ 
coggin River. Portland, Maine, is ninety-eight 
miles southeast, and Manchester, N. H., is 175 
miles south. Railway transportation is pro¬ 
vided by the Boston & Maine and the Grand 
Trunk lines. The first settlement was made 
in 1827, and the city was incorporated in 1897. 
The population increased from 11,780 in 1910 
to 13,013 in 1914; more than 7,500 are French- 
Canadians and 5,000 are Americans. The city 
has an area of three and one-half square miles. 

Berlin is located in the heart of the White 
Mountains, a region noted for wonderful moun¬ 
tain scenery. The Androscoggin River has a 
rapid descent here of nearly 200 feet in the 
course of a mile, and while the falls contribute 
greatly to the picturesque scenic effect they 
also furnish power for manufacture. The city 
has the largest sulphite-pulp mill in the United 
States, the daily output being over 400 tons; 
this product is a wood pulp used in making 


paper, the manufacture of which is so extensive 
that the city is known locally as the Paper 
City. There are also large lumber mills, knit¬ 
ting mills, foundries and chemical plants. Ber¬ 
lin has a city hall, recently built at a cost of 
$100,000, a $125,000 Y. M. C. A. building, a 
high school, a business college and a Carnegie 
Library. 

BERLINER, ber' lener, Emile (1851- ), 

the inventor of the telephone transmitter, or 
microphone, and of the method of reproducing 
sound utilized in one style of talking machine. 
He was bom and educated in Germany, emi¬ 
grated to the United States in 1870, and nine 
years later became chief instrument inspector 
for the Bell Telephone Company. In addition 
to the microphone, invented in 1877, he dis¬ 
covered several other means of improving the 
telephone service, the patents for which are 
held by the Bell Company. 

Berliner’s inventions in connection wfith the 
talking machine date from 1887. In the old- 
style machine the sharp-pointed instrument, 
known as the stylus, moved through a groove 
of varying depth, and the reproduction of 
sound was inaccurate and unsatisfactory. Ber¬ 
liner conceived the idea of using for the record, 
instead of a cylinder, a disk on which a hori¬ 
zontal record of uniform depth but varying 
direction should be cut. In reproducing the 
sound the stylus, as the invention developed, 
is guided only by the groove through which it 
moves, and not by a feed screw as formerly. 
He also invented and perfected the modern 
method of making duplicates of disk records and 
saw his prediction fulfilled that famous singers 
would some day earn great sums of money 
by having their voices recorded. The talking 
machine company which owns his devices has 
spent $500,000 in sustaining the patents. 

The air-cooled engine with revolving cylin¬ 
ders, now used extensively on aeroplanes, is also 
the invention of Berliner. 

BERLIOZ, barele ose' , Hector (1803-1869), 
one of the most intellectual and poetical com¬ 
posers of music that France has ever produced. 
He studied at the Paris Conservatory, where, in 
1830, his Sardanapalus won first prize—ex¬ 
penses for foreign travel. Thereafter he gained 
a wide reputation for the composition of so- 
called program music, in which a story is realis¬ 
tically expressed by the music; and for his 
masterful work in the arrangement of orchestra 
music, in which he laid the foundation for 
Wagner, Liszt and Richard Strauss. His sj^m- 
phonies, Harold in Italy and Romeo and 


BERMUDA 


697 


BERNARD 


Juliet; his opera, The Trojans, and his cele¬ 
brated Te Deum are now considered master¬ 
pieces, though the composer was little appre¬ 
ciated in his own day. 

BERMUDA or SOMERS ISLANDS, a group 
of about 350 islands and islets in the Atlantic 
Ocean, midway between the West Indies and 
the North American coast. By steamer they 
are forty-eight hours distant from New York 



THE FORM OF THE BERMUDAS 

Hamilton, the capital, and sailing distances to 
New York and Europe. 


City. Twenty of the group are inhabited, 
forming one of the most important of British 
possessions in the Atlantic. They are the most 
northerly islands in the world entirely of coral 
formation, and unlike other coral islands they 
contain hills and ridges which rise to a height 
of nearly 300 feet. The largest islands are 
Bermuda, named after Juan Bermudez, who 
discovered the group in 1515, Saint George, 
Ireland and Somerset. The total area is 12,000 

i 

acres, of which Bermuda contains 9,000 acres. 

The climate is especially pleasant and health¬ 
ful. In winter frost is unknown, and the 
temperature seldom falls below 50° F. The 
sharp contrast between summer and winter on 
the mainland is here entirely absent, for in 
summer the heat is seldom greater than 87° F., 
and delightfully cooling breezes blow from the 
sea. The Bermudas have long been regarded 
as almost an ideal health resort, and are visited 
both summer and winter by great numbers of 
Americans and Englishmen. The scenery is 
magnificent and many enjoyable drives may be 
taken, but so conservative are the people that 
no automobiles are allowed on any of the 
islands. 

Ireland Island is an important British naval 
station, forming the winter headquarters of the 
North Atlantic fleet. A garrison of 2,500 men 


is permanently maintained. The capital, Ham¬ 
ilton, on Bermuda, with a population of 2,627, 
is described elsewhere in these volumes. The 
islands were first settled in 1609 by Sir George 
Somers, supported by a number of colonists 
from \ irginia. They are now administered by 
a governor, assisted by two councils of ap¬ 
pointed members and an assembly of thirty-six 
members elected by the people. Population 
in 1913, 19,935, of whom 7,060 were whites. 

BERN, burn, the capital of the Swiss canton 
of Bern, and since 1848 the capital of the 
republic of Switzerland. Its name is taken 
from the German word Bdren, meaning bears, 
and was adopted, according to legend, because 
many bears were killed on the day the city 
was founded. In consequence of this tradition 
the bear is almost a sacred animal in Bern, 
and the municipality keeps a Bears’ Den, on 
the right bank of the Aar, in which a number 
of fat, brown bears are always on view. Bears 
in wood and stone are everywhere to be seen 
throughout the city as ornaments on founda¬ 
tions and buildings. 

Bern is nearly 1,800 feet above sea level, and 
is surrounded on three sides by the river Aar. 
No other city in Switzerland excels it in 
beauty, and it is among the most regularly- 
built towns in Europe. Its fountains, its ar¬ 
cade-covered walks, its fine bridges and quaint 
old shops are a joy to the tourist. Among the 
public buildings are the great Gothic cathedral, 
built between 1421 and 1502; the Church of 
the Holy Spirit; the Federal-council buildings, 
or Parliament house, commanding a splendid 
view of the Alps; the university; the town 
house, a Gothic edifice of the fifteenth century, 
and the mint. Bern has an academy and an 
excellent public library. The manufactures are 
woolens, linens, silk stuffs, stockings, watches, 
clocks and toys. The city was founded in 1191, 
became a free city of the empire in 1218 and 
in 1353 entered the Swiss Confederacy. Popu¬ 
lation in 1910, 85,264. See Switzerland, sub¬ 
head History. 

BERNARD, bur'nard or burnahrd', Saint 
(1091-1153), one of the most influential Roman 
Catholics of the Middle Ages, whose life and 
character, to the people of his own day, were 
the expression of their highest ideals. He was 
born in Burgundy, France, and at the age of 
twenty-two became a monk of the Cistercian 
Order. Soon after, he founded the famous 
Cistercian monastery at Clairvaux, becoming 
its first abbot, and it was to him that the Order 
owed its wonderful growth and influence. 





BERNHARDT 


698 


BERNHARDT 


Saint Bernard dominated the affairs of the 
Church for the rest of his life and in 1128 
gave the rules of government to the newly- 
founded Order of Knights Templars. His stir¬ 
ring eloquence inspired the Christians to under¬ 
take the second Crusade (see Crusades), but 
of the innumerable host that marched to the 
holy war only a remnant ever returned, and 
his disappointment over this failure was a blow 
from which he never recovered. 

He wrote a large number of epistles, sermons 
and treatises, and his beautiful hymns, Jesus, 
the Very Thought of Thee and O, Sacred Head, 
Now Wounded, are sung in Christian churches 
to-day. Martin Luther’s words concerning him 
are famous: “If there ever lived a God-fearing 
and holy monk, it was Saint Bernard of Clair- 
vaux.” 

BERNHARDT, Rosine, known as Sarah 
(1845- ), one of the world’s greatest 

actresses, who through fifty years of almost 
uninterrupted work retained unimpaired her 
vitality and her artistic gifts. The impression 
that her art has 
made on people 
is expressed in 
the name so fre¬ 
quently applied 
to her—“the Di¬ 
vine Sarah.” 

She was born in 
Paris, and though 
of Jewish descent 
was baptized with 
Christian rites, in 
accordance with 
her father’s wish, 
and spent the early years of her life in a con¬ 
vent. At the Paris Conservatory, where she 
studied from 1858 to 1862, she won second 
prizes for tragedy and comedy, but her first 
appearance on the stage in 1862, in a small 
part in Racine’s Ipliigenia, was in no way 
exceptional. After an unsuccessful trial of 
burlesque she turned to serious parts, and as 
Cordelia in King Lear, as the queen in Hugo’s 
Ruy Bias and as Zanetto in The Passer-by, she 
made it known to the theatrical world that a 
new actress of rare promise had appeared. 

Joining the company at the French Comedy 
Theater in 1872, she achieved a series of 
triumphs, one of her most remarkable perform¬ 
ances being the role of Dona Sol in Hugo’s 
Hernani (1877). In 1879 she acted with great 
success at the London Gaiety Theater. On 
her return to Paris she suddenly terminated an 


engagement with the management of the 
French Comedy Theater, a breach of contract 
which cost her $20,000. During 1880 and 1881 
she toured Denmark, Russia and America, in¬ 
cluding in her repertoire the famous Camille 
of Dumas. In 1882, in London, she married 
a Greek actor, Jaques Damala, from whom she 
was separated a year later. Her next appear¬ 
ances on the stage were in a number of plays 
by Sardou, who wrote for her especial use 
Theodora, La Tosca and Cleopatra. 

American Tours. Bernhardt’s first American 
tour began in 1886, and she was everywhere 
received with great enthusiasm. Between 1891 
and 1893 she visited North and South America, 
Australia, and the chief countries of Europe, 
and on her return to Paris in 1893 she became 
manager of the Theater of the Renaissance. 
Five years later she established the Sarah 
Bernhardt Theater, of which she is still the 
manager, and which she opened with a revival 
of La Tosca. She revisited America in 1900, 
1911 and 1913, the first of these tours being 
devoted to Rostand’s L'Aiglon, with the famous 
Coquelin in the leading male role. Her 1913 
tour consisted of vaudeville performances of 
single acts from a number of plays, and the 
presentation of a new one-act play entitled 
A Christmas Night During the Reign of Terror. 

During the American engagement of 1913 
she suffered from an accident which later 
developed into blood poisoning and made 
necessary the amputation of a leg in February, 
1915. Yet she learned to walk on an artificial 
leg and resolutely returned to activity, al¬ 
though not to the stage. In 1914 she appeared 
in a moving-picture production of Queen Eliz¬ 
abeth, which she said gave her great joy be¬ 
cause it would make her live a thousand years. 

In October, 1916, this great actress returned 
to the United States to appear during the 
following winter in the principal cities. She 
was accorded the greatest reception which ever 
marked her American experiences. 

Her services to America have been aptly 
summarized by a writer in these words: “Of 
French literature we knew nothing. She opened 
that great treasure-house to us. She made liv¬ 
ing realities of great dramatists and created an 
intellectual sympathy between France and 
America.” The countries of Europe which the 
great Bernhardt has visited owe her a similar 
tribute. 

Estimate of the Actress. Bernhardt is also a 
gifted painter and sculptor, and has written a 
volume of Memoirs and two plays. In recogni- 



BERNSTORFF 


699 


BERYL 


tion of her great talents she was elected to 
membership in the French Legion of Honor in 
1914. As an actress she represents the perfec¬ 
tion of the art of acting in all its forms, and 
it is said with truth that “where inspiration 
fails her she triumphs by sheer technique.” 

A number of peculiar mannerisms and oddi¬ 
ties are associated with her acting, but these 
give her individuality without detracting from 
the flawlessness of her art. b.m.w. 


Consult Jules Huret’s Sarah Bernhardt, with 
a preface by Edmond Rostand. 



BERNSTORFF, Johann Heinrich, Count 
(1862- ), a German diplomat, in 1908 ap¬ 

pointed ambassador to the United States. His 
father, Count Albrecht Bernstorff (1809-1873), 
was also prominent in German diplomacy, and 
was for many 
years ambassador 
at London, where 
his son was born. 

After serving in 
the army for 
eight years, the 
son entered the 
German diplo¬ 
matic service in 
1889 as an at¬ 
tache of the em¬ 
bassy at Constan¬ 
tinople. There- 
f , , i • COUNT VON BERNSTORFF 

after he served m 

various diplomatic capacities at Belgrade, Dres¬ 
den, Munich, Petrograd and London, and was 
German consul-general in Egypt for two years 
prior to his appointment as ambassador to the 
United States. In this position he conducted 
many delicate negotiations, especially during 
the War of the Nations, when the relations be¬ 


tween Germany and the United States were 
several times strained to the breaking point. 
It was generally believed that Bernstonf was 
in favor of maintaining peaceful relations at all 
cost, and the more or less amicable solution of 
the questions raised by the German submarine 
campaigns was commonly attributed to his 
influence with the imperial German govern¬ 


ment. 

BERSAGLIERI, bersalya're, the famous 
fast-marching sharpshooters of Italy, whose 
picturesque uniform of dark green is distin¬ 
guished by the full plume of cock featheis 
surmounting a broad-brimmed felt hat. They 
are said to be able to march farther in a day 
than any other body of troops in the world, 
and their normal gait is a rapid, swinging walk 


by which good pedestrians are soon outdis¬ 
tanced. The Bersaglieri won distinction as 
fighters in the Crimean War, especially at the 
battle of Tchernaya (August 16, 1855), and up¬ 
held their traditions in the War of the Nations, 
after Italy entered the struggle in 1915. 

BERTILLON, berteyoN', SYSTEM, a sys¬ 
tem for the identification of criminals, named 
after its inventor, Alphonse Bertillon. The 
object of the system was to arrive at so 
complete a description of a criminal that, no 
matter how he might disguise himself in future, 
his recognition and identification would be 
certain when the Bertillon tests were applied. 
The means of identification are based on meas¬ 
urements of certain parts of the body and 
description of general appearance. It is known 
that the bones of adults over twenty years of 
age do not change, neither are the measure¬ 
ments of any two persons exactly similar. In 
the Bertillon system the following measure¬ 
ments are taken: 

Body : Height standing ; height sitting ; inches 
from finger tips to finger tips, with arms out¬ 
stretched. 

Head: Length and width; length and width 
of right ear. 

Limbs: Length of foot, left middle finger, 
little finger and forearm. 

The system has proved successful and its effi¬ 
ciency has been greatly increased by the in¬ 
clusion of thumb and finger prints, which by 
themselves are considered an almost infallible 
means of identification. See Finger Print 
Identification. 

Alphonse Bertillon (1853-1914), the inventor 
of the system named after him, was born in 
Paris, and after years of study devoted to 
criminology became the head of the identifi¬ 
cation department of the police of Paris. In 
recognition of his services he was made cheva¬ 
lier of the Legion of Honor. He was a prolific 
writer on criminology and kindred subjects, 
on which he is regarded as the world’s chief 
authority. 

BERYL, ber' il, a mineral which occurs some¬ 
times in great six-sided prisms and sometimes 
in smaller crystals, which are among the most 
valuable of the precious stones. Some beryls 
are bright green, and are called emeralds; some 
are a bluish sea-green, when they are known 
as aquamarines; and some are light blue or 
yellowish. The best beryls are found in Brazil, 
in Siberia and in Alexander County, North 
Carolina, but various other parts of the United 
States produce the coarser, less valuable varie¬ 
ties. The scholars of the Middle Ages credited 






BESANT 


700 


BESSEMER 


the beryl with many virtues, one learned 
writer declaring it “rendered the wearer un¬ 
conquerable and at the same time amiable, 
while his intellect was quickened and he was 
cured of laziness.” For a long time the beryl 
was the birthstone for October, but it has been 
replaced in that connection by the opal. 

BESANT, bezant’, Sir Walter (1836-1901), 
an English novelist and critic. His most no¬ 
table work, All Sorts and Conditions of Men, 
giving a clear picture of the sordid life and 
surroundings of the people of East London, 
was the inspiration of the People’s Palace in 
Mile End Road, London, and placed the author 
among the social reformers of his day. Like 
Dickens, he tried to arouse public sympathy for 
the poor and oppressed. He was born at Ports¬ 
mouth and educated at King’s College, London, 
and Christ’s College, Cambridge. 

After teaching mathematics for a few years 
he formed a literary partnership with James 
Rice. Among the novels which they produced 
together are Ready Money Mortiboy, The 
Golden Butterfly and The Seamy Side. After 
the death of Rice, Besant wrote alone a num¬ 
ber of popular novels, including, besides his 
masterpiece mentioned above, Dorothy Forster, 
Armorel of Lyonesse and Beyond the Dreams 
of Avarice. He was the founder of the Society 
of Authors, a trade-union of writers, and the 
editor of the Author, the publication of the 
society. He was knighted by Queen Victoria 
in 1895. 

BESSARABIA, bes a ray' bia, a province in 
the extreme southwest of Russia, between the 
rivers Pruth, Danube and Dniester, and bor¬ 
dered on the southeast by the Black Sea. It 
covers an area of 16,181 square miles, more 



than Maryland and Delaware combined. The 
province is for the most part flat, but the soil 
is extremely fertile, producing an abundance 
of grain and raising great numbers of sheep, 


cattle and horses, which are among the finest 
of Europe. Vine growing is also an important 
industry, and wine of good quality is exported. 
Manufactures are in a backward state, the 
inhabitants being more devoted to out-of-door 
pursuits than to confining industries. 

In the sixteenth century Bessarabia was 
seized by the Turks, but it was taken by Russia 
in 1770, to which it was formally ceded in 1812. 
In 1856 the southeast portion was restored to 
Turkey, but by the Treaty of Berlin in 1878 
it was again declared Russian territory. The 
population is very much mixed, consisting of 
Russians, Poles, Bulgarians, Rumanians, Greeks, 
Tartars, Jews, Turks, Armenians and numerous 
tribes of gypsies. The capital is Kishinev, the 
scene of a massacre of the Jews in 1907 (sec 
Kishinev). Population, 2,400,000. 

BESSEMER, bes' emer, Sir Henry (1813- 
1898), an English inventor and engineer, cele¬ 
brated for his discovery of the Bessemer process 
for making steel. This discovery made it 
possible to roll steel into shape without ham¬ 
mering it (see Steel, subhead Bessemer Proc¬ 
ess). It is true that the process was discovered 
by an American named William Kelly eight 
or nine years earlier than by Bessemer, and 
the American patents were granted to Kelly, 
yet it was from Bessemer that the world 
learned of it. Both inventors were first ridi¬ 
culed by iron-makers, but Bessemer’s superior 
resources and business ability enabled him to 
put his ideas into successful operation. His 
experiments and discoveries relating to steel 
and iron are best known, but his work in many 
other fields also brought him fame. He dis¬ 
covered a new process of making bronze 
powder, made several important improvements 
in type-casting machinery, and invented a 
method, still in use, for compressing the 
graphite used in making lead pencils. He was 
knighted by Queen Victoria in 1879. 

BESSEMER, Ala., a city famous for its 
iron, steel and coal industries. It is situated 
in Jefferson County, on the Valley River, a 
little north of the geographical center of the 
state, and about eleven miles southwest of 
Birmingham. The large tonnage produced in 
the city and vicinity make it the objective 
point of seven railroad lines. The city was 
founded in 1887, incorporated in 1888 and 
named for Sir Henry Bessemer, the English 
inventor of the Bessemer process of steel manu¬ 
facture. Its population is principally American, 
but with a large percentage of negroes and 
Italians, and increased from 10,864 in 1910 to 



BETEL 


701 


BETHLEHEM 


15,360 in 1914. Since the last Federal census 
(1910) Jonesboro has been included within the 
city limits. The area is about four and one- 
half square miles. 

Bessemer occupies the physical center of 
the great iron ore and coal district of Ala¬ 
bama, located high above Valley River, with 
a border of cedar, chestnut and pine forests. 
To the northwest are the extensive Dolomite 
and the Black Warrior coal fields. From south¬ 
east to southwest, twelve miles from the city, 
extends the famous Cahaba coal field, with 
iron ore seams intervening. The city’s indus¬ 
tries are concerned chiefly with the products 
of the natural resources of the region. About 
10,000 people are employed in the three princi¬ 
pal iron industries and in the Louisville & 
Nashville Railroad shops. The manufacture of 
fire and building brick is important, and the 
lumber products are considerable. Valuable 
limestone quarries also occur in the vicinity. 

Educational advantages are provided by a 
high school, a business college and a library. 
There are three banks, and a post office, erected 
at a cost of $37,000. The Elizabeth Duncan 
Hospital, the Presbyterian church and the 
Methodist Episcopal church are the most 
notable buildings. g.h.s. 

BETEL or BETLE, be' t’l, the name of two 
different plants common in Asia—the betel 
palm and the be¬ 
tel vine. The be- 
t e 1 palm, the 
commonest and 
most important 
of the areca 
palms (see Palm), 
is a graceful 
tree, usually 
forty to fifty feet 
high. Its fruit, 
the betel nut, is 
about the size of 
a small hen’s egg, 
and has a fibrous 
shell, within 
which is enclosed 
the betel nut 
which is chewed 
by the natives of 
the Orient. But 
the name betel 
has been given to 
this nut and tree 
which bears it, only because of the association 
with the betel vine, to which the name orig¬ 


inally belonged. This is a creeping plant of the 
pepper family, the leaves of which have a sharp, 
stinging taste. A number of different plants 
nearly related to the peppers, the leaves of 
which have similar properties, are also exten¬ 
sively cultivated in the East, and are some¬ 
times called betel. 

Betel Chewing. In the East Indies, practi¬ 
cally every native, man and woman, young and 
old, carries a betel-box. It is rare indeed to 
find a Malay of either sex who is not ad¬ 
dicted to the habit, but it has never spread 
to any extent among other peoples. The seeds 

of the betel nut are boiled, cut into slices 

» 

and dried in the sun and are then grated 
upon fresh betel leaves which have been 
smeared with quicklime. The whole is rolled 
into a pellet and chewed, and, while it is far 
too biting for pleasure to a person not used 
to it, the Malays find so much satisfaction in 
it and chew it so continuously that the proper 
handling of betel is an important part of the 
etiquette in every ceremonial meeting. Betel 
tinges the saliva, gums and lips brick red, 
blackens the teeth and causes them to decay 
rapidly. 

BETH'EL, the place where Abraham pitched 
his tent, where Jacob saw in his dream the 
ladder reaching to heaven, upon which angels 
were ascending and descending, and where he 
wrestled with the angel and had his name 
changed to Israel. There are various opinions 
about the location of Bethel, but most authori¬ 
ties consider it to be about twelve miles north 
of Jerusalem. The name means house of God. 
The present town is of no importance. 

BETHLEHEM, beth'lehem, the town in 
which Jesus Christ was born. The name means 
house of bread. Bethlehem is now a small 
village about five miles from Jerusalem, with 
but one street of low, flat-roofed houses. Our 
interest in it is due to its importance in Bible 
history. David, Boaz and Obed were also born 
there. As- the birthplace of Israel’s great men 
and the Savior of the world, Bethlehem will 
always be held sacred in the memory of Chris¬ 
tians. 

BETHLEHEM, Pa., a borough in Northamp¬ 
ton County, fifty miles northwest of Philadel¬ 
phia, near the New Jersey boundary line. It 
is on the Lehigh River and Canal, and is served 
by the Central of New Jersey, the Lehigh & 
New England and the Lehigh Valley railroads 
and by electric interurban lines to nearby cities 
and towns. The population in 1910 was 12,837; 
in 1914 it was 13,721. 



BETEL PALM 
(a) Nut; (1)) cross-sec¬ 
tion of nut; (c) flower. 





BETHMANN-HOLLWEG 


702 


BHUTAN 


Bethlehem was founded by Moravians in 
1741 and is the chief Moravian center in the 
United States. A college and theological sem¬ 
inary and a seminary for women are main¬ 
tained there by that denomination. South 
Bethlehem (which see), connected with Beth¬ 
lehem by two fine bridges across the Lehigh 
River, is the seat of Lehigh University. Among 
the institutions of Bethlehem are Saint Luke’s 
Hospital and a public library. The important 
industrial plants include great steel and iron 
works, zinc and graphite works, silk and knit¬ 
ting mills and manufactories of hosieiy, paint 
and other commodities. 

West Bethlehem was annexed to Bethlehem 
in 1904. At the former place was located a 
general hospital of the Continental army, 1776- 
1778, and 500 soldiers are buried there. Beth¬ 
lehem became a borough in 1845. It is gaining 
an enviable musical reputation as a result of 
the Moravian musical festivities. 

The area of the borough is a little more than 
one square mile. 

BETHMANN-HOLLWEG, bate'mahn hoi' 
vayK, Theobald Theodore von (1856- ), a 

German jurist and statesman, fifth Chancellor 
of the German Empire and the leader of the 
German government during the gigantic War 
of the Nations, 
which began in 
1914. Bethmann- 
Hollweg acquired 
a peculiar inter¬ 
est for Americans 
in 1915, when it 
became known 
that he was op¬ 
posed to the pol¬ 
icy of torpedoing, 
without warning, 

passenger ships of the war chancellor 
the nations with 

which Germany was at war. It is said to have 
been largely through his influence ’ with Em¬ 
peror William II that the submarine warfare 
was modified and that diplomatic relations 
were preserved between Germany and the 
United States. 

Bethmann-Hollweg is by nature quiet, re¬ 
served and studious. It has been said that 
“gravity is the essence of him.” To this man, 
apparently more at home in the study than in 
the councils of state, it fell to pilot the Empire 
through its greatest crisis. The son and grand¬ 
son of famous men who had held high offices, 
and born of a wealthy family, he rose rapidly 







in the ranks of officialdom, becoming governor 
of the province of Brandenburg in 1899, and 
in 1905 Prussian Minister of the Interior. In 
1907 he left the Prussian ministry and became 
Secretary of State for the Interior in the Ger¬ 
man Empire and Vice-Chancellor under Prince 
von Bulow. In 1909 he succeeded to the chan¬ 
cellorship, and as such he is at the same time 
President of the Prussian Cabinet. The leading 
idea of his international policies was friendship 
between Germany, England and America. 

BEVERLY, bev'erli, Mass., a progressive 
manufacturing center and a popular summer 
resort, situated in the northeastern part of the 
state on Salem Bay, an inlet of the Atlantic 
Ocean. A bridge connects Beverly with the 
city of Salem, two miles distant, on the oppo¬ 
site shore of the bay. Boston is eighteen miles 
southwest. Railway accommodations are pro¬ 
vided by the Boston & Maine and by electric 
lines. Beverly was founded in 1668 and was 
incorporated as a city in 1895. In 1915 it had 
a popidation of 22,959, an increase of 4,309 
since 1910. The city’s area is about fourteen 
and one-half square miles. 

Beverly is the center of the shoe-machinery 
industry, about 4,500 people being employed in 
one factory. There are also manufactories of 
shoes, boots, morocco, belting and oil clothing. 
Beverly is a distributing point for the prod¬ 
ucts of the Texas oil region, steamers operating 
regularly between this point and Port Arthur, 
Tex. The city^ has a number of vessels engaged 
in cod-fishery, and many of the inhabitants 
gain a livelihood in this industry. The most 
notable buildings are the $110,000 public 
library, with 12,000 volumes, and a Federal 
building erected in 1910. In addition to its 
public school system, the city has the New 
England Industrial School for Deaf Mutes and 
the Beverly Industrial School. Six playgrounds 
and two parks provide recreation and amuse¬ 
ment. 

Beverly Farms is a delightful summer resi¬ 
dential district, located in the eastern part of 
the city. It is the summer residence of many 
Bostonians and was the “summer capital” dur¬ 
ing Ex-President William H. Taft’s administra¬ 
tion. Beverly Farms has a branch public 
library, erected at a cost of $25,000. 

BHUTAN, bhoo tahn', is the name of an 
independent state, covering an area of about 
16,800 square miles in the southern part of 
Asia. It lies between Tibet on the north and 
Bengal on the south, in the eastern Himalayas, 
where the mountains abound in sublime scenery 


BIBLE 


703 


BIBLE 


and raise their snowclad peaks 
to a height of over 24,000 feet. 
Some parts of the territory are 
fertile, the chief crops being mil¬ 
let, wheat and rice. The chief 
manufactures are coarse cloths 
and silks. The inhabitants are 
allied to the Tibetans, and are 
skilled agriculturists. They are 
Buddhists and have two rulers— 
a spiritual ruler, the Dharm Raja, 



BHUTAN 


and a secular ruler, Deb Raja. 
The capital is Punakha, or Dosen. 
The government of Bhutan is 
subsidized by the English gov¬ 
ernment in India, receiving 
£3,333 (nearly $17,000) annually 
in return for a portion of the 
state annexed by the British in 
1865. Population, estimated, 200,- 
000. Only a very few of the peo¬ 
ple are of the white race. 



IBLE. The man who sets out on a 
journey around the world finds that it does 
not take long to reach a place where most 
of the things which assume importance in his 
own life seem unimportant or unknown. The 
automobile or the works of Shakespeare; the 
telephone or the dramas of Goethe—these 
have found their way over a comparatively 
small part of the earth’s area. But there is 
one book which the traveler finds in the re¬ 
motest part of the earth. Farther than the 
railroad has penetrated or the most daring 
gold-seeker has ventured, the Bible has found 
its way, until it is almost literally true that 
there is no country in which it has not tried 
to make for itself a home. 

This does not mean that the knowledge of 
the Bible has spread throughout the world; 
that the Eskimo hut or the African kraal has 
its Bible as has the Ontario or Texas farm¬ 
house; but it does mean that it has been so 
frequently translated and so widely distributed 
that almost everybody can have at least parts 
of it in his own language. In all, there are 108 
complete translations and over 500 partial 
translations, and more than 14,000,000 copies 
of the Bible or of the New Testament are 
distributed each year. 

What It Is. The Book, the Bible is fre¬ 
quently called, but it could with greater accu¬ 
racy be called the library, for it is in reality 
a library of sixty-six books which are usually 
bound together as one. Even the name to¬ 
day has the singular form, but originally it 
was a Greek plural meaning books. These 


sixty-six books have a greater unity than most 
libraries, for while they include essays, stories, 
love-songs, dramas and legal documents, they 
constitute altogether the sacred writings of 
Judaisrrj and Christianity, and they have run¬ 
ning through them a single thread of purpose 
which makes of them a whole. The Jews 
felt that to them, and to them alone, had 
been granted the revelation of the true God, 
and their sacred writings had as their purpose 
the setting forth of this revelation for future 
generations—for future generations of Jews, 
for it was too w T onderful and too sacred to be 
wasted on Gentiles, or “heathen.” 

This was the older part of the Bible—the 
Old Testament, as it is commonly known. 
The New Testament aimed with no less single¬ 
ness of purpose at giving a revelation of God, 
but it spoke to a wider audience. Its teach¬ 
ings were for “all the world,” “to the Jew first, 
and also to the Gentile.” Thus it is that the 
Jews of to-day accept only the Old Testament, 
while for the Christians the two parts have 
equal authority. 

The Story of Its Long Life. Long ago, when 
the sacred writings received their name of 
The Books, that word meant a very different 
thing from what it does to-day. It referred 
to the rolls of papyrus, on which were in¬ 
scribed by hand those writings which were 
counted worthy of publication (see Manu¬ 
script). On such rolls were inscribed the 
earliest sacred writings of the Jews, and it 
was probably such a manuscript which was 
delivered to Jesus when “He went into the 











































BIBLE 


704 


BIBLE 


synagogue and stood up for to read.” At 
that time there existed only the Old Testa¬ 
ment, but as the founders of the Christian 
Church wrote out their records of its origin 
or sent to individual churches their advice in 
letters, these, too, became a part of the Holy 
Scriptures. 

As Christianity spread to Europe the influ¬ 
ence of the sacred writings spread also. In¬ 
terest in secular learning died out in the 
troubled times of the later Roman Empire 
and in the Dark Ages which followed, but 
love for “the book” never flagged, and it 
seems not too much to say that knowledge 
of the arts of reading and writing might have 
died out had it not been for this concern for 
the sacred writings. There were no printing 
presses in those days, and every new copy of 
the Scriptures which was made had to be 
laboriously written out by hand. Each monas¬ 
tery had its writing room, in which the monks 
toiled over their precious manuscripts, keep¬ 
ing heart and hand and pen clean, that they 
might be worthy of the high task. In his 
Golden Legend Longfellow put into the mouth 
of a monk the words— 

It is growing dark ! Yet one line more, 

And then my work for to-day is o’er. 

I come again to the name of the Lord! 

Ere I that awful name record, 

That is spoken so lightly among men, 

Let me pause awhile, and wash my pen ; 
Pure from blemish and blot must it be 
When it writes that word of mystery. 

Very beautiful were some of these manu¬ 
scripts, for they were frequently embellished 
or illuminated with gold and silver and glow¬ 
ing colors. Longfellow’s monk continues: 

There, now, is an initial letter ! 

Saint Uric himself never made a better ! 
Finished down to the leaf and the snail, 
Down to the eyes on the peacock’s tail! 

So the Bible w r as kept alive by the monks’ 
labor of love, until in the fifteenth century 
there came that w’onderful invention which 
revolutionized learning—the invention of 
printing from movable types. So far as is 
known the first book printed by Gutenberg 
(which see) was a Bible; and from that time 
on the number of Bibles turned out by the 
presses has steadily increased. In many in¬ 
stances it has been necessary to design and 
make special types for the printing of the 
Bible in languages which had never before 
known a printed book, but no difficulty has 
been so great as to daunt those who have de¬ 
termined to make it possible for everyone, 


everywhere, to read the Bible in his own 
language. 

From One Language to Many. In a sense, 
the writings of any great author make up a 
library, but the Bible differs from such a col¬ 
lection in that it is the work of about forty 
authors. All of its books, with the exception 
of Daniel and Ezra, which were in Aramaic, 
were written in Hebrew or in Greek; but the 


im*wm 


* SPECIMEN OF EARLIEST MANUSCRIPT 
A portion of Exodus (chapter XXVI. verse 7), 
written in square Hebrew. This was translated 
into Syriac, Greek, Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Old 
English, and finally into present-day English. 


Hebrew books, those which comprised the 
Scriptures in the time of Christ, had all been 
translated into Aramaic, for Hebrew had at 
that time become a dead language. Further 
translations, too, were necessary, for many of 
the Jews had settled in different countries 
and had adopted the languages of the native 
inhabitants. 

Of these ancient translations into other 
tongues by far the most valuable was that 
known as the Septuagint, which was completed 
in 285 b. c. It is a translation from Hebrew 
into Greek of such parts of the Scriptures as 
then existed, and received its name, which 
means seventy, from the fact that about that 
many scholars took part in the work of trans¬ 
lating. 

The time came, however, when Christianity 
became the religion of the Roman world, and 
Latin-speaking Christians demanded the Bible 
in their own tongue. Jerome, one of the most 
famous of the Church fathers, completed such 
a translation in a. d. 405, and this Vulgate, as 
it was called, became the authorized Bible of 
the Western Church. Down to the present 
time the Bible in use in the Roman Catholic 
Church is based on the Vulgate. 

In Modern Tongues. Long after Christian¬ 
ity spread to countries where no Latin was 




BIBLE 


705 


BIBLE 


spoken, that language continued to be used 
in the churches, and the earliest suggestions 
that the Bible actually be translated into the 
vernacular met with violent opposition. Ex¬ 
press the sacred truths which had stood su¬ 
preme in the Church for centuries in the 
vulgar language of the people? It was not to 
be thought of! But in every enlightened 
country there were brave men who dared to 
fight against tradition and to bring the Bible 
within reach of all. In Germany, Luther’s 
translation was epoch-making, not only in 
religion but in the literature and language of 
the country, for it helped to crystallize the 
all-too-fluid dialect forms. In England there 
were several worthy of note—Wycliffe’s trans¬ 
lation, finished about 1380; Tyndale’s, upon 
which modern versions of the English Bible 
are based; and Coverdale’s, which was printed 
in 1535 and was the first complete English 
Bible published. 

The Accepted English Versions. Several edi¬ 
tions of the Bible followed Coverdale’s, each 
of which attempted to correct the errors and 
improve the language of previous editions, 
but none proved wholly satisfactory. In 1604, 
therefore, at the petition of the leading cler¬ 
gymen of the country, James I of England 
appointed fifty-four eminent scholars to make 
a new translation. For seven years they 
worked at their task, and the King James, or 
Authorized, Version which they produced, so 
far surpassed in accuracy, arrangement and 
language all those versions which had gone 
before that within a few years it supplanted 
them all. English-speaking Protestant churches 
throughout the world adopted it, and until the 
latter part of the nineteenth century it had 
no rival. 

Biblical knowledge had not stood still, how¬ 
ever, and the English language had changed 
so that some parts of the Bible had acquired 
different meanings from those which they had 
had when the translation was made; and in 
1870 a company of English scholars, aided by 
a group of distinguished Americans, set about 
making a new translation. So far as possible 
they kept the stately language of the King 
James Version which h$d become so firmly 
fixed in the affections of the people; but 
where changes in diction were necessary for 
the clearing up of obscurities they did not 
hesitate to make them. Many a reader to-day, 
who is grateful for the new light thrown by 
this Revised Version, still prefers to read the 
older version, familiar through long use. 

45 


The American Revised Version, which em¬ 
bodies all the results of recent investigations, 
was made still later. 

The Divisions of the Bible. The Jews looked 
upon their religion as a compact between 
themselves and God, and applied to their 
sacred writings the title of Covenant or Testa¬ 
ment. This latter form attaining wider use, 
the later books were called the New Testa¬ 
ment, and as the Old and New Testaments 
the two great divisions of the Bible are known 
to-day. 

The Old Testament. This division, which 
deals with the Jew r s and their history under 
the old Mosaic law r s, consists of thirty-nine 
books, which admit of a very definite classi¬ 
fication into law r , historical books, prophecy 
and poetical books. The law includes the first 
five books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Num¬ 
bers and Deuteronomy; the historical division 
takes in all the books from Joshua to Esther; 
the poetry embraces Job, Psalms, Proverbs, 
Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon and Lamenta¬ 
tions; and the prophetic division comprises 
the remaining sixteen books. Of some of these 
books the authors are definitely known; of 
others the authorship is traditional; while as 
to the origin of a number of them, absolutely 
nothing is known. Throughout century after 
century the first five books v r ere ascribed to 
Moses, and the daring person who ventured 
the question, “But how could Moses have de¬ 
scribed his own death?” was looked upon as 
a dangerous skeptic. The Psalms, too, were 
credited without question to David. But 
present-day criticism is by no means so sure 
of its ground, and hesitates to declare with 
certainty the authorship of either of these 
groups of w T ritings. 

The New Testament. The twenty-seven 
books which make up this division fall into 
three natural groups. First, there are the his¬ 
torical books, the four Gospels and the Acts 
of the Apostles; then the epistles, and finally 
the curious, prophetic, visionary Revelation. 
Even the earliest of the Gospels was not writ¬ 
ten until j^ears after the Ascension; the story 
of Jesus was handed down by word of mouth 
until there grew up the fear that parts of it 
might be lost, and then Mark wrote his nar¬ 
rative, the first of the Gospel accounts. The 
Gospel of John was the latest book, and was 
probably not written until the beginning of 
the second century of the Christian Era. 

The Canon. This is a curious word with an 
interesting history, as used in this connection. 


BIBLE 


706 


BIBLE 


Originally it meant a rod, or by derivation, a 
carpenter’s rule, and so in time it came to 
have reference to the standard by which the 
authority of the sacred writings was measured. 
Now the term “canon of the Scriptures” de¬ 
notes those books which are believed to be 
inspired and are therefore authorized by the 
Christian Church. Just those books which at 
present make up the Bible, and no more, were 
not always looked upon as the canon; over 
certain specific books long controversies raged. 
Could the book of Esther, in which the name 
of God is not once mentioned, possibly be 
one of the “holy” writings? Were the books 
of the Apocrypha (which see) to be regarded 
as inspired, or were they merely secular? Be¬ 
fore the time of Christ the Jews had deter¬ 
mined the canon of the Old Testament, but 
that of the New was naturally not entirely 
fixed until some centuries after Christ’s death. 
To-day the Roman Catholic Church accepts 
as canonical the Apocrypha, which Protestant 
churches reject. 

The Bible as Literature. The writers of the 
Bible were not learned men, as the world 
counts learning to-day, and yet their works 
have lived and multiplied as have no others 
ever written. In large measure, to be sure, 
this is because of the subject matter with 
which they deal, but in a lesser degree it is 
an outgrowth of the literary character of the 
Bible. Time was, and not so very long ago, 
when to have spoken of the “literary charac¬ 
ter” of the Bible would have been looked 
upon as sacrilege. It was a sacred book, de¬ 
signed to appeal to man’s spiritual nature and 
taking no account of the feeling for beauty 
which is no less an inborn sense. Indeed, in 
those days when the Bible was perhaps more 
in men’s thoughts than at any time since the 
days of the Church fathers—in the Puritan 
age—the spiritual sense and the sense of beauty 
were looked upon as antagonistic. 

Then, too, the Book was looked upon as too 
sacred to be studied as any other book might 
be; people actually held that its holy charac¬ 
ter extended to the paper upon which it was 
printed and the boards in which it was bound. 
To ponder over it spiritually was right and 
necessary—“in His law doth he meditate day 
and night”; but to attempt to solve its prob¬ 
lems with the aid of cold reason—such an act 
was to lay profane hands upon the Ark of the 
Covenant or to enter with unhallowed feet 
the Holy of Holies. One eminent writer upon 
things Biblical phrased the matter pictur¬ 


esquely when he called the Bible “a literature 
smothered by reverence.” 

In recent years students of the Bible have 
been paying more and more attention to its 
literary quality, but yet students of literature 
have placed upon it too little stress. Many 
a person who accounts. himself well read, and 
is ashamed to confess his ignorance of the 
works of some minor poet, almost boasts of his 
lack of knowledge of the Bible. And yet no 
one can really understand English literature 
or grasp its full significance who has not a 
background of Biblical knowledge. What can 
Byron’s stirring Destruction of Sennacherib 
mean to the person who has never read the 
account in II Kings, 35? We are told that— 

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the 
fold, 

And his cohorts were gleaming’ in purple and 
gold, 

and that later— 

The Angel of Death spread his wings on the 
blast, 

And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass’d, 

but no statement is made as to who Senna¬ 
cherib was or as to why such dreadful woe 
came upon the Assyrians. Or how can the 
person who had not read the story of Moses’ 
experience on Sinai grasp the full significance 
of Lowell’s— 

■Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, 

We Sinais climb and know it not. 

But it is not only as a background for other 
literature that the Bible merits attention. It 
is itself a literature unmatched in certain lit¬ 
erary forms. Epigram, epic, thrilling tale, 
exquisite pastoral romance—all these and 
many more are to be found in its pages, and 
in lyric poetry, especially, critics agree that it 
equals if it does not surpass all other litera¬ 
tures in the world. The translators, too, have 
been so wise in their choice of words that the 
English reader has little or none of that dis¬ 
appointed feeling which usually accompanies 
the reading of translations. So wonderfully 
phrased are most parts of the Scriptures that 
the person who cares nothing for the spiritual 
significance of the Bible cannot fail to be 
impressed with the fact that if Biblical quo¬ 
tations are contrasted with those from almost 
any other work, they take from such quota¬ 
tions much of their dignity and stateliness. 

The Bible for Children. This topic is closely 
related to the preceding, since it means to take 
no account of the religious teaching of chil¬ 
dren, but to emphasize the “story” side of the 


BIBLE 


707 


BIBLE 


Bible. Any truth 
which is presented to 
children must of ne¬ 
cessity be in story 
form, and the Bible 
is at its best in this 
field. It was written 
in the childhood of 
the race, by men who 
were striving not to 
attain literary distinc¬ 
tion, not to embellish 
their works highly, 
but merely to tell 
their stories and sing 
their songs simply and 
directly, that they 
might not fail of their 


The Finding of Moses 



Then I tried reading 
the Bible to them, and 
quite took possession 
of them. . . . The 

corner of the veil was 
lifted, and they yielded 
themselves to me com¬ 
pletely. They fell in 
love with the Book and 
with learning and with 
me. 

The vivid stories of 
men and women who 
seem alive and who 
have to do with just 
those fascinating 
things which interest 
children most cannot 
fail to attract and 
hold attention. 




The Handwriting on the Wall 


The Wise Men of the East 


appeal. Tolstoi 
phrased most forcibly 
the relation between 
this fact and the ap¬ 
peal of the Bible to 
children. “It seems to 
me,” he wrote, “that 
the Book of the child¬ 
hood of the race will 
always be the best 
book for the child¬ 
hood of each man.” 
And he goes on to tell 
of his experience in 
teaching peasant chil¬ 
dren, whom he had 
tried to interest 
through other means: 


The Good Samaritan 


Joseph, with his mar¬ 
velous coat, with his 
adventures in the pit 
and in prison and with 
his final triumph,, is a 
hero after their own 
hearts, and David’s 
giant, Jonathan’s bow 
and arrows and Dan¬ 
iel’s lions are just the 
- exciting touches which 
1 they love. The find¬ 
ing of Moses is an old 
story which to chil¬ 
dren is ever new. As 
they grow older, there 
is the pastoral of 
Ruth, with its “happy 

















































































































































































































































































BIBLE 


708 


BIBLE 


ending,” and the no less charming but more 
stirring prose epic of Esther. There are books 
of Bible stories without number, some excel¬ 
lent, some mediocre and some poor; but as 
soon as the child is old enough he should be 
given his Bible stories in Bible language. Not 
only does this enhance their charm, but it gives 
the boy or girl a taste of well-chosen, virile 
English which most of the harmless but care- 
lessl} 7, constructed children’s books of the 
present day do not afford. The story of the 
Three Wise Men, the moral from the tale of 
the Good Samaritan and the warning in the 
handwriting on the wall cannot be excelled in 
this twentieth century. 

Biblical Chronology. The general reader of 
the Bible, as well as the student, cannot fail 
to be interested in the location of the events 
in time. Does anyone know when Abraham 
went out from Ur of the Chaldees? Did 
David live before or after the Trojan War? 
The Jews reckoned time from the Creation 
of the world, and by computing the genera¬ 
tions before and after the Deluge, worked out 
a complete system of chronology. According 
to them, the creation of the world took place 
about 4,000 years before the birth of Christ, 
and the outstanding events occurred in the 
years here set down: 

Creation of the world. (b. c.) 4000 


The Flood. 3200 

Call of Abraham. 2000 

Israelites enter Egypt. 1700 

The Exodus . 1300 

Saul anointed king. 1095 

David began to reign. 1055 

Solomon began to reign. 1015 

Division of the kingdom. 975 

Fall of the kingdom of Israel 722 

Fall of the kingdom of Judah 586 

Return from the Captivity.. . 536 

Conquest of Palestine by Al¬ 
exander . 330 

Capture of Jerusalem by 

Pompey. 63 


The correctness of these dates previous to 
the reign of Saul, it should be stated, is open 
to serious criticism, and among historians and 
Bible students Hebrew chronology is consid¬ 
ered to stand by itself until such time as the 
dates given coincide with dates of events in 
secular history. 

Books of the Bible. The table which follows 
lists the books of the Bible and gives their 
authors, so far as they are known, but it must 
be borne in mind that often the authorship 
cited here is merely traditional. The books 
marked with a star are those about which 


there has been most controversy and uncer¬ 
tainty. Separate articles on the more impor¬ 
tant of the books listed here will be found in 
their alphabetical order in this work: 


THE OLD TESTAMENT 


Book 

Author 

Genesis . 


Exodus . 


Leviticus . 


Numbers . 


Deuteronomy .... 


Joshua . 


Judges . 



Psalms 


Proverbs 


Ruth .Unknown 

I and II Samuel .Unknown 

I and II Kings .Unknown 

I and II Chronicles.*Ezra 

Ezra .Ezra 

Nehemiah .Ezra 

Esther .^Unknown 

Job .Uncertain 

David 
Asaph 
Levites 
Hezekiah 
Solomon 
Prophets 
Solomon 
Agur 

Ecclesiastes .Unknown 

Song of Solomon.Solomon 

Isaiah .Isaiah, 

Jeremiah .Jeremiah 

Lamentations .Jeremiah 

Ezekiel .Ezekiel 

Daniel .Daniel 

Hosea .Hosea 

Joel .Joel 

Amos .Amos 

Obadiah .Obadiah 

Jonah .Jonah 

Micah .Micah 

Nahum .* Nahum 

Habakkuk .Habakkuk 

Zephaniah .Zephaniah 

Haggai .Haggai 

Zechariah.Zechariah 

Malachi .Malachi 


THE NEW TESTAMENT 


Matthew .Matthew 

Mark .Mark 

Luke .Luke 

John .John 

Acts of the Apostles.Luke 

Pauline Epistles .Saint Paul 

Romans 


I and II Corinthians 

Galatians 

Ephesians 

Philippians 

Colossians 

I and II Thessalonians 
I and II Timothy 


Titus 

Philemon 

James .James 

I and II Peter.Peter 


























































BIBLE 


709 


BIBLE 



Outline 


I. What It Is 

(1) Its name 

(2) Its place in the world 

(3) A library, not a book 

II. The Canon of the Scriptures 

(1) Old Testament. 

(2) New Testament 
(3 ) Apocrypha 

III. Origin 

(1) Dates of writing 

(a) The oldest book 

(b) The youngest book 
(2’) Authors 

(3) Language 

' IV. Translations 

(1) The Septuagint 

(2) Vulgate 

( 3 ) The Bible in English 

(a) Early versions 

1. Wycliffe’s 

2. Tyndale’s 

3. Coverdale’s 


(b) The Authorized Version 

(c) The Revised Version 

(d) American Revised Version 

V. Contents 

(1) Old Testament 

(a) Law 

(b) History 

(c) Prophecy 

(d) Poetry 

(2) New Testament 

(a) History 

(b) Letters 

(c) Prophecy 

VI. Chronology of the Bible 

(1) Important dates 

(2) Its uncertainty 

VII. The Bible as Literature 

(1) The new attitude 

(2) Reasons for its charm 

(3) Its value for children 


Questions 

What event, according to Bible reckoning, took place almost as long before the 
beginning of the Christian Era as the Norman Conquest did after it? 

What was the first complete Bible published in English? 

What was the form of the sacred writings possessed by the Jews? 

How many letters of Paul are part of the New Testament? 

What change has taken place in comparatively recent times in the attitude 
toward the Bible? 

How many complete translations of the Bible have been made? 

By what other name is the Authorized Version known? Why is it so called? 
What quality have many of the Bible stories that makes them suitable for 
children? 

According to tradition, who wrote the first five books of the Old Testament? 
In what language were Daniel and Ezra originally written? Why was the entire 
Old Testament later translated into this tongue? 

What reasons were there for making a revised version of the Scriptures? 
What is the meaning of the name Bible? 

How many books of history are there in the New Testament? Name them. 
Why was the Septuagint so called? Is the title strictly accurate? 

What are the books of law? The prophetic books? 

About how many Bibles and New Testaments are distributed each yeai ? 

What is meant by the “canon”? What books form part of it? 

About how early were the first translations from the Hebrew? 
















BIBLE 


710 


BIBLIOMANIA 


I, II and III John 


Pentateuch 

Scribes 

Jude . 


Pentecost 

Selah 

Hebrews . 


Peter 

Septuagint 

Revelation . 


Pharisees 

Shem 



Philip 

Sinai 

Consult Brown’s 

History of the Bible; 

Philip 

Sodom 

Jacobus’s Roman Catholic and Protestant Bibles 

Philistines 

Solomon 

Compared ; Selleck’s 

The New Appreciation of 

Pilate, Pontius 

Tabernacle 

the Bible. 


Rachel 

Tabernacles, Feast of 



Ruth 

Targum 

Related Subjects. 

These volumes contain a 

Sadducees 

Thomas, Saint 

great number of articles on Biblical topics—the 

Samaritans 

Timothy 

books of the Bible, the characters, and kindred 

Samson 

Titus 

topics. For convenience of reference these are 

Samuel 

Vulgate 

listed here, with the 

! exception of the books, 

Sanhedrin 

Zebulum 

which are given above: 

Saul 

Zedekiah 

Aaron 

Haggai 

Scapegoat 

Zephaniah 

Abel 

Hallelujah 

In addition to these, there is given under 

Abraham 

Ham 

Palestine a list of 

the Biblical places treated 

Absalom 

Herod 

in these volumes. 

A.MC c. 

Adam and Eve 

Hezekiah 



Ahab 

Hittites 

BIBLIOGRAPHY, 

bib li og ' rafi, a term 

Ahasuerus 

Hosea 

which has changed from its original meaning— 


Ahaz 

Amalekites 

Ananias 

Apocalypse 

Apocrypha 

Ark 

Baal 

Babel, Tower of 

Balaam 

Barabbas 

Barnabas 

Bartholomew 

Beelzebub 

Benjamin 

Caiaphas 

Cain 

Calvary 

Canaanites 

Cherub 

Cities of Refuge 

Daniel 

David 

Deborah 

Decalogue 

Delilah 

Deluge 

Donai Bible 

Eden 

Edom 

Eli 

Elijah 

Elisha 

Esau 

Esther 

Ezekiel 

Ezra 

Felix, Antonius 

Festus, Porcius 

Gabriel 

Gamaliel 

Gath 

Gehenna 

Gideon 

Goliath 

Goshen 

Gospels 

Habakkuk 


Isaac 

Isaiah 

Ishmael 

Jacob 

James, Saint 

Japheth 

Jehoshaphat 

Jehu 

Jeremiah 

Jeroboam 

Jezebel 

John, the Baptist 
John, Saint 
Jonah 

Joseph • 

Joseph 

Joseph of Arimathea 

Joshua 

Josiah 

Jubilee 

Judas 

Jude 

Judith 

Lazarus 

Leviathan 

Levites 

Lucifer 

Luke, Saint 

Magdalen, Mary 

Malachi 

Manna 

Mark 

Mary, The Virgin 

Matthew, Saint 

Michael, Saint 

Miracle 

Moabites 

Moses 

Nahum 

Nazarite 

Nehemiah 

Nimrod 

Noah 

Ophir 

Passover 

Patriarchs 

Paul 


the copying of books—and has come to denote 
writings about books, whether these concern 
themselves with the externals of books or with 
their contents. Collectors of rare books are 
especially interested in the former branch, and 
will pore long over bibliographies which give 
descriptions of old or rare books, their bind¬ 
ings, and the comparative value of different 
editions; but the general reader is far more 
interested in a bibliography which treats of 
the content of books. 

Bibliographers have never quite relinquished 
the ambition of compiling one huge bibliog¬ 
raphy which shall include and classify all the 
books that have ever been published, but this 
remains as yet an unrealized dream. Special 
bibliographies, however, which either limit 
themselves to the books of one country or to 
those treating of some one subject, are numer¬ 
ous and are constantly increasing in number. 
To the unsystematic reader whose choice of 
books is guided bjr what he happens to see 
or hear, such works are of little value, but to 
the person who wants to pursue a certain line 
of reading or find out all that has been writ¬ 
ten on some topic, they are indispensable. 
Scribner’s Biographical Guide to American 
Literature and the Reader’s Guide to Period¬ 
ical Literature are probably the best-known 
of the general book lists. 

At the end of important articles in these vol¬ 
umes are names of books which give broader 
treatment of the topic just discussed. These 
names are selected with a view to their popular 
character and their appeal to the general reader. 
See Bibliomania, below. 

BIBLIOMANIA, hib li o may' nia, a term 
derived from two Greek words meaning book 






BICYCLE 


BIBLIOTHEQUE NATIONALE 711 


and madness. It is used to denote the pas¬ 
sion a person may display for collecting books, 
not for the interest or helpfulness of their 
contents but rather for their rarity. Andrew 
Lang describes it as the “love of books for 
their own sake, for their paper, print, binding, 
and for their associations, as distinct from the 
love of literature.” Thus the books of famous 
printers or binders, early editions or de luxe 
editions, uncut copies, specially illustrated 
copies, or even books which contain certain 
misprints, are eagerly sought after. 

There seems to be almost no limit to the 
price which a real bibliophile, or book-lover, 
will pay for a certain choice volume, if only 
other book-lovers want it also. The largest 
sum on record paid for a single volume is 
$50,000, the price of a Bible printed on vellum 
by Gutenberg about 1450 and sold for that 
sum in 1911. A copy of the same edition, but 
printed on paper, was sold in 1912 for $27,500. 
The only known perfect copy of Malory’s 
Mori d’Arthur, printed by William Caxton, 
was sold in 1885 for $9,750 and in 1912 for 
$42,800; other books from Caxton’s press 
bring from $1,000 to $15,000. Books from the 
presses of other early printers also bring high 
prices, notably those of Jenson and Aldus at 
Venice, Sweynheym and Pannartz at Rome, 
and Ulric Gering at Paris. The many books 
printed by the Plantin and the Elzevir families 
at Antwerp, Amsterdam and Leyden are also 
eagerly sought. 

A special field of great interest is the col¬ 
lection of books which have belonged to fa¬ 
mous people and contain bookplates, auto¬ 
graphs or other marks of ownership. Of recent 
years there has been a growing interest in 
early books on America, and in the first edi¬ 
tions or obscure works of famous modern 
writers, notably Poe, Thackeray, Dickens, 
Stevenson and Kipling. A copy of the original 
1827 edition of Poe’s Al Aaraaj, Tamerlane, 
and Other Poems sold at auction in 1900 for 
$2,050, and another copy, with an inscription 
in Poe’s handwriting, in 1909 brought $2,900. 

BIBLIOTHEQUE NATIONALE, he hie o tek' 
nahsyonal', the largest library, not only in 
France, but on the Continent. It is located in 
Paris, and is the national library of the French 
people. Its splendid collections include over 
2,600,000 printed volumes and maps, about 
102,000 manuscripts, more than 250,000 engrav¬ 
ings and 150,000 coins and cameos. In 1536 
it was decreed that one copy of every book 
printed in France should be deposited in the 


national library; this explains the large num¬ 
ber of printed volumes it contains. 

The sources of this library are, in the main, 
the library that Charles V arranged in the 
Louvre in 1367, and that of the royal Orleans 
family, at Blois. Francis I united the two 
libraries, and Charles IX brought them to 
Paris. The library is now located on Riche¬ 
lieu Street. 

BICEPS, hi' seps, the large muscle in the 
front of the upper arm. Its upper end is at¬ 
tached to the shoulder blade, or scapula, and 
its lower end by a tendon 
to the large bone, or radius, 
of the fore arm. This is 
the muscle usually proudly 
exhibited as evidence of 
muscular development. It 



LOCATION AND FORM OF BICEPS 


bends the elbow and turns the hand outward, 
and is the largest and strongest muscle of the 
arm. The muscle opposed to the biceps, and 
by which the arm is straightened, is the triceps. 
See Muscles. 

BF CYCLE. The story of the modern bicycle 
furnishes an interesting example of the man¬ 
ner in which the delight of the public in 
various forms of recreation rises and declines. 
The familiar “safety” bicycle entered upon its 
career of wide popularity in America about 
1889, and during the next ten years it enjoyed 
an astonishing vogue. It was ridden by old 
and young, was as popular with women as 
with men, and bicycle enthusiasts found it 
equally satisfactory for recreation and for 
business purposes. In 1899 there were 312 
bicycle establishments in the United States, 
and their combined output for the year 
reached a total of 1,112,880 machines. Then 
the tide turned, and after 1900 there was a 
gradual decline in the demand for these ma¬ 
chines. Manufacturers of bicycles ceased ad¬ 
vertising their wares, and many of them 
transferred their capital and equipment to the 
production of the motorcycle (a bicycle 
equipped with a gas engine) and the auto¬ 
mobile. The bicycle is still used to a limited 
extent as a business convenience, but it will 






BICYCLE 


712 


BICYCLE 


probably never again be as popular as the 
motorcycle (which see), because of the speed 
of the latter and the fact that it can take 
the rider long distances without causing him 
undue fatigue. 

The essential features of the bicycle of lat¬ 
est construction are as follows: It consists of 
two wheels, arranged tandem and attached to 
a frame upon which the rider’s seat is 
mounted. The vehicle is propelled by the 
rider’s feet, which act upon pedals connected 
with the axle of the rear wheel. A handle bar, 
guiding the direction of the front wheel, is the 
steering apparatus. The mechanism for driv¬ 
ing the vehicle is usually a chain whose links 


In the older type of machine the brake was 
attached to the handle bar. 

In the early stages of the bicycle’s vogue 
a high grade .machine, more than twice as 
heavy as the present-day vehicle, cost from 
$100 to $150. An excellent bicycle, with the 
latest appliances, can be purchased to-day for 
twenty-five or thirty dollars. About 169,000 
machines, valued at approximately $2,437,000, 
are manufactured in a year in the United 
States. The province of Ontario is the cen¬ 
ter of the Canadian industry, the yearly out¬ 
put of the entire Dominion being valued at 
about $445,000. 

Evolution of the Bicycle. A crude, two- 



THIRTY YEARS OF BICYCLE DEVELOPMENT 

(a) Modern bicycle; ( b ) the so-called “ordinary,” the immediate predecessor of (/), the first 
“safety”; (c) the “Star” bicycle, with small wheel in front; ( d ) the “safety” adapted for the 
use of women; (e) the “tandem,” for two, which could be developed on the same principle for 
three, four or even six people. 


fit over a sprocket wheel turned by the crank 
shaft and running over another sprocket on 
the rear wheel; but some chainless bicycles 
are made, having levers with bevel gear which 
transmit the motion of the crank shaft to the 
rear wheel. 

The wheels are of equal size and have steel 
wire spokes, ball bearings, wooden rims and 
pneumatic tires. The latter may be single¬ 
tube or double-tube, but the double-tube are 
generally regarded as the more satisfactory. 
The frame consists of hollow steel tubing, and 
the weight of the vehicle is from twenty-three 
to thirty pounds. A recent appliance is the 
coaster brake, attached to the rear wheel, 
which enables the rider to check the speed 
of the bicycle by pressing back on the pedals. 


wheeled vehicle propelled by the feet was 
known to the ancients, and machines of this 
character were in use in England, France and 
Germany many years before the real fore¬ 
runner of the modern bicycle was devised. 
This machine, invented in 1816 by Baron von 
Drais, chief forester to the Grand Duke of 
Baden, and called draisine in honor of him, 
consisted of two wheels of equal size, arranged 
tandem and connected by a perch. The rider, 
who rested part of his weight on the perch, 
propelled the machine by striking the ground 
with his feet. A padded arm-rest on a bar 
attached to the front wheel served as a handle 
bar, and the whole formed a steering appar¬ 
atus. 

A machine modeled on the draisine was 
































BICYCLE 


713 


BIDDEFORD 


patented in England in 1818, where it en¬ 
joyed a brief period of popularity under vari¬ 
ous names—hobby-horse, dandy-horse, swift- 
walker and others. Its manufacturer, however, 
named it the 'pedestrian curricule. This ma¬ 
chine and others modeled on it failed to win 
permanent favor. In 1855 a French carriage- 
maker brought out a vehicle resembling the 
modern bicycle in that it had cranks and ped¬ 
als fitted to the front wheels, and ten years 
later an improved form of two-wheeled veloci¬ 
pede appeared in Paris, greatly stimulating 
interest in cycling and resulting in the intro¬ 
duction of the French velocipede into the 
United States. 

This velocipede, like the high-wheeled bi¬ 
cycle which followed it, had the front wheel 
much larger than the rear, and was propelled 
by cranks attached to the hubs of the front 
wheel. Its successor, known as the ordinary, 

which was developed in England about 1873, 

* 

was in general use in Europe and America 
until replaced by the low-wheeled bicycle, or 
safety. The first vehicle of this type had the 
front wheel about three times the size of the 
back one, but the tendency was to increase the 
size of the former and to reduce that of the 
rear wheel, until the diameters were respec¬ 
tively sixty and sixteen inches. The average 
roadster of 1875 weighed sixty-five pounds and 
had a steel frame and solid rubber tires. 

During the next ten years various improve¬ 
ments were introduced, including adjustable 
ball bearings and cushion tires. The “ordi¬ 
nary” was popular because it afforded exhil¬ 
arating exercise, but it had serious defects. 
The high seat, more than five feet above the 
ground, and nearly over the center of the large 
wheel, made falls, or “headers,” as the}' were 
called, somewhat frequent and dangerous, and 
the vehicle was difficult to mount. It is not 
surprising, therefore, that a low-wheel vehicle 
embodying the principal features of the mod¬ 
ern bicj^cle was finally brought out in 1884. 
Of the subsequent improvements, including 
the coaster brake, adjustable handle bars, 
cushion saddles and the drop frame for ladies’ 
bicycles, the most important was the pneu¬ 
matic tire. Though invented in England in 
1843, this device was not applied to the bicycle 
until 1889, and it was the greatest single fac¬ 
tor in stimulating the popularity of the 
“wheel.” The cyclist might be subjected to 
the trouble of mending punctured tires, but 
whatever annoyance he suffered on this ac¬ 
count was more than offset by the freedom 


from jolts, greater ease in running, and the 
increased lightness of his machine. 

The cycling era was not unproductive of 
good results, for in moderation it provided 
very healthful exercise; and the extensive use 
of the bicycle, together with the influence of 
the League of American Wheelmen, contrib¬ 
uted much to the good-roads movement that 
has been so greatly advanced by the advent 
of the automobile. e.d.f. 

Consult Garratt’s Modern Safety Bicycle; 
Henry’s Cycle Building and Repairing. 

BIDDEFORD, Me., an old city in York 
County, which was for a long time the chief 
settlement in the province of Maine. It is 
situated in the extreme southwestern part of 
the state, on the right bank of the Saco River, 
six miles from the sea. Portland is fifteen * 
miles northeast, and Portsmouth, N. H., is 
forty miles southwest. Railway transporta¬ 
tion is provided by the Boston & Maine Rail¬ 
road, and electric lines extend north and south. 
For eight months in the year there is water 
transportation for freight that can be shipped 
by schooner or barge. The first settlement 
was made as early as 1616 by people from 
Biddeford, England, who named the place for 
their home town. Biddeford was settled un¬ 
der a patent in 1630, and Saco, on the opposite 
bank of the river, was included within its 
limits until 1718, when Biddeford was incor¬ 
porated separately. In 1855 it received a city 
charter. In 1910 the population was 17,079; 
it increased to 17,475 in 1914. The foreign 
element is largely French. The area exceeds 
fifteen square miles. 

The development of Biddeford was favored 
by the abundant water power of the Saco 
River, which at this point has a fall of forty 
feet. The manufacture of textiles is its lead¬ 
ing industry, about 16,000 people being em¬ 
ployed in the two large cotton mills, which 
rank with the foremost in New England. 
There are machine shops, making cotton-mill 
machinery and accessories for cotton mills, 
and two big saw mills which have an annual 
output of 15,000,000 feet. The post office, 
erected in 1914, the city hall, Masonic Temple, 
Webber Hospital and McArthur Library are 
the noteworthy buildings. 

Biddeford is located in the heart of a sum¬ 
mer resort region and on account of its fine 
boating, fishing and bathing facilities is a pop¬ 
ular resort. Old Orchard Beach, which com¬ 
prises several small beaches, is not excelled by 
any resort on the New England coast. b.m.a. 


BIENNIALS 


714 


BIGHORN 


BIENNIALS, byen'ialz, in botany, the 
name given those plants that put forth leaves 
and roots the first season, remain quiet through 
the winter, and the next spring or summer 
bear blossoms, fruit and seed, and then die. 
That is, their life-span is two years, or prac¬ 
tically so. Familiar examples of biennials are 
the turnip, beet and carrot, which store up 
food in their roots the first season for the 
plants to feed upon during the period of flow¬ 
ering. Plants that live for one year are known 
as annuals, while perennials live on year after 
3 r ear for an indefinite period. See Annuals; 
Perennials. 

BIENVILLE, byaN veel' , Jean Baptiste le 
Moyne, Sieur de (1680-1758), a well-known 
explorer who was prominent in the settlement 
. of the French province of Louisiana. As a 
boy he accompanied his brother Iberville 
(which see) on his early explorations of the 
Mississippi, and assisted him in founding 
Biloxi in 1699. He was appointed governor 
of Louisiana in 1701, at the age of twenty-one, 
and founded the city of Mobile, which he 
made the seat of government, but was re¬ 
moved from office in 1707. He continued to 
be active in the upbuilding of the province, 
however, and in 1718 was again made gov¬ 
ernor, in which year, with the aid of Law’s 
Mississippi Company, he founded the city of 
New Orleans. This place became the capital 
of Louisiana province in 1722. Four years 
later Bienville w 7 as again dismissed, but was 
reinstated in 1733, and for the next ten years 
worked with untiring zeal for the prosperity 
of his colony. From 1743 until his death he 
lived in France. See Mississippi Scheme. 

BIERSTADT, beer' staht, Albert (1830- 
1902), a landscape painter whose popularity 
rests on his pictures of scenes in the Western 
United States, especially in the Rocky Moun¬ 
tains. He was born in Germany, but spent 
most of his life in America. Though his can¬ 
vases do not have the highest artistic merit, 
they possess a grandeur and impressiveness 
that make them wonderfully effective. His 
Sierra Nevada may be viewed in the Corcoran 
Art Gallery in Washington, D. C.; his Valley 
of Yosemite is in the James Lenox collection 
in New York. The Capitol at Washington 
contains two historical pictures painted by 
him— The Discovery of the Hudson River and 
The Settlement of California. Bierstadt was 
awarded several German and Austrian decora¬ 
tions and was a member of the National Acad¬ 
emy of Design of New York. 


BIGAMY, big'ami, in law, the crime of 
marrying a second time while a first husband 
or wife is living and not legally divorced. The 
laws of the Roman Catholic Church formerly 
regarded a second marriage as bigamous even 
though the first spouse were dead, the first 
marriage being a sacrament that was binding 
on each of the contracting parties for life. 
That Church does not even now admit the 
right of civil courts to annul marriages by 
divorce, but recognizes the right of one to 
many again whose first marriage has been 
broken by death. In most countries the gov¬ 
ernment recognizes a properly-granted divorce 
as sufficient authority to remarry. If a per¬ 
son remarrying can prove that he or she is 
unaware of the fact that a former husband or 
wife is living, and has had no such knowledge 
for seven years, the law does not now con¬ 
sider remarriage under such circumstances as 
bigamous. 

In England, until the reign of William III, 
bigamy was a crime punishable by death. The 
penalty was reduced in the time of George I 
to a minimum of two years’ imprisonment, with 
hard labor. In the United States the punish¬ 
ment is usually a term of imprisonment, vary¬ 
ing from two to five years, accompanied by a 
fine. Canadian laws concerning bigamy are 
based on those of England. 

BIGHORN, the name given a wild sheep, 
native to the Rocky Mountains, /and named 
from the massive horns of the ram, which 



curve back from the forehead, down and then 
forward, frequently measuring forty inches. 
This is also the height of the animal at the 










BIGHORN RIVER 


715 


BILE 


shoulder. The horns of the ewe are short. 
Bighorns, which are not to be confused with 
the much less wary Rocky Mountain goat 
(which see), formerly ranged in the highest 
mountains from New Mexico to the Arctic 
Circle. They are grayish brown, with face of 
a lighter shade, a dark line down the spine 
and the under parts and two patches on the 
rump, white. They live in herds of thirty or 
forty, are quick and nimble, jumping and 
climbing easily in the most dangerous places. 
Their meat has an excellent flavor and they 
are considered fine game, but in most states 
are protected by law. No other animal on 
earth, not even the chamois, has the agility of 
the bighorn. In the Rocky Mountain Na¬ 
tional Park, in Colorado, tourists sometimes 
see herds of them, even the lambs, plunge head 
downward from precipices hundreds of feet 
high, then landing on their four feet held tight 
together, break their fall only for an instant, 
repeating their leaps until safe from their ene¬ 
mies, in the valley below. 

BIGHORN RIVER, the largest southern 
tributary of the Yellowstone River. It rises 
in the Wind River Mountains of Central Wyo¬ 
ming and flows in a northeasterly direction 
for a distance of 450 miles, through Wyoming 
into Montana. Its course is through scenic, 
mountainous country, along the former home 
of the Sioux Indians. The stream is navigable 
as far as Fort Custer, near the scene of the 
Custer massacre in 1876. 

BIGLOW PAPERS, two series of humorous 
and satirical poems which at two critical times 
in the nation’s history made James Russell 
Lowell not only a popular poet but an impor¬ 
tant figure in the life of the country. The 
first, relating to the Mexican War, appeared 
in 1848; the second, dealing with the War of 
Secession and reconstruction, in 1867. Both 
were signed with the fictitious name of Hosea 
Biglow. Hosea, who wrote in Yankee dialect, 
possessed all of New England s clear-headed¬ 
ness and sharpness. “Editorial matter” by a 
fictitious Homer Wilbur reinforced the poems. 
The following quotations, among many others, 
have made a permanent place for themselves 

in American literature: 

This goin’ ware glory waits ye haint one agree¬ 
able featur. 

I don’t believe in princerple 

But oh I du in interest. 

An’ you’ve gut to git up airly 

Ef you want to take in God. 

BIGNONIA, big no' ni a, a family of plants, 
consisting both of shrubs and trees, which bear 


showy, trumpet-shaped flowers and are native 
to warm climates. One of the most interest¬ 
ing members of this family is the trumpet- 
flower, or trumpet-creeper, which is found in 
the United States from New Jersey and Penn¬ 
sylvania westward to Illinois and south to the 
Gulf States. This plant loves the moi^t wood¬ 
lands and fields, where its stem creeps along 
the ground or climbs over fences and bushes 
and often finds its way up the trunks of small 
trees. Because of its excellent climbing qual¬ 
ities the trumpet-creeper is cultivated as a 
porch vine. The beautiful, trumpet-shaped 
flowers are red within and tawny or orange 
outside, and are the favorite blossom of the 
humming bird; in order to reach the nectar 
this little bird must thrust its tiny head and 
shoulders well into the long tube. 

Another species of bignonia found commonly 
in the woodlands of Southern United States 
is the cross-vine, a shrub with a high-climbing 
stem and numerous flowers which are yellow 
within and reddish-brown without. This plant 
takes its name from a curious formation in 
the stem, a cross-section of which shows a 
conspicuous cross. The familiar catalpa tree 
is also a member of the bignonia family. 

BILBAO, bit ball' o, an important commer¬ 
cial center and port of Spain, on the River 
Nervion, about eight miles inland from the 
Bay of Biscay. It is a well-built city, capital 
of the province of Vizcaya, or Biscay, and lies 
on both banks of the river, which is crossed 
by five bridges. Bilbao has always been fa¬ 
mous for the manufacture of swords, which in 
the days of Shakespeare were commonly called 
bilbos. The river Nervion is navigable. The 
city exports wool, iron, fruit, oil, grain and 
wines; its imports are cotton and woolen 
goods, fish, spirits and machinery. Copper and 
iron are mined in the vicinity. Population in 
1910, 92,514. 

BILE, a yellowish, bitter fluid secreted by 
the liver. The bile is collected in the gall 
bladder, to which it passes through the biliary 
ducts. The amount formed varies from 
twenty-five to fifty ounces in twenty-four 
hours. From the gall bladder the bile passes 
to the small intestine, entering the duodenum 
by the cystic duct. The bile acts as an aid 
to digestion in the following ways: 

(1) It emulsifies the fats; that is, it breaks 
them up into small globules, so that they can 
pass into the lacteals. 

(2) It moistens the mucous membrane of the 
intestines so that it will absorb fats, 


BILL 


716 


BILLBOARD 


(3) It prevents a decomposition of food while 
it remains in the intestines. 

(4) It stimulates the muscles of the intestines, 
and so aids in the movement of their contents 
and prevents constipation. 

When the regular flow of bile is stopped the 
coloring matter is absorbed into the blood and 
causes .jaundice, a condition in which the 
whites of the eyes and the skin turn yellow. 
Gall stones result from a chronic mild infec¬ 
tion of the contents of the gall bladder; they 
are sometimes caused by the bacillus of 
typhoid fever. w.a.e. 

Related Subjects. The articles on the fol¬ 
lowing topics contain information that will be 
helpful in this connection : 

Digestion Jaundice 

Gall Bladder Liver 

Intestines 

BILL. When the men of the Middle Ages 
wrote an important document they closed it 
with a leaden or other seal called a bulla. 
Gradually the word came to be applied to the 
paper itself (see Bull), and in England and 
France the similar words bill and billet were 
applied to less formal writing as well. As a 
result Anglo-Saxons have at the present time 
several widely different sorts of written or 
printed papers which are called bills. Besides 
the bills of attainder, of exchange, of health, 
of lading, of rights and of sale, each of which 
is described in the succeeding pages of this 
volume, the most important forms are the fol¬ 
lowing. 

In Bookkeeping. When a promissory note is 
received by the proprietors of a business, or a 
draft or bill of exchange in their favor is ac¬ 
cepted, the bookkeeper enters them on his 
page for Bills Receivable. Notes given or 
drafts accepted by the firm are Bills Payable. 
See Promissory Note; Bill of Exchange; 
Bookkeeping. 

In Commerce. Besides the formal statement 
of money due, a bill with which everyone is 
familiar, there is the invoice or bill of goods, 
which contains a list of goods sold, with the 
price of each item, and is commonly sent out 
at the time of a sale. The usual form of in¬ 
voice is here shown: 

Kitchener, Ont., 

Sept. 22, 19— 

T. Campbell, Esq., 

Bay City, Mich. 

Bought of Matthews Co. Ltd. 

Terms 80 days. 

100 bbls. Baldwin apples @ $2.04 $204.00 
50 bbls. Northern Spies @ $2.86 143.00 

$347.00 


In Law. When anyone is accused formally 
and in accordance with legal procedure, the 
written statement is known as a true bill or 
a bill of indictment (see Jury, subhead Grand 
Jury). There are several other types of for¬ 
mal statements in legal practice which are 
called bills. 

In Law-Making. When we read of the 
Jones Bill or the Smith Bill being passed by 
the House, we know that a statute has been 
proposed by a Representative or Member of 
that name. Later, if it becomes law, it will 
be termed an act. See Law. 

BILLBOARD, a board erected for the dis¬ 
play of posters or other advertising matter, 
It is used to advertise nearly everything the 
public buys, from shoe polish and hooks and 
eyes to theaters, automobiles and hotels. Bill¬ 
boards are found in every village, town and 
city, and in the rural districts they are fre¬ 
quently prominent along railroads and at 
crossroads. In many cities nearly every vacant 
lot has billboards. They are usually built of 
wood, eight to twelve feet high, and of any 
length from a few feet to an entire block. 

The billboard is almost always unsightly, but 
sometimes the posters displayed have real 
artistic merit. This is especially true in Eng¬ 
land, France and Germany, where the art of 
designing large posters has received much at¬ 
tention. Many boards are now constructed so 
that they may be illuminated at night, either 
by colored electric lights which form a part of 
the design or by reflection from powerful 
lamps overhead. 

The erection of a billboard requires that the 
property-owner give his consent, but this is* 
not always sufficient. In many large cities the 
boards must conform to a standard size set 
by law, and frequently the consent of a ma¬ 
jority of the property-owners in the block is 
necessary. Usually the regulation of billboards 
is left to the local authorities, both in the 
United States and Canada as well as in Europe, 
but there are a few exceptions. Massachu¬ 
setts, for example, allows no billboards along 
public highways within the state. 

There is developing a consistent crusade 
against the billboard, with the hope of abol¬ 
ishing it. Some communities are almost a unit 
in their agreement not to purchase anything 
advertised in this manner in their vicinity. 
The theory on which such a crusade is based 
is that business interests will cease to disfig¬ 
ure the landscape when it is no longer profit¬ 
able to do so. See Advertising. 


Shipped Grand Trunk, 



BILLIARDS 


717 


BILLIARDS 



BILLIARDS, bil' yardz, a popular indoor 
game usually played on a rectangular table 
with three ivory balls, which are driven against 
one another by means of a rod called a cue. 
Billiards, as now played, is a scientific game, 


The Table and the Cues. Billiard tables are 
made in many sizes, but the size generally 
used is four feet six inches wide and nine feet 
long. In championship games between pro¬ 
fessionals, a table five feet wide and ten feet 


IN THE GAME OF BILLIARDS 

(a) Position of left or right hand, showing bridge; ( b ) cushion and ball 


requiring much skill and practice, and like 
many other games has won the attention of 
enthusiasts who have become professional play¬ 
ers. So skilful are many of them that special 
rules have been devised as handicaps. The 
average amateur, however, finds ordinary bil¬ 
liards sufficiently difficult and interesting. 

Before the game begins, the players bank 
for the lead; this is done by driving the balls 
against the end cushion so that they rebound 
toward the other end. The player whose ball 
approaches nearer to the head cushion on the 
rebound has the choice of playing first or of 
allowing his opponent to play first. He may also 
pick out one of the three balls as his cue ball, 
this being the one which he drives with his 
cue against the other two. One of the balls 
is red and two are white, but one of the white 
is distinguished by a black spot. The two 
cue balls are used in rotation throughout the 
game. If any player uses the wrong ball he 
is usually penalized by the loss of his turn. 

To begin the game the red ball and one of 
the white balls must be placed on the two 
spots near the ends of the table. The red ball 
is placed on the spot at the foot of the table, 
and one of the white balls at the head. The 
first player places his cue ball anywhere on 
the table back of or to the side of the white 
ball of his opponent. He then tries to hit 
the red ball at the other end of the table in 
such a way that his cue ball will rebound and 
hit the third ball. If he succeeds he makes 
a carom, or billiard, and scores one point. He 
may then drive his ball at either of the others, 
and may continue to play until he misses a 
carom. Then his opponent, driving his own 
ball at either of the others, plays until he 
misses. The players shoot alternately until 
the game is ended. Any number of points 
may be agreed upon as constituting a game. 


long is sometimes used. The bed of the table 
is a tablet of slate or marble, covered with a 
fine green broadcloth. At the sides and ends 
of the table are cloth-covered rubber cushions, 
from which the balls rebound. Billiards may 



A BILLIARD TABLE 


also be played on tables with pockets at the 
corners and at the middle of the sides, but this 
style is usually reserved for pool (which see). 

A good billiard cue, made of ash or maple, 
should weigh about a pound, though the heavier 
cues run to twenty or twenty-two ounces. The 
handle, or butt end, is about an inch and one- 
half in diameter, and the cue tapers down to 
a tip from one-fourth to one-half inch in 
thickness. Glued to the small end is a button 
or tip, made of two pieces of leather; the un¬ 
der piece is hard and flat, while the upper or 
outer piece is springy and spongy, thus giving 
a “jump” to the ball. 

Billiard Balls. The best billiard balls are 
made of solid ivory, but cheaper ones are of 
various imitations. When an ivory tusk reaches 
the manufacturer it is carefully examined for 
flaws. If it is perfect it is then sawed into 
blocks two and one-half to three inches square. 
The blocks are then cut into a rough spherical 
shape, and laid aside for six months to dry. 
When the ivory is perfectly dry it is chiseled 
smooth and spherical. Lastly it is polished by 
machinery which gives it a rubbing with chalk, 
chamois skin and soft leather. See Ivory. 




































BILLINGS 


718 


BILL OF HEALTH 


All particles of ivory sawdust and shavings 
are carefully saved. They are treated with 
various chemicals, and are molded into any 
shape desired under enormous hydraulic pres¬ 
sure. Cheap grades of billiard balls are some¬ 
times made of such a composition, as are 
many other small articles. The process of 
manufacture is so nearly perfect that only an 
expert can distinguish the composition from 
the solid ivory. w.f.z. 

Consult Modern Billiards; Daly and Harris’s 
Daly’s Billiard Book. For the English game, see 
Roberts’s The Game of Billiards. 

BILLINGS, Josh. See Shaw, Henry 
Wheeler. 

BILLINGS, bit'ingz, Mont., the county 
seat of Yellowstone County, is in the south- 
central part of the state, 238 miles east and 
south of Helena, on the Yellowstone River 
and on the Burlington, the Great Northern 
and Northern Pacific railroads. The area ex¬ 
ceeds two square miles. In 1910 the popula¬ 
tion was 10,031; in 1914 it had increased to 
13,020. 

Cattle and sheep raising are extensive indus¬ 
tries in a large territory surrounding Billings, 
and from the city are shipped great consign¬ 
ments of cattle, sheep and wool. It is one of 
the most important inland wool markets in 
the United States. In the vicinity are coal, 
marble and limestone deposits, and among the 
industrial establishments are railroad shops, a 
beet-sugar factory, flour and lumber mills and 
brickyards. The city has a county courthouse, 
city hall and public library. 

BILL OF ATTAINDER, a bill or statute 
declaring a person to be guilty of an offense 
named and his property appropriated or confis¬ 
cated. It is an act of a law-making body which 
pronounces a verdict of guilt upon a man for 
some alleged offense without giving him a legal 
trial, or even a hearing. Under such a bill 
a person found guilty could neither receive 
nor transmit by inheritance, neither could he 
testify in any court or claim any rights or 
legal protection. The Constitution of the 
United States declares that no state shall pass 
any bill of attainder, and furthermore explicitly 
assures any accused person the right to a fair 
and speedy trial. Bills of attainder were abol¬ 
ished in England and its possessions in 1870. 
See Attainder. 

BILL OF EXCHANGE, a written order by 
one person directed to another person, request¬ 
ing him to pay to a third a certain sum of 
money. The word person, as used in this case, 


may refer to an individual, a bank or any other 
corporation. The writer of the bill of exchange 
is called the drawer, or maker; the person who 
is asked to pay the fixed sum is the drawee; 
the person to whom the money is to be paid 
is the payee. 

Technically, there is not the slightest differ¬ 
ence between a bill of exchange and that com¬ 
mercial paper called a draft. Common usage, 
however, has in a measure established slightly- 
different meanings; so to-day when a bill of 
exchange is correctly referred to, it means a 
draft drawn by a person of one country upon 
a drawee in another country; in such case the 
word exchange, while its ordinary meaning of 
transfer of money remains, is also significant of 
the value of money of one country in terms of 
the other country’s monetary unit. In ex¬ 
planation of the latter statement we speak of 
the rate of exchange between the United States 
and England as being $4.86 for £1. Accepting 
this view of a bill of exchange, a draft then 
becomes an order for transfer of money be¬ 
tween people of the same country. In the 
days before the term draft became current, bills 
of exchange were termed either foreign or 
domestic. 

Form of a Bill of Exchange. Only in one 

respect does the form of a bill of exchange 
differ from the ordinary draft. Triplicate 
copies are made in interest of security because 
of long distances required for transmission and 
dangers incident thereto. The first, or original 
copy, is sent to the payee; the second is for 
the purpose of presentation to the drawee, and 
the third is retained in the hands of the drawer. 
The wording of the first, or original copy, may 
be as follows: 

$500 

New York, N. Y., Dec. 22, 1916. 

At sight of this first of exchange (second and 
third unpaid) pay to William Jones, or order, 
five hundred dollars ($500), for value received, 
and charge to the account of 

John Knight. 

To Lester Morgan, London, England. 

As soon as the drawee has honored the re¬ 
quest made upon him by paying the amount 
demanded, the other two copies of the bill of 
exchange automatically become null and void. 

Further particulars of the laws relating to 
bills of exchange will be found in the article 
Draft. 

BILL OF HEALTH, a certificate signed by 
port authorities, certifying the state of health 


BILL OF LADING 


719 


BILL OF SALE 


of a ship’s crew and passengers at the time 
the ship sails. If no infectious disease is known 
to exist the master of the vessel receives what 
is called a “clean bill of health.” A “sus¬ 
pected bill” is given when disease is feared, and 
a “foul bill” when it is known to exist. At the 
port of arrival the vessel is held in quarantine 
(which see) until the state of health of those 
on board is ascertained. 

A “clean bill of health” is now often used 
to indicate that a person suspected of some 
wrong doing has been proven to be innocent. 

BILL OF LADING, a written receipt for 
goods consigned to a common carrier for ship¬ 
ment, either on land or sea. A bill of lading 
is not merely a receipt for the goods to be 
transported, but it is a contract between the 
shipper and the carrier by which the latter 
agrees, for a stated consideration and under 
specified conditions, to deliver the goods to 
their destination. The term was originally 
applied only to agreements made with ship¬ 
owners or captains, but now it is also given 
without distinction to receipts issued by other 
common carriers. Such receipts issued by rail¬ 
ways are sometimes called way bills. 

A complete bill of lading should mention the 
name and address of the shipper or consignor, 
and the name and address of the consignee, the 
person to whom delivery is to be made. It 
should name the railway or railways over which 
shipment is made; on the sea the name of 
the ship and of the company which owns it are 
necessary. The goods should be described as 
accurately as possible, the number of cases or 
packages and the character of the contents 
being noted. If there are numbers or other 
marks of identification these should be re¬ 
corded. It is further customary to state the 
value of the shipment, as the charge for trans¬ 
portation is based partly on value and partly 
on weight or bulk. The charges for transporta¬ 
tion, whether paid in advance or payable on 
delivery, must be mentioned. 

A bill of lading has some of the characteris¬ 
tics of a negotiable paper. While the goods 
are in transit the owner may endorse the bill 
to a purchaser, who assumes, in law, all the 
rights and responsibilities of the original con¬ 
signee. Goods in transit cannot themselves be 
transferred, but ownership in them may be 
changed by a transfer of the bill of lading. 
Only the owner of the goods, however, may 
endorse it. A finder or thief of a bill, even 
though it is endorsed in blank or to bearer, 
cannot claim title. See Common Carrier. 


BILL OF RIGHTS, a phrase used rather 
loosely to mean an enactment or agreement 
setting forth some fundamental right of the 
people. When the term is used without modifi¬ 
cation or explanation it is usually the English 
Bill of Rights of 1689 which is referred to. 
When William and Mary came to the throne 
in 1688 they were forced to assent to a Declara¬ 
tion of Rights, which guaranteed to all the 
principles of political liberty now established 
in the English system of government. It is 
one of the great instruments on which the 
English constitution rests, the others being the 
Magna Charter and the Petition of Rights 
(which see). 

Most of the states of the United States have 
in their constitutions bills of rights, which 
make clear just what the state may or may not 
do, and define the inalienable rights of the 
citizens. Because the first ten Amendments to 
the Constitution of the United States, pro¬ 
posed by the first Congress which met after 
the adoption of that instrument, had as their 
object a more definite statement of the rights 
of the citizens, they have received collectively 
the name of “bill of rights.” The enactment 
of these Amendments had been promised at the 
hands of the First Congress; it is believed the 
new American states would not have ratified 
the Constitution in the form in which it was 
presented to them if such an understanding 
had not been reached. 

BILL OF SALE, a formal statement of the 
sale or transfer of personal property. There 
is a recognized legal form in which a bill of 
sale should be written, which may be pur¬ 
chased at any stationer’s store. However, any 
clear and definitely-written statement of trans¬ 
fer of rights and interest in fully described 
property is accepted as legal evidence of sale. 
A bill of sale is often given to a creditor as 
security for borrowed money, and empowers 
the receiver to sell the goods named in it if 
the loan is not repaid at the appointed time. 
The following is a form of bill of sale used in 
connection with the sale of ordinary property: 

Know all Men by These Presents, That I, 
James Brown, of Springfield, Ill., in considera¬ 
tion of Eight Hundred Seventy Dollars ($870), 
the receipt of which is hereby acknowledged, do 
hereby grant, sell, transfer and deliver unto John 
Howard the following property, to-wit: 


Six Horses. 

. @ 

$100. 

o 

o 

Two Buggies .... 

. @ 

90. 

... 180 

Two Harness .... 

. @ 

25. 

... 50 

Two Plows . 

. @ 

20. 

... 40 

Total . 











BILOXI 


720 


BIMETALLISM 


To have and to hold the said goods and chat¬ 
tels unto the said John Howard, his executors, 
administrators and assigns, to his own proper 
use and benefit forever. And I, the said James 
Brown, do avow myself to be the true and lawful 
owner of said goods and chattels; that I have 
full power, good right and lawful authority to 
dispose of said goods and chattels in manner 
aforesaid; and that I will warrant and defend 
the same against the lawful claims and demands 
of all persons whomsoever. 

In witness whereof, I, the said James Brown, 
have hereunto set my hand this 12th day of June, 
1916. 

James Brown. 

(Witness)- 

BILOXI, bilok' si, Miss., lays claim to dis¬ 
tinction as a favorite watering place and as a 
great market for sea foods. It is in Harrison 
County, in the southeastern corner of Missis¬ 
sippi, and is situated on a peninsula formed by 
the Black Bay of Biloxi, north and east of the 
city, and the Mississippi Sound, both parts of 
the Gulf of Mexico. A chain of islands in the 
Gulf creates the Sound, a quiet, protected 
strip of water for all manner of craft sailing 
between Biloxi and Mobile, sixty-one miles 
northeast, and New Orleans, eightjr miles west. 
Biloxi covers an area of six square miles. It is 
served by the Louisville & Nashville Railroad 
and by an interurban line for a distance of 
twenty-five miles along the coast. The popula¬ 
tion was 8,049 in 1910; in 1914 it was 9,147. 

More shrimps are caught and canned in the 
twelve factories in Biloxi than at any other 
city in America. The oyster production, both 
raw and canned, is fast taking a leading place. 
The combined oyster, fish and shrimp business 
amounts to $2,500,000 annually. The sea food 
industry has required three others of im¬ 
portance, shipbuilding, artificial ice plants and 
box-making. Biloxi is an attractive city. Mag¬ 
nificent trees, live oaks, pines, magnolias and 
palms, are part of an abundant vegetation. 
Wide streets extend in shell-paved drives fifty 
miles in length. A marble Federal building, 
costing $175,000, was completed in 1907. 
Beauvoir, the former house of Jefferson Davis, 
near Biloxi, is now a home for Confederate 
veterans. 

Across the Bay from the present city, d’Iber¬ 
ville established in 1699 Fort Maurepas, the 
first French post in the Gulf region, and soon 
after a settlement near the fort named Biloxi, 
from the Biloxi Indians. After a fire, the first 
site was abandoned and a permanent settlement 
made where the present city stands. For a 
number of years it was the seat of government 
of the Colony of Louisiana. In 1872 it was in¬ 


corporated as a village and in 1896 received a 
city charter. Water is supplied by artesian 
wells, owned and operated by the city, h.h.r. 

BIMETALLISM, bimet'aliz’vi, a monetary 
system in which two metals, gold and silver, 
are legal tender for any amount. The ratio 
of value between the two metals, under such 
a system, is fixed either by law, if the system 



CHART OF SILVER VALUES 

In 1873 the silver in a silver dollar of United 
States coinage was worth 100 cents in gold. The 
line in the chart shows its depreciation until 
1915. Later its value increased to nearly 75 
cents. The dot indicates value on June 1, 1916. 

is confined to a single country, or by inter¬ 
national agreement if it applies to several 
nations. The supporters of bimetallism argue 
that a fixed legal ratio will prevent nearly all 
fluctuation in the prices or market values of the 
two metals. If this were true, the prices of 
commodities would become practically stable 
and foreign exchange would be greatly simpli¬ 
fied, whether other countries used a single or a 
double standard. 

The opponents of bimetallism, who now in¬ 
clude most economists, assert that the argu¬ 
ments for such a system are false. They 
claim, apparently with justice, that the cheaper 
metal will drive the dearer from use (see 
Gresham’s Law). An example taken from 
history will make their point clear. In the 
United States in 1896 the Democratic party 
platform demanded the “free and unlimited 
coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1.” As a 
matter of fact, silver in 1896 was not worth 
16 to 1, and its market price later fell to 25 
and even 30 to 1; that is, it required thirty 
ounces of silver to buy one ounce of gold. If 
the Democrats had won the election of 1896, 
free silver coinage would probably have been 
established. Before many years all the money 
of the country would have been silver, for 
fifty cents worth of silver, bought in the open 
market, could then have been exchanged at the 
mint for a coin stamped one dollar. Gold 
would have been withdrawn from circulation, 
for a dollar’s worth of gold could have been 
exchanged intrinsically for two dollars in silver. 
The opponents of bimetallism further argued 
that even if the system were logical, and if both 
metals remained in circulation, there was no 
proof that the fluctuating prices of commodities 



















BINDER TWINE 


721 


BINGEN 


would become stable. The total output of the 
precious metals might fluctuate as much as 
the output of one alone. 

Bimetallism was for a century a political 
issue in France and other European countries. 
In the United States it was a burning issue 
only during the last quarter of the nineteenth 
century. This was an era of falling prices, of 
industrial depression and lack of work. The 
industrial and agricultural classes seized on 
bimetallism as a remedy, not because they were 
sure it was right but because they felt that the 
gold standard was wrong. The discovery of 
new sources of gold supply in various parts of 
the world was followed by a gradual rise in 
prices which removed the causes of complaints. 
Bimetallism is now a dead issue, not because 
its theories were entirely disproved, but be¬ 
cause there is no need for it. e.d.f. 

BINDER TWINE, the string with which 
grain in the harvest fields is fastened into bun¬ 
dles by mechanical binders, is an article of 
an importance which few people realize. Be¬ 
cause of the almost universal employment of 
machinery in the wheat fields of the United 
States and Canada and its growing popularity 
in Russia and Argentina, a failure in the supply 
of twine at any harvest would mean the loss 
of millions of bushels of the grain from which 
the world s bread is made. 

About ninety per cent of all binder twine is 
made from the leaf fiber of the sisal, a plant 
described in another volume of this work, 
which grows mainly in Yucatan. Most of the 
rest is spun from the fiber of the manila tree, 
a banana-like plant of the Philippines. Though 
twine manufacturing companies have spent 
time and money on agricultural experiments in 
the attempt to find a substitute for manila or 
sisal which will grow in the United States or 
Canada, they have not yet found one which 
resists insects. About 200,000 tons of sisal are 
needed each year for the twine of Canada and 
the United States. 

Almost all binder twine is made entirely by 
machinery. Combs traveling on a belt pick out 
the foreign matter and straighten the fibers, 
delivering them in a loose but continuous coil. 
A length of this coil is placed in a receptacle 
in front of each spinning machine, to which it is 
automatically fed, and which takes just enough 
fibers to form the proper size strand, and twists 
them into a firm twine. The balling machines 
then finish the work. 

BINDWEED, the name of a group of plants 
of the morning glory family, the creeping, 
46 


twining stems of which cling so tightly to other 
plants as often to cause their death through 
suffocation. Thus they are aptly named. One 
of the most familiar 
bindweeds is the hedge 
bindweed, or wild morn¬ 
ing glory, found com¬ 
monly along the road¬ 
side, trailing over walls 
or on the edge of the 
woods, both in Europe 
and throughout the 
Middle and Eastern 
United States and lower 
Canada. The stem is 
somewhat hairy and 
grows from three to ten 
feet long. The blos¬ 
soms are beautiful in color, pink with white 
stripes, and have the shape of a funnel with a 
flaring mouth. The tubes of these flowers are 
so long that only long-tongued bees and other 
insects can reach the stores of nectar within, 
and the blossoms remain open only in the 
sunshine or on bright moonlight nights. 

The field bindweed is a troublesome weed 
that came from Europe and now grows from 
Nova Scotia and Ontario southward to New 
Jersey and westward to Kansas. Its stem is 
rarely more than two feet in length, but it 
trails along the ground in the fields of the 
farmer with a persistency that makes it any¬ 
thing but a welcome visitor. If the weed is 
kept from going to seed and the land is culti¬ 
vated in the late fall, the plant may be con¬ 
trolled in a few seasons. Kerosene oil applied 
to the roots will kill the plant. 

BINGEN, bing' en, a town of Germany 
which has attained a place in literature and in 
legend. Mrs. Caroline Norton’s world-famous 
ballad has made the name a household word; 
it begins as follows: 

A soldier of the legion lay dying in Algiers, 
There was lack of woman’s nursing, there was 
dearth of woman’s tears, 

and closes with the refrain— 

For I was born at Bingen, fair Bingen on the 
Rhine. 

Also the legend of the Mouse Tower, on a rock 
in the Rhine, is one of the most famous tales 
which has come down from the Middle Ages. 
According to this tale the hard-hearted Bishop 
Hatto, having caused hundreds of poor people 
to be burned to death in a barn to avoid 
feeding them, fled to the Mouse Tower and 






BINGHAMTON 


722 


BIOGRAPHY 


was there devoured by rats and mice. This 
tower, built before the year 1000, was restored 
in 1856 and now serves as a signal station for 
ships. 

Bingen is in the Duchy of Hesse, at the point 
where the Nahe joins the Rhine. The district 
is noted for the culture of the vine, and there 
is a large trade in wine. There are also im¬ 
portant manufactures of starch and tobacco 
products. Opposite the city, on a bluff above 
the Rhine, stands a great monument com¬ 
memorating the founding of the German Em¬ 
pire in 1871. Population in 1910, 10,200. 

BINGHAMTON, bing'amtun, N. Y., the 
county seat of Broome County, is in the south- 
central part of the state, 215 miles northwest 
of New York City and eighty miles south and 
east of Syracuse. It is attractively situated at 
an altitude of 867 feet, at the junction of the 
Susquehanna and Chenango rivers, which are 
crossed by several bridges within the city 
limits. It is on the Erie, the Delaware & Hud¬ 
son and the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western 
railroads; interurban electric lines connect with 
various suburbs, some of which have important 
manufacturing interests. The area is nearly 
ten square miles. In 1910 the population was 
48,443; in 1915 it was 53,082. 

Prominent features of Binghamton include 
Ross Park (100 acres) and Ely Park (134 
acres), O’Neil Park, Industrial Exposition 
grounds, a Federal building, city hall, public 
library, supreme court law library, state 
armory, an opera house and the armory the¬ 
ater. The Binghamton State Hospital for the 
Insane, and Susquehanna Valley Orphans’ 
Home and Saint Mary’s Home are among the 
leading institutions of the city. 


Binghamton is an important manufacturing 
center; among the chief factory products are 
boots and shoes, tobacco and cigars, cameras 
and photographic supplies, carriages and car¬ 
riage trimmings, spices, leather goods, motors, 
clocks, furniture (Morris chairs a specialty), 
electrical apparatus, clothing, cotton fabrics, 
medicine, paper bags and envelopes, glass, pot¬ 
tery, etc. The total value of factory products 
is about $18,000,000 a year, and is increasing 
at a rapid rate. 

Settled in 1787, and known as Chenango 
Point until 1800, Binghamton was then platted 
and named in honor of William Binghamton, 
an owner of land in the neighborhood. The 
place was incorporated as a village in 1834 and 
became a city in 1867. 

BINOMIAL, by no' mi al, in algebra, a quan¬ 
tity consisting of two terms or members, con¬ 
nected by the sign + or — ; thus a+6 or a—b 
is a binomial. Either term of a binomial may 
itself contain two or more numbers, as 
(x~f-y) —( y — x — z ). One of the most interest¬ 
ing and important operations in all algebra 
is the binomial theorum, perfected by Newton, 
b}^ which a binomial may be raised to any 
power. See Algebra. 

BIOGENESIS, by o jen'e sis, the theory 
that all living things come from living things 
similar to themselves, as the chick from the 
egg and the plant from the seed. This theory 
accounts for all life from the lowest to the 
highest forms, both animal and vegetable. It 
is now the theory generally accepted by biolo¬ 
gists, and is opposed to the old theory which 
accounted for each form of life by supposing it 
to have originated from a separate creation. 
See Biology. 




IOGRAPHY, which is derived from two 
Greek words meaning life and to write, 
means literally the written lives of men and 
women. It is a very important department of 
literature. Biographies range in length from 
what is probably the shortest one ever written, 
the Biblical “And Enoch walked with God; 


and he was not, for God took him,” to lengthy 
works of many volumes which touch upon 
philosophy, upon science, upon history. 

Development of Biographic Writing. It 
seems natural that biographical writing should 
be one of the oldest branches of literature, for 
there has never been a time when men have 













































































BIOGRAPHY 


723 


BIOGRAPHY 


not been interested in the lives of other men; 
but the earliest writings of this type were very 
simple, like the accounts of the patriarchs in 
the Bible. The myths and legends of the 
Greeks and Romans were but brief biographies 
of their gods and heroes, usually written to 
bring out some one point of character. The 
more formal biography was then, as it remained 
fo’’ centuries, little more than an account of 
the happenings in the life of a man; but never¬ 
theless ancient Greece and Rome produced 
some examples of biographical writing which 
in their way have never been surpassed. The 
Agricola of Tacitus, for instance, is beyond 
criticism, while the parallel Lives oj Plutarch 
have had an influence on modern literature 
which it is difficult to overestimate. 

The Middle Ages had little biography except 
the lives of saints and martyrs. These works 
did not strive for historic accuracy, and it was 
not until the seventeenth century that biog¬ 
raphy in the modern sense really appeared. 
That an appreciation of the influence of such 
writings did not take an earlier hold upon 
the people is to be much deplored, for had 
the sixteenth century felt the keen interest 
that the twentieth does, in the lives of its 
poets, for instance, the world would have much 
valuable information which now it lacks. To¬ 
day every “idle singer of an empty day” has 
the minute details of his life chronicled in the 
magazines, and of all writers of any note 
exhaustive biographies are sure to appear; but 
of Shakespeare, the world’s greatest poet, there 
is no biography—not even so much as to make 
absolutely certain that he was the author of 
the plays ascribed to him. 

Important Biographies. Preeminent among 
English biographies is Boswell’s Life of Samuel 
Johnson, and second perhaps is Lockhart’s 
Scott. Forster’s Dickens, Mrs. Gaskell’s Char¬ 
lotte Bronte, Cross’s George Eliot and Tenny¬ 
son’s Life by his son are all excellent examples 
of biographical writing. The most interesting 
and famous American biography is of the type 
known as autobiography —the life of a person 
written by himself. This is Benjamin Frank¬ 
lin’s Autobiography. 

Biographical material has also entered largely 
into the writing of fiction. Sometimes a slight 
sketch of some real person is introduced by an 
author into his novels, as when Dickens in 
Bleak House pictures Walter Savage Landor 
and Leight Hunt as Mr. Boythorne and Harold 
Skimpole; sometimes an entire novel is woven 
about the career either of the writer himself or 


of some person prominent in public life. Thus 
Goethe wrote of himself in The Sorrows of 
Werther and Dickens made use of many of the 
events of his own life in David Copperfield; 
Meredith described in Diana of the Crossways 
the celebrated Carolyn Norton, a granddaugh¬ 
ter of Sheridan; Gertrude Atherton wrote of 
Alexander Hamilton in The Conqueror, and 
Maurice Hewlett gave a more or less distorted 
picture of Lord Byron in his Bcndix. In read¬ 
ing such works allowance must always be 
made for the fact that after all the author is 
writing fiction and not biography, and there¬ 
fore may feel free to take certain liberties with 
his material. 

Biography for Children. If the teacher or 
parent of a child ever hears him say, “I don’t 
like to read biography—I don’t care for dives’ 
of people,” that teacher or parent may be sure 
that the lives have simply been presented to 
him in the wrong way. For everyone, young 
or old, is naturally interested in “lives”—if 
they are shown him from the right angle. What, 
indeed, are most of the stories which so delight 
children but biography, presented from the 
point of view which appeals to a child? Blue¬ 
beard, Dick Whittington and His Cat, The 
Ugly Duckling, “fairy tales” though they may 
be, are but biographies which the child feels 
should be true, even if they are not; while as 
regards less legendary heroes—Joseph, Daniel, 
David, King Arthur, the Cid, Roland—any 
child will listen to stories of them told over and 
over again, and then ask to hear them once 
more. 

We expect a child to like stories of these 
heroes; we pick out the points that will strike 
the child’s fancy, fire his imagination, hold his 
interest. But our attitude changes when we 
come to consider other men whom tradition has 
not marked as children’s heroes. “Why,” we 
say, “should a child be interested in the Apostle 
Paul? A boy or girl does not care particularly 
for preaching and for missionary work.” And 
we forget that Paul had, if ever a man had, just 
those experiences that children love to hear 
about; that he was “in deaths oft, ... in 
journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils 
of robbers, ... in perils of the wilderness, 
in perils of the sea.” Or we think again, “Of 
course a child doesn’t care to read about Dick¬ 
ens or Longfellow or Hawthorne. Of what par¬ 
ticular interest is it to him that one man wrote 
The Tale of Two Cities and another man wrote 
The Marble Faun?” 

But even in those biographies which at first 


BIOGRAPHY 


724 


BIOGRAPHY 


sight seem adapted only to older people, a little 
study will almost always reveal much that will 
interest a child. The “things that happen” 
must of course be emphasized, especially child¬ 
hood events, while all moralizing must be 
omitted. There may be in such a biography 
an apparent lack of proportion, but it is simply 
an exaggeration of some points, not a distor¬ 
tion. As a child grows older and gradually 
widens his interests, he will learn other facts to 
fit on to and fill out those he has already 
learned; but he will not need to unlearn any¬ 
thing of what he has remembered. 

Biography in the School. The teacher finds 
many uses for biography besides the merely 
intellectual one, for there is nothing so helpful 
in character-building as well-selected, well-pre¬ 
sented biographical material. This does not 
mean that the admonition, “Do thou likewise,” 
is to be given every time a forceful act or an 
attractive character is presented; in fact, it 
means quite the opposite. If the factors that 
made a man great or good are put impressively 
before him, the child will have an instinctive 
desire to imitate them. A knowledge of the 
early hardships of Dickens, for instance, and 
of his struggles to educate himself is almost 
certain to waken in a child some appreciation 
of his greater opportunities; the story of Wolfe 
or of Washington contains a never-dulled spur 
toward achievement; the wonderful career of 
Florence Nightingale is a striking lesson in the 
benefits of preparation for life work. These 
illustrations might be multiplied almost end¬ 
lessly, but every teacher and parent will have 
in mind heroes or heroines of his own. whom 
he can present sympathetically to the chil¬ 
dren. 

The Biography Method of Studying History. 

“History is but the essence of innumerable 
biographies,” wrote Carlyle, and the deeper a 
student delves into history, the more thor¬ 
oughly is he convinced that this is true. Some 
men seem tq gather unto themselves the entire 
history of their times; the story of Rome in 
its late republican days was the story of 
Caesar; France for almost a generation had 
almost no history save that of Napoleon; while 
the trend of affairs in England during a mo¬ 
mentous period is best understood through a 
study of the life of Cromwell. In other eras no 
one man stands out as clearly, and it is the 
reaction of many less dominant figures upon 
each other which works out the history of such 
periods. 

To come to concrete examples, a student 


might possess himself very satisfactorily of the 
history of the early national period in the 
United States by studying the lives of Wash¬ 
ington, John Adams, Hamilton and Jefferson. 
If the history of Germany from 1860 to 1880, 
for instance, be the topic, it may be approached 
through the Jives of Emperor William I, Bis¬ 
marck and Napoleon III of France. To most 
students this biographical method is very inter¬ 
esting, for it introduces that personal touch 
which makes history a living subject. 

How to Write a Brief Biography. No hard 
and fast rules can be laid down for this, for 
every person looks at the subject from a differ¬ 
ent angle, but certain general directions can be 
given which will be of use to school children 
in writing such brief biographies as they may 
be called upon to produce. First of all, an out¬ 
line is most helpful. It need not be elaborate, 
but it should contain every important point 
which the writer intends to touch upon. The 
natural method in writing a biography is to 
proceed chronologically, and, simple as that 
direction may seem, it is one that is frequently 
overlooked by young writers. One apparent 
exception should be made to this rule: the 
great achievement of the man under consid¬ 
eration should be briefly noted very near the 
beginning of the biography, that the one who 
reads may know why he is important enough to 
deserve study. Later it may be dwelt upon 
more at length. 

One rule cannot be too strongly insisted 
upon—a biography must not be a mere cata¬ 
logue of dates. No one finds interesting a 
story of a man’s life which proceeds thus: 
“He was bom in 1847. In 1853 he started to 
school and in 1865 to college. He graduated 
in 1869 and two years later moved to Phila¬ 
delphia.” That is the mere skeleton, the 
framework about which interesting events and 
anecdotes are to be grouped. Above all, one 
thing should be kept in mind, and that is the 
crowning achievement; and every happening, 
however trivial, which helped to shape the 
man’s character or ability toward that end 
should be pointed out. In Nathaniel Haw¬ 
thorne’s life, for instance, the years spent in 
the Maine woods were quiet, unproductive 
years, but no one could understand Haw¬ 
thorne’s later life, his intense reserve and his 
unsociable habits, without a knowledge of that 
formative period. 

Some men’s lives, from the point of view 
of a biographer, do not end with their death. 
Those classical biographies known as . the Gos- 


BIOGRAPHY 


725 


BIOGRAPHY 


pels chronicle the entire career of Jesus of 
Nazareth, but the account of his life is not 
complete without that supplementary book 
called the Acts oj the Apostles which gives the 
account of the carrying on of his work by 
those whom he inspired. Thus the life of 
Dickens cannot be regarded as complete with¬ 
out a discussion of those humane reforms 
which have taken place since his death, but 
which he initiated. a.mc c. 

Related Subjects. These volumes are partic¬ 
ularly rich in biography, and to make reference 
to it easier and more effective, the biographical 
articles are all indexed. Many of them, as indi¬ 
cated below, are listed under special depart¬ 
ments ; the others are given here. 


BUSINESS MEN AND FINANCIERS 


Allan, Sir Hugh 
Armour, Philip D. 
Ashburton, Alexander 
Baring, Lord 
Astor, John Jacob 
Astor, William B. 

Astor, William Waldorf 
Belmont, August 
Carnegie, Andrew 
Cooke, Jay 
Field, Marshall 
Field, Cyrus West 
Fish, Stuyvesant 
Gould, George Jay 
Gould, Jay 
Green, Hetty H. 
Harriman, Edward H. 
Hill, James J. 


Hirsch, Maurice, 

Baron de 
Law, John 

Mackay, John William 
Morgan, John Pierpont 
Plant, Morton F. 
Pullman, George M. 
Rockefeller, John D. 
Rothschild, Mayer A. 
Rothschild, Lionel 
Sage, Russell 
Schwab, Charles M. 
Stanford, Leland 
Vanderbilt, Cornelius 
Vanderbilt, William 
Henry 

Vanderbilt, William K. 
Wanamaker, John 


See Drama. 


ACTORS 


ASTRONOMERS 

See Astronomy. 


AUTHORS-MISCELLANEOUS 


Adams, Charles Francis 
Asbjornsen, Peter 
Christen 
Baedeker, Karl 
Boswell, James 
Brandes, Georg M. C. 
Burke, Edmund 
Butterworth, Hezekiah 
Caedmon 
Carpenter, Frank 
George 

Chesterfield, Earl of 
Collier, John Payne 
Curtis, George William 
Custis, George Wash¬ 
ington P. 

Dana, Richard Henry 
Diderot, Denis 
Dodge, Mary Abigail 
Dole, Nathan Haskell 
Dowden, Edward 
France, Anatole 
Franklin, Benjamin 
Frechette, Louis H. 
Furness, Horace 
Howard 
Gosse, Edmund 
Grady, Henry Woodfin 
Hale, Edward Everett 
Heine, Heinrich 
Johnson, Samuel 
Lafontaine, Jean de 
Landor, Walter Savage 
Lang, Andrew 
Le Moine, James 
MacPherson 
Lewes, George 
Malory, Sir Thomas 
Mandeville, Sir John 
Martineau, Harriet 
Matthews, James 
Brander 

Mitchell, Donald Grant 
Morley, Henry 


Morley, John 
Oliphant, Laurence 
O’Rell, Max 
Ossoli, Sarah Margaret 
Fuller 

Paine, Thomas 
Pepys, Samuel 
Pliny the Elder 
Pliny the Younger 
Proudhon, Pierre Joseph 
Quintilian 

Richter, Johann Paul F. 
Riis, Jacob A. 

Roosevelt, Theodore 
Rousseau, Jean Jacques 
Sainte-Beuve, Charles 
Augustin 

Scudder, Henry Elisha 
Sheldon, Charles M. 
Smiles, Samuel 
Smith, Goldwin 
Smollett, Tobias George 
Southey, Robert 
Sparks, Jared 
Stael-Holstein, 

Baroness de 
Steele, Sir Richard 
Stoddard, Richard 
Henry 
Strabo 

Swift, Jonathan 
Taine, Hippolyte 
Adolphe 

Tarbell, Ida Minerva 
Taylor, Bayard 
Thomas 4 Kempis 
Tieck, Ludwig 
Voltaire 

Walpole, Sir Robert 
Walton, Izaak 
Warner, Charles Dudley 
Wilde, Oscar 
Wilson, John 
Winter, William 


CARTOONISTS 

See Cartoon. 

CHEMISTS 


See Chemistry. 

CHURCHMEN 

See Protestants; Roman Catholic Church. 
DRAMATISTS 


See Drama. 

ECONOMISTS 

See Political Economy. 


EDITORS 


Bennett, James Gordon 
Bennett, James Gordon, 
Jr. 

Bok, Edward W. 
Bourassa, Henri 
Brisbane, Arthur 
Brown, George 
Bryan, William Jen¬ 
nings 

Carter-Cotton,Francis 
L. 

Dana, Charles A. 
Douglass, Frederick 
Garrison, William Lloyd 
Greeley, Horace 
Hapgood, Norman 
Hearst, William R. 
Hincks, Sir Francis 


Howe, Joseph 
Howell, Clark 
Labouchere, Henry D. 
Macdonald, James A. 
Mackenzie, William L. 
Northcliffe, Alfred 
Charles Harmsworth, 
First Baron 
Pulitzer, Joseph 
Robertson, John R. 
Rochefort, Victor H. 
Scott, Walter 
Smith, Goldwin 
Stead, William T. 
Watterson, Henry 
Weed, Thurlow 
White, William Allen 
Willison, Sir John 


EDUCATORS 

See Education. 

ENGINEERS 


See Engineering. 
See Essay. 


ESSAYISTS 

EXPLORERS 


Abruzzi, Luigi Amadeo, 
Duke of the 
Alvarado, Pedro de 
Amundsen, Roald 
An dree, Salomon 
Baker, Sir Samuel 
White 

Balboa, Vasco Nunez de 
Bienville, Jean Baptiste, 
Sieur de 
Cabot, John 
Cabot, Sebastian 


Cabral, Pedro Alvarez 
Carson, Christopher 
Cartier, Jacques 
Champlain, Samuel 
Clark, William 
Columbus, Christopher 
Cook, James 
Cook, Frederick 
Coronado, Francisco 
Vasquez 

Cortez, Hernando 
Dawson, George M. 


BIOGRAPHY 


726 


BIOGRAPHY 


De Soto, Fernando 
Dias, Bartholomeu 
Drake, Sir Francis 
Du Chaillu, Paul Belloni 
Emin Pasha 
Eric the Red 
Franklin, Sir John 
Fremont, John Charles 
Frobisher, Sir Martin 
Cama, Vasco da 
Gilbert, Sir Humphrey 
Gosnold, Bartholomew 
Hawkins, Sir John 
Hedin, Sven 
Hennepin, Louis 
Henry the Navigator 
Hudson, Henry 
Joliet, Louis 
Kennan, George 
La Salle, Sieur de 
Lewis, Meriwether 
Livingstone, David 
Mackenzie, Sir 
Alexander 

Magellan, Ferdinand 
Marquette, Jacques 
Nansen, Fridtjof 


Narvaez, Panfilo de 
Nordenskjold, Nils 
Adolf Erik, Baron 
Park, Mungo 
Parry, Sir William 
Edward 
Pike, Zebulon 
Montgomery 
Pizarro, Francisco 
Polo, Marco 
Ponce de Leon, Juan 
Raleigh, Sir Walter 
Rohlfs, Gerhard 
Ross, James Clark 
Schwatka, Frederick 
Scott, Robert Falcon 
Shackelton, Sir Ernest 
Henry 

Speke, John Hanning 
Stanley, Sir Henry 
Morton 

Stefansson, Vilhjalmur 
Thompson, David 
Tonty, Henry de 
Verrazano, Giovanni da 
Vespucius, Americus 


See Geology. 
See History. 


GEOLOGISTS 

HISTORIANS 

HUMORISTS 


Ade, George 
Bangs, John Kendrick 
Browne, Charles F. 
Burdette, Robert J. 
Clark, Charles H. 
Clemens, Samuel L. 
Cobb, Irvin S. 

Dunne, Finley P. 


Haliburton, Thomas C. 
Jerome, Jerome K. 
Jerrold, Douglas W. 
Locke, David R. 

Nye, Edgar Wilson 
Shaw, Henry Wheeler 
Shillaber, Benjamin P. 
Smith, Sydney 


INVENTORS 

See Invention. 

JOURNALISTS 

See Newspaper. 

JURISTS 

See Law. 

LABOR LEADERS 

See Labor Organizations. 


MATHEMATICIANS 

See Mathematics. 


PHILANTHROPISTS 


Addams, Jane 
Armour, Philip D. 
Barton, Clara 
Carnegie, Andrew 
Cooper, Peter 
Corcoran, William W. 
Cornell, Ezra 
Drexel, Anthony 
Durant, Henry F. 
Gerard, Stephen 
Gould, Helen Miller 


Hirsch, Maurice 
Lenox, James 
Lick, James 
Nightingale, Florence 
Peabody, George 
Raikes, Robert 
Rockefeller, John D. 
Smithson, James 
Vassar, Matthew 
Yale, Elihu 


PHILOSOPHERS 

See Philosophy. 

PHYSICIANS 

See Medicine and Surgery. 


See Physics. 


PHYSICISTS 


PIONEERS 


Austin, Stephen F. 
Boone, Daniel 
Carson, Christopher 
Clark, George Rogers 


Crockett, David 
Cutler, Manasseh 
Ross, Alexander 


POETS 

See Poetry. 

POPES 

See Pope. 

PRESIDENTS 

See President of the United States. 


PSYCHOLOGISTS 
See Psychology. 

REFORMERS 


Addams, Jane 
Anthony, Susan B. 
Bergh, Henry 
Booth, Maud B. 

Booth, Bramwell 
Booth, Ballington 
Booth, William 
Booth, Tucker 
Brown, John 
Calvin, John 
Catt, Carrie Chapman 
Dow, Neal 
Fry, Elizabeth 
Garrison, William L. 
Gough, John B. 

Hunt, Mary H. 


Huss, John 
Knox, John 
Jerome of Prague 
Livermore, Mary A. R. 
Lockwood, Belva Ann 
Luther, Martin 
Melancthon, Philip 
Mott, Lucretia Coffin 
Owen, Robert 
Phillips, Wendell 
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady 
Tyndale, William 
Willard, Frances E. 
Wycliffe, John 
Zwingli, Ulric 


See Missions. 


See Music. 


MISSIONARIES 


MUSICIANS 


MILITARY AND NAVAL LEADERS 
See subhead History under each country. 


See Novel. 


See Oration. 


See Painting. 


See Patriotism , 


NOVELISTS 


ORATORS 


PAINTERS 


PATRIOTS 


RELIGIOUS LEADERS 

See Religion. 

RULERS 

See subhead History under each country. 


SAINTS 


See Canonization. 


See Science. 


See Sculpture. 


SCIENTISTS 


SCULPTORS 


SOCIALISTS 


See Socialism, 
i STATESMEN 

See subhead History under each country. 


BIOLOGY 


727 


BIRCH 


MISCELLANEOUS 


Agrippina 
Alden, John 
Aspasia 

Beatrice Portinari 
Beard, Daniel C. 
Blennerhassett, 

Harman 
Blondel 
Boabdil 
Boleyn, Anne 
Bothwell, James 
Hepburn 

Bridgman, Laura D. 
Brummell, George 
Bryan 

Buckingham, George 
Villiers, Duke of 
Cade, John 
Camp, Walter 
Carteret, Sir George 
Carver, John 
Cassius Longinus 
Catiline 
Cenci, Beatrice 
Corday d’Armont, Marie 
Anne Charlotte 
Coriolanus 
Cornelia 
Coverdale, Miles 
Crassus, Marcus 
Licinius 

Crichton, James 
Damocles 

Damon and Pythias 
Darling, Grace H. 
Dinwiddie, Robert 
Du Barry, Marie Jeanne 
Becu 

Duns, John 
Eaton, Margaret 
O’Neill 

Erasmus, Desiderius 
Eugenie-Marie de 
Monti jo 

Eulenspiegel, Till 
Faust, Johann 
Fawkes, Guy 
Force, Peter 
Fra Diavolo 
Frohman, Charles and 
Daniel 

Furnivall, F. J. 

Gary, E. H. 

Grey, Lady Jane 
Grotius, Hugo 
Hays, Charles M. 

Jahn, Frederich L. 

John of Gaunt 
Josephine, Marie Rose 
Keller, Helen Adams 
Kidd, William 
Kneipp, Sebastian 
Kropotkin, Peter A., 
Prince 


Lathrop, Julia C. 
Leicester, Robert Dud¬ 
ley, Earl of 
Lycurgus 

Maintenon, Frangoise 
Marquise de 
Maria Louisa 
Marie Antoinette 
Mercator, Gerard 
Morgan, Sir Henry 
Mother Shipton 
Muller, Friedrich Max 
Miinchhausen, Baron 
Nana Sahib 
Octavia 

Oglethorpe, James E. 
Olmsted, Frederick L. 
Origen 

Orleans, Dukes of 
Pankhurst, Emmeline 
Paris, Count of 
Peter the Hermit 
Petrarch, Francesco 
Petrie, William M. F. 
Pinchot, Gifford 
Pinkerton, Allan 
Pitman, Sir Isaac 
Pompadour, Madame 
Queensberry, Marquis of 
Reichstadt, Duke of 
Ridley, Nicholas 
Riel, Louis 
Rienzi, Cola di 
Robin Hood 
Rob Roy 

Roland de la Platiere, 
Madame 
Rolfe, John 
Rosamond 

Schliemann, Heinrich 
Selkirk, Alexander 
Servetus, Michael 
Seymour, Horatio 
Shaw, Anna 
Skeat, Walter William 
Smith, John 
Spartacus 
Standish, Miles 
Stradivarius, Antonio 
Stuart, Charles Edward 
Tetzel, Johann 
Turner, Nat 
Van Horne, Sir William 
C. 

Walker, William 
Warbeck, Perkin 
Warwick, Richard 
Neville, Earl of 
Washington, Martha 
Webster, Noah 
White, Richard Grant 
Xanthippe 


BIOLOGY, byol'oji, from two Greek words 
meaning life and speech or discourse, is an old 
subject, but a modern word, for it seems to 


have been used only since the beginning of the 
nineteenth centuiy. It means, as is clear 
enough from its origin, the study of life, whether 
plant or animal, but the word is used in some¬ 
what varying senses. Thus botany, zoolog} 7 , 
ethnology, physiology, as well as other branches 
—all those sciences which deal with living 
things as distinguished from the non-living 
things in which geolog} 7 , astronomy and physics 
interest themselves—are a part of biology. 


Related Subjects. All the articles listed un¬ 
der botany, zoology, physiology and kindred 
sciences really fall within the scope of biology ; 
but the following list contains those topics which 
are too broad to be classified under any one 
branch, and so belong to biology as a whole: 


Acclimatization 

Albino 

Assimilation 

Atavism 

Biogenesis 

Cell 

Death 

Degeneration 

Dwarf 

Evolution 

Fibrin 

Genus 


Hybrid 

Man 

Metamorphosis 

Morphology 

Natural Selection 

Order 

Parasites 

Protoplasm 

Reproduction 

Species 

Spontaneous Generation 
Variety 


BIRCH, the name of all trees belonging to 
the birch family, found widely spread in North 
America, Europe and Northern Asia. In gen¬ 
eral, birches may be distinguished by their 
smooth bark arranged in horizontal layers and 
thin, delicate, triangular leaves, which usually 
turn yellow late in autumn. The flowers appear 
before the leaves, and are in long clusters which 
hang downwards. The fruit is a small, scaly 
cone, and the seed is flat and winged (see Seeds, 
subhead Seed Dispersal). The birch is a hardy 
tree, and only one or two other trees can live 
in so cold a climate as it can endure. 

Canoe Birch, or Paper Birch, also called 
White Birch. This tree is easily recognized by 
its yellowish-white bark, which is easily sepa¬ 
rated into thin layers. It reaches a height of 
sixty to eighty feet, has a few erect, large 
branches and many small horizontal ones. It 
is the bark of this tree that was used by the 
Indians in making canoes, and they still employ 
it for making ornaments and small baskets 
which they sell to tourists. Ladies visiting the 
northern woods collect it for stationery, for 
writing can be put upon the thin bark. This 
birch is found throughout North America from 
the Arctic Circle southward as far as Long 
Island. A variety of the white birch, known 
as the weeping birch, is common throughout 
Scotland and England. 


BIRCH 


728 


BIRCH 



Yellow Birch. The yellow birch, sometimes 
called the gray birch, is a tree from fifty to 
seventy-five feet in height, with a broad, round 
top. The bark may be yellow or dark gray, but 
on young twigs it is silvery yellow. The thin 
layers often break, forming loose ends which 
give the tree a ragged appearance. The yellow 
birch is found from.Newfoundland south as far 
as Delaware, east to North Carolina and Ten¬ 
nessee, and west to Minnesota. The wood is 
valuable for furniture, sleigh frames and a large 
number of small articles. It is one of the best 
of timber trees. 

Red Birch, or River Birch. The bark of this 
tree is a dark reddish-brown, varying on the 
different branches from cinnamon to silver. 
The red birch is a tall graceful tree, reaching a 
height of sixty to ninety feet. It is the birch 
of the South, being found along rivers and in 
ponds and marshes from Massachusetts to 
Florida and west as far as Texas. When trans¬ 
planted, it flourishes equally well in the North¬ 
ern states. 

Cherry Birch, or Sweet Birch. This species 
is found throughout the Northern United States 
and Canada, as far west as the Great Plains. 


Its branches are slender, with delicate twigs. 
The tree reaches a height of sixty to eighty 
feet, and has a beautiful, rounded top. The 
wood is dark brown, hard and close-grained, 
and is valuable especially for furniture and 
interior decorations. Boys chew the twigs for 
the flavor of wintergreen in the sap, and from 
the sap the genuine birch beer is made. Much 
of the latter, however, is made from chemicals. 

White Birch, or Aspen-leaved Birch. This 
is a small, graceful tree, found along the At¬ 
lantic coast from Nova Scotia to Delaware and 
northwest to Lake Ontario. It rarely grows 
higher than forty feet, and has slender hori¬ 
zontal branches and small, dainty, tremulous 
leaves that in shape and poise resemble those 
of the aspen. Its bark is chalky white or 
grayish, is hard and close and not easily sepa¬ 
rated into layers. Dark-colored V-shaped 
patches appear on the bark wherever there has 
been a bud or branch. The wood of the white 
birch is used for making spools, shoe pegs and 
wood-pulp and is also valued as a fuel. This 
tree is hardy, and will thrive in almost any 
soil, though it is generally found in dry, grav¬ 
elly places, w.f.r. 






























































































BIRD 


729 


BIRD 



IRD, an animal with feathers—that 
is the briefest description that can be given, 
and at the same time one which will enable a 
person to recognize a bird wherever seen. Of 
course many more facts must be known if one 
is to have even the most general knowledge of 
birds—that they are warm-blooded, that each 
has a backbone and but two legs, and that most 
of them can fly. This last feature might at first 
seem the truly distinguishing one, but a little 
thought brings to mind the fact that some 
birds, as the ostrich, the penguin and the 
curious apteryx, cannot fly, while bats, which 
are not birds, flying squirrels and flying fishes 
do have the power of flight. » 

That birds have backbones show that they 
belong in the great class of vertebrates, for 
vertebrate means backboned. But it is very 
curious to an untrained person to learn that 
they are much more closely related to the 
reptiles than to any other living animals. 
There seems to be absolutely no resemblance 
between the brilliantly-colored bird, with its 
exquisite song, poised lightly on tree or bush, 
and the venomous snake which slips stealthily 
through the underbrush, perhaps intent on 
robbing the nest of that very bird. One is 
perhaps the most dearly-loved by man of all 
the animal world; the other the most hated 
and feared. Yet scientists discover resem¬ 


Flight. It is the modification of the fore 
limbs or “arms” of birds into wings which gives 
them their most wonderful distinction—the 
power of flight. From the “arms and hands” 
as they may be called, grow strong heavy 
feathers, making a broad surface with which 
the bird can beat the air; while above and 
below these heavy quills there are short feath¬ 
ers which prevent the air from passing through. 
The great condor has a wing-stretch of from 
ten to twelve feet, while that of the humming 
bird is from two to about five inches, but 
each is perfectly adapted to bearing up the 
body which it must support. The tail does not 
help much in flight, but is rather a rudder by 
which the bird steers itself and holds its body 
level. 

And the power of flight to which all these 
special structures contribute is marvelous 
indeed. The grace of a bird in soaring, hover¬ 
ing, sailing and swooping, everyone has 
remarked, and poets have often found in it 
their inspirations. Thus Leland has— 

Great albatross !—the meanest birds 
Spring up and flit away, 

While thou must toil to gain a flight, 

And spread those pinions gray ; 

But when they once are fairly poised, 

Far o’er each chirping thing 
Thou sailest wide to other lands, 

E’en sleeping on the wing; 


blances in their structure, and students of fossil 
forms can state positively that ages ago there 
were bird-reptiles or reptile-birds from which 
existing birds developed. 

Framework of the Body. The most natural 
thing in the world is to think, “Since a bird 
can fly, its body must be light,” and so indeed 
it is. For the bones are thin and hollow, and 
in the thorax and abdomen are air cavities 
which can be inflated when the bird wants to 
fly. Everyone who has watched a housewife 
prepare a fowl for the table knows the shape 
of the breastbone, which is really a keel to 
which are fastened the strong wing-muscles. 
All birds that fly have this keel-like breast¬ 
bone, and the lowest classes of birds, as the 
ostrich, which do not have it, are called ratitae, 
meaning keelless or flat-bottomed boat. 


and Shelley sings— 

Around, around, in ceaseless circles wheeling 
With clang of wings and scream, the Eagle sailed 
Incessantly. 

The flight of smaller birds, too, has had its 
strain of praise, for Riley tells of— 

. the humming-bird that hung 
Like a jewel up among 
The tilted honeysuckle horns. 

and Christina Rossetti sings to the skylark— 

O happy skylark springing 
Up to the broad, blue sky, 

Too fearless in thy winging. 

It does not seem strange that the giant birds 
that seem to hang motionless for hours in the 
upper air should be able to take long, swift 
journeys in search of food or a new abiding 


























BIRD 


730 


BIRD 


place, but the endurance of some of the smaller 
birds is surprising. Apparently feeble birds, that 
usually confine their flight to short dashes from 
bush to bush, may during the migrating season 
cover in a single flight distances ranging from 
500 to 2,000 miles. Some birds, as the yellow- 
legs, migrate in the fall from the Arctic regions 
to Southern South America, and return in the 
spring, thus making each year journeys amount¬ 
ing to 16,000 miles. See subtitle, Migration of 
Birds, below. 

Just how rapidly they fly during these jour¬ 
neys there is wide difference of opinion. It 
may safely be stated that no land animal can 
move nearly as rapidly as these dwellers in the 
air, but it seems likely that their speed has 
been exaggerated by some writers. Carrier 
pigeons, not the very fleetest of birds, can keep 
up for hours an average of fifty-five miles an 
hpur; an eagle can rise out of sight in less 
than three minutes, and thus, according to 
calculations, must be able to fly at least sixty 
miles an hour. But it seems probable that 
the average speed of birds is not more than 
thirty or forty miles an hour. 

The flight of birds, their ability to live in 
an element peculiarly their own, has been an 
inspiration to inventors as well as to poets. 
For their flight clearly proved that solid bodies 
of considerable weight could be held suspended 
in the air if only the right sort of “wings” 
could be constructed, and all the attempts at 
building flying machines have grown out of 
this perception. From Daedalus (which see), 
who made wings of feathers cemented with 
wax and flew with them over the sea, to the 
successful maker of the most complete aero¬ 
plane—all have had constantly before them the 
example of the birds. 

Feathers. That birds are among the most 
beautiful objects in nature is due not only to 
their grace, but to their clothing of feathers. 
These feathers, while they take the place of 
the hair that covers the higher animals, do not 
grow from practically every part of the body, 
as does a cat’s fur, for instance. They grow 
in certain definite areas or patches, and the 
spaces between may be bare or covered with 
down. Usually, however, the feathers overlap 
enough to furnish a complete coat. The wing 
and tail feathers are always the largest and 
strongest. 

The wonderful adaptations which nature is 
capable of are plainly to be seen in the feathery 
coats or plumage of birds. Thus the birds 
which live in a warm climate and do not fly, 


like the ostrich or the cassowary, have fewer 
and thinner feathers than do the birds of 
colder regions. A thick covering is not needed 
as protection; strong quills are not needed for 
beating the air—and the bird therefore has 
neither. In any water fowl is seen the same 
wise provision—a special gland exists for the 
secretion of oil, with which the bird oils its 
plumage and thus prevents the water from 
reaching the body and the feathers from be¬ 
coming wet and heavy. “Like water from a 
duck’s back” is the common proverb which has 
grown out of this peculiarity. 

The difference in color which often exists 
between the male and the female bird of 
the same species is another example of this 
same wonderful adaptation. At the mating 
season the male must be attractive, if at no 
other time, and therefore it is true of many 
birds as of the bobolink that— 

Robert of Lincoln is gayly drest, 

Wearing a bright, black, wedding coat; 

White are his shoulders and white his crest; 

% 

while— 

Robert of Lincoln’s Quaker wife, 

Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings, 

Passing at home a patient life, 

Broods in the grass while her husband sings. 

Some of these mating-season coats of the male 
birds are gorgeous in the extreme, but many 
of them are shed when the nesting season is 
over. 

Molting. Almost all birds shed their feathers 
at least once a year. Anyone who has had a 
canary or other cage-bird has watched the 
process often, and has noticed how the best 
songster fails at that time to sing. Nor will 
the barnyard fowl, however well fed, lay eggs 
during this shedding or molting time, as it is 
called. The feathers never all drop off at once, 
as do the leaves from a tree, to make room 
for the new plumage, but the old, worn 
feathers gradually give place to new. In some 
birds the molting is partial, the wing and tail 
feathers remaining in place; in others com¬ 
plete, those strong feathers falling also. Some 
birds, like the bobolink mentioned above, 
have a gay plumage for the mating season and 
a duller one thereafter— 

Robert of Lincoln at length is made 
Sober with work and silent with care; 

Off is his holiday garment laid; 

and such birds have of necessity two molting 
seasons in a year. 

Senses. As compared with other animals 



BIRD 


731 


BIRD 


birds have a very keen sense of sight. Indeed, 
in some species this is little less than marvel¬ 
ous. A kite which has soared so high that 
the human eye cannot see it, can often spy 
far below on the ground a tiny mouse, upon 
which it will drop with unerring aim. Some¬ 
times, as in the owl, the sensitiveness to light 
is so great that the bird is practically blind in 
the daytime, but at night he is truly “lord of 
the dark green wood.” The eye of a bird is 
much like that of a human being, but it 
possesses certain advantages all its own. For 
it has an extra eyelid, called by naturalists the 
nictitating or winking membrane, which it may 
draw at will. 

The sense of hearing, too, is very well devel¬ 
oped in birds—not better than in human beings, 
as is the sense of sight, but probably as well. 
They have no external ears, but the opening 
to the internal ears is fairly large. No better 
proof of this acute sense of hearing is necessary 
than the ease with which certain birds mimic 
sounds, as does the mocking bird, or learn to 
repeat words, as does the parrot. 

The senses of touch and taste are not highly 
developed in birds, nor, it is believed, is that 
of smell, though some birds seem to make use 
of this last-named sense in seeking out their 
food. The condor and the common buzzard, 
however, find their food by sight and not by 
smell. 

Special Senses. In addition to these senses 
possessed by man, birds, according to some 
authorities, have also a so-called “sixth sense” 
—the sense of direction. Whatever this sense 
be called, it is exhibited in a marked degree 
by the carrier pigeon, which will fly swiftly back 
to its home, even when it has been sent away 
by train in a wicker case. Even more remark¬ 
able is the ability of a flock of migrating birds 
to fly straight to the spot where they had their 
homes the year before, even when to reach 
it they must cross tracts of water which afford 
no landmarks whatever. A person who has 
interested himself in providing homes for cer¬ 
tain kinds of birds, as the bluebird or martin, 
may feel certain that each spring they will 
return to him. One observer writes: 

My neighbor was very busy one Saturday 
morning putting up his ornamental bird house— 
“For my martins,” he explained, “will arrive 
about the twelfth.” The completed house was 
promptly taken over by the sparrows, but the 
bird-lover did not worry. On the morning of the 
twelfth we heard a commotion, and sure enough, 
the martins had arrived and were driving the 
sparrows from their premises. 


It is not only in this special sense or instinct 
that birds show their adaptation to the necessi¬ 
ties of their life; there are peculiarities of 
structure, too. Thus there is no danger of a 
perching bird falling from its twig while sleep¬ 
ing, for the muscles in its legs are so arranged 
that, when the bird perches, its toes are bent 
and cannot open until the bird rises again. 
Some birds’ feet are specially made for scratch¬ 
ing in the ground, some for holding prey, some 
for swimming, and the bills are equally well 
adapted to just the services they must perform. 

Song. Without their power of song, birds 
would not be so greatly loved, however beauti¬ 
ful many of them are. Yet only a compara¬ 
tively small number can really sing, and these 
are often the ones which have the plainest 
plumage. Almost all birds make some sound— 
many seem to have a well-developed language 
by which they make themselves understood; 
but no one welcomes especially the harsh caw 
of the crow, the scream of the jay or the hoot 
of the owl. However, the nightingale, the 
mocking bird, the thrush, the linnet, the warb¬ 
lers, the skylark and certain others—these are 
welcome everywhere; for the song of the male 
in the mating or nesting season affords one of 
the greatest pleasures which all out-of-doors 
has to offer. The lark, of whom Shelley sings— 

Sound of vernal showers 
On the twinkling grass, 

Rain-awakened flowers, 

All that ever was 

Toyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music 
doth surpass, 

and the nightingale with its “eternal passion, 
eternal pain” have been most celebrated in 
poetry, but there are other birds which give 
equal pleasure to innumerable listeners. 

The organ which produces the voice of birds, 
whether it be melodious song or discordant 
cry, is not the larynx, as in man, but a special 
organ which only birds have, called the syrinx. 
Man uses his tongue in his speech; a bird 
does not. 

“Home Life” of Birds. Birds usually live in 
pairs and in some species, as the eagles and 
hawks, a union lasts for life. With the major¬ 
ity of birds, however, a new mating takes place 
each spring, and the first act of the pair is 
to seek out a suitable place for a home. Most 
birds build nests, all those of one species 
making just the same kind, but there are some 
curious exceptions to the nest-building rule 
(see Nest). In the nest the eggs are laid, for 
all birds without exception are hatched from 


BIRD 


732 


BIRD 


eggs; and in some way or other these must 
be kept warm until the little ones appear. 
Sometimes the eggs are laid in warm sand or 
rotting vegetation, but the nesting birds brood 
their eggs, and keep them warm by their 
bodies. Usually, the mother bird performs this 
act of service, while her mate brings her food 
or cheers her with his song, but in some species 
the father bird takes his turn at brooding the 
eggs. With most of the smaller birds it takes 
from two to three weeks for the little chicks 
to mature and break from their shells. The 
number of eggs varies from two to a score, 
seeming to be in proportion to the dangers 
which the young are to meet; the number is 
practically the same at every sitting of each 
species. See Egg. 

With the lower orders of birds, such as the 
chickens and geese, and other water fowl, the 
young come from the shells clothed with a 
complete suit of down, and are able to take 
partial care of themselves. Within a few hours 
after their appearance the fluffy chicks run 
about searching for bugs or grain, though they 
still have to be kept warm by the mother at 
night. The chicks of the higher orders of birds, 
however, are very helpless when they first come 
from their shells—as helpless as is a tiny 
kitten or a baby. They are naked of feathers, 
scrawny and apparently “all mouth”; and the 
frequent saying that “all young things are 
beautiful” certainly does not hold true of 
young birds. The parent birds show the most 
unselfish devotion to their helpless little ones, 
guarding the nest from enemies at the risk of 
their own lives, keeping the nestlings warm at 
night, and above all things providing them with 
the incredible amount of food which they need 
for growth (see subhead Food, below). When 
the time comes for the little birds to fly, the 
parents teach them to do so by calling to them 
and withholding food from them, thus inducing 
the young to leave the nest. Few members 
of the animal kingdom show more parental 
affection than do the birds. In some cases it 
is but a few weeks that the little ones are 
so dependent, but with some of the larger birds 
this period may be almost a year. 

Food. The food of birds varies according 
to the species, for like the four-footed animals 
they are divided into two classes—those which 
eat animal food and those which eat vegetable. 
Many birds, however, feed on grain and insects 
indiscriminately. No bird has teeth, but the 
beak of each species is fitted to handle the 
kind of food which it eats, and its digestive 


organs are peculiarly adapted to treating food 
that has not been chewed. When the food is 
swallowed it finds lodgment first in the crop, 
a large sack at the bottom of the gullet. Here 
it is soaked and softened for some time, and 
is then passed on to the gizzard, a kind of 
stomach, with exceedingly strong, muscular 
walls and tough, wrinkled lining. Here the 
food is ground fine by vigorous rubbing, aided 
by small stones which have been swallowed by 
the bird. The flesh-eating birds have smaller 
gizzards, with thinner muscular coats, than have 
the grain-eaters, for the softer food does not 
need nearly so much grinding as do the hard¬ 
skinned seeds and grains; and in some species 
of flesh-eaters there is no gizzard at all. 

Like larger animals which live upon flesh, 
the carnivorous, or flesh-eating, birds are strong, 
fierce and unsociable. They do not live in 
friendly colonies, as do the cheerful and harm¬ 
less grain-eaters, but withdraw for the most 
part into some secluded region of forest or 
rock. 

It is seldom that birds, during their waking 
hours, are to be seen at rest. They are con¬ 
stantly flying about, darting from one place to 
another, not at random but with a very definite 
purpose—to find food. For so much food do 
their active bodies, high temperature and rapid 
circulation demand that they must be eating 
most of the time. To anyone who has watched 
fledglings being fed it must have seemed incred¬ 
ible that such tiny bodies could possibly absorb 
so much nourishment, for it is an actual fact 
that these little birds regularly eat more than 
their own weight of food in the course of a day. 
Most young birds, even those which later 
prefer seeds and grain, are fed on insect food, 
and as they appear when insect pests are at 
the very worst, man is usually much benefited 
by their hearty appetites. 

Relation to Man. It is this enormous quan- 
tity^ of food required by birds which makes the 
various wild species of such value to the 
farmer. Not many years ago the farmers were 
inclined to look upon nearly all birds as pests, 
because a few of them stole grain or nipped 
the cherries and blackberries, but to-day there 
exists a far truer appreciation of the part they 
really play in industrial life. For the insects 
upon which birds feed so voraciously are in 
many instances the very worst plant enemies— 
the enemies which each year result in a loss 
of hundreds of millions of dollars to the 
farmers. This loss woidd be much greater 
without the services of the birds, and careful 


BIRD 


733 


BIRD 


scientists who have observed and collected facts 
for years go so far as to say that successful 
agriculture would probably be impossible with¬ 
out the birds. The seeds, too, which furnish 
so large a part of the food of many birds, are 
most frequently weed seeds; it is estimated 
that the sparrows alone save to the farmers of 
the United States and Canada millions of dol¬ 
lars each year by eating these seeds. Some 
birds there are, it is true, who do help them¬ 
selves occasionally to the farmer’s grain, but 
there are very few which do not more than 
pay for such thefts. Even the crow, the owl 
and most of the hawks, generally classed as 
robbers, by their wholesale destruction of 
insects and small rodents prove themselves 
friends rather than foes to the farmer. 

The safe thing for a farmer to do is to 
acquaint himself so far as possible with the 
birds of his neighborhood and to find out their 
favorite diet. Then such as do really prey 
on the crops without making adequate return 
may be driven away or killed, while the others, 
far more numerous, may be attracted in every 
possible way. Protection of such birds from 
enemies, especially cats, providing them with 
food at times when it is not otherwise available, 
and of water for drinking and bathing, and the 
supplying of artificial nest boxes or other safe 
places for building will do much to attract the 
useful birds to spots where they are needed. 
Even the village or city dweller, who does not 
need the help of the birds as does the farmer, 
may by similar methods bring about his house 
a colony of birds which will give him continu¬ 
ous pleasure. 

Cage Birds. Certain birds have for a long 


time held a peculiar relation to man in that 
they have lived in his home and been, in a 
sense, domesticated. The gracefulness, beauty 
and cheerful songs of birds have always made 
their strong appeal, and centuries before the 
beginning of the Christian Era the custom of 
keeping birds in cages was common. To-day 
the number of such pets is greater than ever 
before; most of them have not been captured 
and confined to a cage after having known the 
joys of a free life, but have been bred and 
raised in captivity. In such a case the keeping 
of caged birds cannot be called cruel, as in 
the case of any free, wild thing. 

Canaries are by far the best known of all 
the birds which are kept for their song, but 
caged nightingales, finches, thrushes and mock¬ 
ing birds are by no means uncommon. Parrots 
are the favorite talking birds, while parrakeets, 
cockatoos and certain finches are often kept by 
reason of their beautiful plumage. It is almost 
always the grain-eating birds which are trained 
as cage birds, both because it is far easier to 
feed them and because they are not used to 
so active a life as are the insect-eating birds. 
No person who is not willing to take excel¬ 
lent care of a bird should ever have one, for 
one of the absolutely necessary things is that 
the cage and all it contains should be kept 
strictly clean, and that the bird itself should 
have opportunity for frequent baths. 

Classification. Many systems of classifying 
birds have been offered, no one of which seems 
entirely to please scientists. The outline at the 
end of this article gives perhaps as simple a 
method of grouping as any which is now in 
use. J.b. 


Study of Birds 


In recent years there has been a growing 
interest in birds—their appearance, their habits, 
their value to man—and many “bird books 
have been published to comply with the 
demand for accurate information. Some of 
these are simple little books which list and 
describe the birds of a certain locality, so that 
dwellers there may recognize them on sight, 
while others are more elaborate publications 
with beautifully-colored illustrations. More 
general treatises also abound, which gi\ e 
charming accounts of the manner of life of the 
birds. But no one, no matter how carefully 
he has studied such books, can really know- 
birds unless he has studied them firsthand, at 
first in the laboratory or schoolroom and later 


in the field. The following lessons on birds 
are designed to aid the teacher or parent in 
interesting the boys and girls and showing 
them how T to begin the study of the most fas¬ 
cinating of all their wild neighbors. 

Lessons on Birds. General Suggestions. 1. 
Birds in their natural state are so hard to 
approach that they must be tamed before one 
can successfully study them. This is accom¬ 
plished only by feeding them, for, as one writer 
has said, “The way to a bird’s heart is through 
its crop.” Instructions as to feeding and taming 
birds should be given during the first lessons. 

2. It is exceedingly important that the teach¬ 
er’s knowledge of her subject be much broader 
than the work actually assigned to the class. 


BIRD 


734 


BIRD 


She must be familiar with the size and color 
of the bird and the quality of its singing note; 
she must be able to recognize the features 
that distinguish male and female, and in addi¬ 
tion know the habits and haunts of the bird. 
What it feeds upon, how its food is obtained, 
when and where it makes its nest, when the 
young are hatched, how long they remain in 
the nest and the dangers that beset them after 
they have learned to fly are some of the facts 


The first crow, March 1. 

The first robin, March 10. 

Besides a general school record, there should 
be separate records, kept by the pupils indi¬ 
vidually. Instructions for observing the birds 
should be complete and clear. Observations 
are most successfully made by one pupil alone, 
or by groups of not more than two or three, 
as birds are easily frightened by noises and by 
the approach of people, whom they are likely 



of which the successful teacher will make her¬ 
self mistress. The children must be taught how 
to help the young birds, many of which die 
from lack of care. 

3. The greater part of the work on bird 
study should be devoted to outdoor exercises. 

4. Classroom work should consist chiefly of 
hearing reports and giving instruction for future 
observations. On completing the study of a 
bird assign the review of the work for a class 
exercise. Finally, the review should be written; 
this affords an opportunity for drill in composi¬ 
tion. 

Suggestions for Observations. 1. The return 
of the birds in the spring is a subject that never 
fails to interest the children. Have them report 
the first birds they see and keep a record of 
these reports in some such form as this; 


to regard as enemies. The directions should 
include these points: 

a. In making trips to study birds wear dull- 
colored clothing, preferably shades of brown 
which tone in with the ground and trunks of 
trees. White and bright colors are not prac¬ 
ticable because they attract attention. 

b. Move gently and quietly so as not to 
frighten the bird. As a rule, the observer can 
approach the bird more successfully if he pre¬ 
tends to be searching for something else. 

2. Train the pupils to describe only what 
they actually see, and insist on their making 
careful observations. Caution them about 
imagining that they see the thing they are 
looking for. 

3. An opera glass will be found very con¬ 
venient, but it can be dispensed with much 



























BIRD 


735 


BIRD 


more easily than a few good books. Such 
works as Chapman and Reed’s Bird Guide, or 
Chapman’s Handbook of the Birds of Eastern 




TYPES OF BEAKS 


(a) Kinglet 

( b ) Gnatcatcher 

(c) Wren 
(rf) Sparrow 
(e) Parrot 

(/) Whip-poor-will 

(g) Grosbeak 

(h) Mersanger 

(i) Hummingbird 

( 5 ) 


O') Duck 

(k) Flamingo 

(l) Ibis 

(m) Cormorant 

(n) Gull 

(o) Pigeon 

( p ) Mockingbird 

( q ) Shrike 

(r) Nuthatch 
Grosbeak 


North America, should be found in every school 
library, and be used on observational trips. 

4. Each pupil should carry a pocket note 
book in which to jot down observations as they 
are made. If the memory alone is relied upon 
valuable points may be omitted. 

Parts of a Bird. The parts of a bird, with 
names attached, are shown in the diagram on 
page 734. All but the very young pupils 
should learn these terms, as they occur in all 
books about birds. The little ones should learn 
to recognize the most prominent parts, as the 
head, wings, tail, etc. 

1. For a practical exercise have the children 
(>QjjipQ^j’g g, live bird, a mounted specimen or 
the skin of the bird with the diagram, and ask 
them to name the corresponding parts. The 
first lessons should be the easier ones, the nam¬ 
ing of the head, mandibles, wings, legs and tail. 
Have the pupils measure the specimen from 


the point of the beak to the end of the tail. 

How many inches long is it? 

Spread out the wings, measuring them from 
tip to tip. What is the distance? 

Compare this distance with the length. 

2. To make sure that the pupils remember 
what they have observed, begin the second 
lesson by reviewing the first. Then proceed to 
the study of the smaller parts, taking up this 
part of the work systematically, as follows: 
first study the parts of the body, the head, 
nape, breast, beak and rump. When these 
parts have been learned study in like manner 
the wings, tail and legs. Classes above the 
fifth grade should have no difficulty in dis¬ 
tinguishing and naming all these parts. An 
occasional exercise on them in connection with 
the other lessons will help to fix them in the 
memory. 

3. The way in which the structure of a bird 
is adapted to its mode of life is a topic of 
absorbing interest. The older classes should 
be led to see that a bird of prey has a different 
beak from one which feeds on fruit and insects, 
and that their feet also are not alike. Varia¬ 
tions in the structure of different birds are 
clearly illustrated in the accompanying dia¬ 
grams of beaks and feet. 

Local Protection of Birds. The lessons on 
bird protection are designed to increase the 







PRINCIPAL TYPES OF FEET 


(a) Auk 

( b ) Grebe 

(c) Petrel 
(rf) Pelican 
(e) Sandpiper 
(/) Albatross 


(g) Coot 

( h ) Owl 

( i) Hawk 
O') Parrot 
(7c) Swallow 


interest of the children in birds and their love 
for them, and to impress upon them how valu- 






























BIRD 


736 


BIRD 


able the birds are to the farmer and gardener. 
They should be encouraged to give their serv¬ 
ices in protecting the birds and in making 
it easy for their feathered friends to return to 
the same nesting places year after year. There 
are several ways in which this can be done. 
To illustrate: 

a. Suggest that the children supply the 
birds with food when the spring first brings 
them back, and, in addition, that they provide 
them with fresh water throughout the season. 
The birds are always attracted to a running 
fountain in the garden or yard, but if there is 
none on the premises they will be grateful for 
pans or other vessels from which they may- 
drink. Birds which stay in the locality through 
the winter can be induced to remain about the 
yard and buildings if regularly fed, and in time 
they will feel quite at home. 

b. Nesting places should be provided. A 
small structure which affords a place of shelter 
from the sun and the rain, and which is con¬ 
veniently located, will appeal to the birds as a 
suitable nesting place (see subtitle A Home for 
Birds and a Decoration for the Garden). 

c. Young birds should be protected from 

A Home for Birds and a 

Mr. and Mrs. Wren were house-hunting. 
They had recently returned from a long south¬ 
ern trip, and they found it necessary to look 
up new quarters, for the home they had occu¬ 
pied the season before was sadly out of repair. 
The roof leaked, the inside of the house was 
very dirty, and the premises generally looked 
as though the caretaker had neglected his 
duty. 

“Well, I suppose we’ll have to build a new 
one,” said Mr. Wren, heaving a sigh. “I con¬ 
fess that I had hoped to make the old house 
do for another season, but this seems pretty 
hopeless.” 

“I was much attracted by those new houses 
on Garden Terrace,” said Mrs. Wren. “Let’s 
take another look at them before we start to 
build. They certainly are different from the 
style of house that we have lived in so long, 
and I for one would be glad of a change.” 

“Do you mean those fancy cottages with 
bright-colored roofs?” said Mr. Wren, doubt¬ 
fully. “They did look rather well on the posts 
of the garden fence, but I never supposed they 
were intended for modest people like ourselves. 

I thought they w r ere built for aristocrats!” 

“Nonsense!” said Mrs. Wren. “Those are 


cats and other enemies. Little fledglings which 
fall from the nest before they can fly are espe¬ 
cially in danger; these should be placed back 
in the little home as soon as they are found, 
for otherwise they will be killed by cats or die 
from starvation. Nearly all the young must 
learn how to feed themselves after leaving the 
nest, and if such birds are approached care¬ 
fully and fed, they will become quite tame. 
An older bird that has broken a leg or wdng 
can also be helped. The broken member should 
be tightly bandaged so that it will heal prop¬ 
erly, and protecting care be given the injured 
creature until it is able to fly again. Such 
works of mercy are invaluable in teaching the 
children daily lessons in kindness and gentle¬ 
ness. 

In addition to the books mentioned above, 
Chapman’s Color Key to North American Birds, 
Olive Thorne Miller’s Bird Ways, In Nesting 
Time and Our Home Pets, and Mabel Osgood 
Wright’s Bird Craft and Citizen Birds will be 
found interesting as well as helpful. Besides, 
this set of books contains descriptions of all 
the most important birds of the world, each 
appearing in its alphabetical order. j.b. 

Decoration for the Garden 

the houses that were advertised in the papers, 
as being especially adapted for the homes of 
wrens, bluebirds, chickadees and all kinds of 
middle-class birds. Why shouldn’t we have a 
beautiful house, if we can find one that is 
within our means, and at the same time is 
practical? Come along!” 

Mr. Wren knew from experience that it was 
useless to argue against his wife, when her 
mind was thoroughly made up; so he flew 
meekly after her, across the fields and over 
the streets until they came to a beautiful gar¬ 
den. The fence was quite high, and every 
post held a tiny wooden house, gaily painted 
in bright colors. One house with white and 
green decorations and an orange-colored roof 
seemed to please Mrs. Wren particularly. It 
was not too large, its entrance was of the 
right size, and there was a neat and stylish 
porch. It was the prettiest house in Garden 
Terrace. The Wrens decided to take it. 

Building Bird Houses. Every friend of the 
birds will appreciate the “moral” back of this 
little story. There is no better way to en¬ 
courage the pretty songsters to make the 
yards and gardens their permanent abiding 
places than to build attractive homes for 











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BIRD 


738 


BIRD 


them. Some birds will return season after 
season to the same nesting place after they 
learn that comfort and shelter can there be 

. V 

enjoyed. Children should be urged 'to build 
homes for the little summer visitors, for in 
this way they help to protect the birds as 
well as to make the premises about the home 
delightful throughout the season. Below are 
given directions for building a type of bird 
house that the children will enjoy working 
upon. The two pages of drawings and the 
page of colored pictures accompanying this 
article show various kinds of bird homes that 
can be constructed by any children who are 
familiar with simple tools. 

The children who built the house occupied 
by the Wrens used %" stock of white-wood, 
and it and the other houses on the Terrace 
were made so they could be nailed against a 
barn, a post or a tree (see page 739). The roof 
provided a protective overhang. Six pieces 
of wood, the shapes and sizes of which are 
shown in Fig. 1, were used in making the 
house selected by the Wrens. These pieces 

Nests of 

Of all the wonderful things which the 
bird-lover discovers about his favorites, there 
is nothing more wonderful than their nest¬ 
building power. How can young birds in their 
very first spring know how to set about build¬ 
ing a nest exactly like the one out of which 
they were forced, as awkward fledglings, in 
the summer before? The parent birds are not 
near to instruct them, and yet the nests are 
in practically all instances as perfect as were 
those built by their parents or their grand¬ 
parents. It cannot be explained, this curious 
nest-building instinct; it must ever remain a 
mystery. 

Purpose of Nests. In one sense, a nest is not 
a home. Two robins building their first nest 
do not pick out the spot that suits them best 
and fashion a structure which will afford them 
most comfort, but they build with one pur¬ 
pose in mind—to provide a place in which 
eggs may be laid and brooded until they 
hatch, and in which the young may be pro¬ 
tected until they are ready to take care of 
themselves. The nest is in a sense the little 
birds’ nursery, in which they live and are 
happy until they are ready to start out into 
the world; but very, very few of them ever 
come near the nest again once they have 
learned to fly, and even the parent-birds 


were nailed together with %" brads, making 
what are known as butt joints, as shown in 
the working drawing (Fig. 2). The top edge 
of the front piece and the two end edges of 
the roof were carefully beveled, in order to 
secure the proper pitch or slant of the roof. 

To protect the house from the weather, and 
also to make it an attractive feature of the 
garden, two coats of outside paint were 
applied when the house was built. The four 
sides and the bottom were painted white. 
The roof received two coats of orange coach 
paint. On the sides of the house were painted 
simple tree-shapes, in green. The shapes of 
these decorations were first cut from paper, 
as shown in Fig. 3. The unit developed in 
this way was placed three times on the sides, 
and twice on the front of the house. The 
shapes were traced with a pencil on the white 
paint, as shown in Fig. 4. The tree shapes 
were then carefully filled in with green paint, 
and the trunks and bases with orange paint. 

Fig. 5 shows two completed wren houses, 
with the color schemes indicated. b.s. 

the Birds 

abandon it when it has served its one pur¬ 
pose. But for that one purpose it is remark¬ 
ably well adapted, and each bird builds just 
the type of nest which fits its own need. 

Variations in Nests. In nothing do the 
various birds differ more widely than in the 
kinds of nests they build, and it is very inter¬ 
esting to observe the growing perfection of 
the nests as the birds rise higher and higher 
in development. In part this is because the 
higher orders of birds are more intelligent, but 
largely it is because the young of these higher 
forms are more helpless. The “chicks” of the 
domestic fowl, of the ostrich and of various 
other birds have a full covering of down 
when they are hatched, and are very soon able 
to run about and seek food for themselves, but 
the young of the birds of flight, and especially 
of the song-birds, are utterly helpless and 
require the protection of a carefully-built nest 
and the watchful care of the parents. So an 
ostrich merely makes a hole in the warm sand 
and there deposits its great thick-shelled eggs, 
while an oriole, on the other hand, fashions a 
most curious and wonderful structure, in which 
its eggs and its helpless young are compara¬ 
tively safe from reptiles and other preying 
animals. In general, the 'nests of the smaller 
birds are the more beautiful. 
































































































































































BIRD 


740 


BIRD 


Nests of Special Interest. The different 
varieties of nests are too numerous even for 
listing—there are burrowed nests, ground nests, 
carpenter nests, basket nests, mud nests, woven 
nests and ever so many more; but a few of 
the more interesting kinds may be described 
here. Hunting and studying birds’-nests is a 
fascinating pursuit, but it should not be in¬ 
dulged in while the nests are still in use. The 
bird-lover may discover the whereabouts of the 
nests of various birds, and later, when the 
young have flown, may examine them at his 
leisure; but it is not safe to bring nests into 
the house until they have been carefully looked 
over, as they are likely to be swarming with 
vermin. 

Beginning at the very bottom, there is the 
king-penquin, which simply deposits its eggs on 
the bare rock and pays little further attention 
to them. Then there are the burrowing birds, 
such as the sand-martin and the kingfisher, 
which dig deep tunnels into a bank, usually 
facing the water, and lay their eggs at the 
end; and the ground-nesters, as the turkey or 
the goose, which scrape together on the ground 
shelters of leaves and grass. Very curious is 
the habit of the tropic mound-birds, which 
build up great heaps of vegetable matter, lay 
their eggs therein and trust to the heat of the 
decaying pile to hatch them. Somewhat higher 
in the scale are the mud or clay nests, made 
by some of the commonest American birds. 
The swallows’ nests are entirely of clay, and 
are of varying shapes, some looking much like 
gourds with their bent necks, in the end of 
which is the “door,” but the robin uses mud 
merely as a cement to hold together a nest of 
twigs and leaves, which it lines with cotton or 
wool or hair—any soft substance it can find. 

Then there are the carpenter nests, which 
are in reality but holes in stumps or trees, with 
a very little soft material laid down for a bed. 

Of the birds with such wooden nests the com¬ 
monest examples are the woodpeckers, which 

Migration 

This is one of the great marvels of nature— 
the advance and retreat of an army of birds, 
so great that one might imagine the sky at 
times would be dark with them. But few 
people ever see them in their flight. Astron¬ 
omers, viewing the full moon through their 
large telescopes in August and September, fre¬ 
quently see the small migrating birds, high in 
air, cross their field of vision, and are often 


for the most part choose dead trees, though 
the ivory-billed species can cut its nest into 
a living hardwood tree. A number of song-birds 
make their nests on the ground, blending them 
in with the surrounding vegetation so cleverly 
that only the practiced eye can find them, but 
by far the larger number choose shrubs or 
trees, and the majority of them build what are 
known as basket nests—loosely woven struc¬ 
tures of twigs, stems, grass or any other mate¬ 
rial that may be near at hand. Not all of these 
are equally well made, the crows and eagles, 
for example, constructing very rough, coarse 
nests, while the thrushes and the warblers are 
very neat and skilful. 

Probably the most beautiful and interesting 
of the comparatively common bird homes are 
the woven nests of the humming birds, the 
orioles and a few other species. To do their 
best work these birds must live near dwellings 
where they can get wool or hair or twine; and 
their eyes are very sharp in spying any bit 
which may have been left about for them. 
The humming bird’s nest is so closely and 
smoothly woven that it looks like felt, and so 
tiny that it may swing from the top of a 
branch, almost hidden from the e}ms of the 
curious by the greenish lichens with which its 
little makers have adorned it; the oriole’s 
nest, larger but no less exquisite in structure, 
usually hangs as a pouch from the tip of a 
long, drooping elm branch (see Oriole, for 
illustration). 

A few birds, as the cowbird, are too lazy 
or too stupid to build nests for themselves, and 
lay their eggs in the nests of other birds; but 
for the most part, no trouble is too great for 
the parent-birds to take for the suitable hous¬ 
ing of their eggs and young, and the heroism 
which they show in defending their nests from 
enemies far larger and stronger than them¬ 
selves entitles them to rank among the bravest 
of all the animals. We usually fail to credit 
them with this noble characteristic, a.mc c. 

of Birds 

. 9 

able to distinguish the finches, thrushes and 
others. The Canada geese, in their honking, 
orderly ranks, are a familiar enough sight in 
the fall to those who live in Central North 
America, and hunters can predict very closely 
when the “duck season” will begin. But why 
does no one ever see bobolinks and the plov¬ 
ers, the swallows, the sparrows and the war¬ 
blers sweeping over the hills and valleys and 


BIRD 


741 


BIRD 


over the roofs of the cities? One day there 
are no martins to be seen, no warblers to be 
heard; the next day they seem to be every¬ 
where, making themselves as much at home 
as though they were steady residents and not 
mere summer tourists settling for a brief 
sojourn. How far have they flown? Where 
have they spent the winter? How long did it 
take them to come back? Why do they mi¬ 
grate? These questions and many more are 
certain to occur to any student of this most 
fascinating subject. 

Why Birds Migrate. The little sparrows 
that hop about in the deepest snow of winter 
and seem to enjoy themselves prove clearly 
that some birds are not affected by the cold, 
and careful study has made it practically con¬ 
clusive that this is true of all birds. A mocking 
bird, which everjmne is accustomed to think 
of as a dweller in warm climates, was observed 
to live happily in New York during an unus¬ 
ually cold winter, and frequently bluebirds, 
looked upon as the surest harbingers of spring, 
will winter in a northern wood. The condition 
of residence depends on their food supply. The 
vagrant mocking bird has found a privet tree; 
the bluebirds hover near a berry-covered cedar 
tree. But those birds which feed upon insects 
or worms would starve if they could not seek 
their winter food in less severe climates than 
the temperate zones. There is thus a rough 
division of birds into those which make long 
migrations and those which do not, strictly 
according to the demands of their appetites. 

But the need for food cannot alone account 
for the marvelous departure of the birds from 
home. If it did, insect-eating birds would 
remain the year round in the warm parts of the 
earth, where the air is full of their prey. 
Moreover, some of the birds start south in 
August, when insect life is still plentiful in the 
higher latitudes. Behind the great movements 
there is some primal cause, some strong urge 
which man cannot comprehend. Scientists 
explain that ages ago, when climatic conditions 
were much more extreme, birds were actually 
forced to migrate by the slowly pushing ice 
cap which came down from the Pole, crowding 
out vegetable and animal life before it. As 
this receded, the birds began to press north¬ 
ward from their enforced home, and somehow 
this planted in them an instinct, a heredity of 
habit, which resulted in the seasonal migra¬ 
tions. However that may be, it is certain that, 
as spring approaches, something says to cer¬ 
tain birds, “Fly northward, and there build 


your nests and rear your young;” and in a few 
days the northern woods and fields begin to 
swarm with welcome visitors. Bird-lovers who 
find the domestic life of the pretty creatures 
that nest in their yards a source of unceasing 
interest, report that pairs of birds sometimes 
return season after season to the same tree 
or bird house. 

How They Migrate. When they have felt 
the “mysterious call” the birds respond at once, 
each species organizing its flight as have its 
ancestors from time immemorial. Some spe¬ 
cies are most systematic; others are more 
happy-go-lucky, traveling as the spirit moves, 
and covering no great distance at a time. Al¬ 
most invariably, however, there is a certain 
order. The old males, strong of wing, fly 
first, next come the females, and at the close 
of the procession the young birds, who are 
re-visiting their northern birthplace for the 
first time. Perhaps as they advance northward 
they may find that they have started a little 
too soon. Then they slacken their pace, and 
tarry in the intermediate regions for a time. 
Some kinds of birds fly openly day by day, but 



PRINCIPAL ROUTES OF MIGRATIONS, 
SHOWING EXTENT OF FLIGHT 


many of the ordinary night-fliers and the more 
timid species migrate only by night, sheltering 
themselves in secluded places during the day. 

There is a difference observable in the spring 
and fall flights. In the former, the birds are 
fresh and strong from their long winter’s feed- 





BIRD 


742 


BIRD 


mg without family cares, and the trip may be 
made easily. The males don their brilliant 
courting dress, and their arrival at any given 
place is a conspicuous event. In the fall, 
however, the birds move more slowly. They 
have worked hard during the summer feeding 
their young, for this is a tremendous task, and 
have as yet scarcely recovered from their 
molting season, and there are, besides, the 
little birds which have not yet tried their 
wings in any very long flight. Stop-overs are 
frequent, and sometimes the whole flock tar¬ 
ries in a rich feeding ground for weeks, gath¬ 
ering strength for continuation of the long 
journey. The bobolink, for instance, stays for 
a time in the Carolina rice fields. 

Migration Routes. Some of the birds make 
what would be a very long journey even for 
larger travelers. The golden plover, one of 
the most ambitious birds, breeds far north on 
the shores of the Arctic Ocean, and with the 
approach of fall moves into Nova Scotia and 
from there lays a direct course southward to 
the north coast of South America, flying for 


hundreds of miles across the open Atlantic, 
far out of sight of the shore (see diagram 
herewith). The yellowlegs are the world’s 
most famous travelers, for they summer as far 
north as the Arctic Circle and take an 8,000- 
mile flight to Central Argentina every autumn, 
returning in the spring. Sixteen thousand 
miles a year on a serious adventure, borne 
onward by one slender pair of wings I Other 
birds there are, too, which cross great 
stretches of trackless water, and the mind of 
man cannot even conjecture what guides 
them. Observation has been extensive enough 
to show that there are a number of well- 
marked migration routes along which most of 
the birds travel—in America no fewer than 
seven “trunk lines.” In part these are deter¬ 
mined by the land surface features, and in part 
by the presence along the way of food sup¬ 
plies, but nothing has as yet been discovered 
which will account in the least for the route 
of the “ocean-going” birds. The valleys of the 
great rivers running from north to south are 
favorite highways of the migrating birds, j.b. 


Government Protection of Birds 


Bird Reservations. Tracts of land or water— 
islands and marshy places along rivers and 
shores, wild stretches in mountainous districts 
and lakes—which are set apart by national, 
state or provincial governments as permanent 
and safe retreats for the native wild birds, are 
known as bird reservations. There they rest 
in peace and security from the hunter the 
year round. Without such abiding places 
many species of birds would before many 
years become extinct. The first United States 
reservation was established by President 
Roosevelt in March, 1903, when, by special 
proclamation, he set aside Pelican Island, in 
Indian River, Fla., as a home for the pelicans 
that nested there. In 1909, when he retired 
from office, he had established fifty-three 
different bird reservations. This great work 
was continued by his successors; four new 
national reserves were created in 1913, and 
two in 1915. 

These places of refuge are located in all 
parts of the national domain, from Porto Rico 
on the south and east to the chain of Aleutian 
Islands off the coast of Alaska; along the 
Gulf and Atlantic states, midland in Nebraska 
and South Dakota, and westward in Oregon 
and California; while in the Pacific is the 
great Hawaiian Island Reservation. The two 


reservations in Oregon and California, includ¬ 
ing Lower Klamath Lake, Malheur and Har¬ 
ney lakes and the great marshy stretches 
around them, are the largest wild-fowl nur¬ 
series on the Pacific coast. 

In bird reservations the feathered creatures 
seem instinctively to know they are safe from 
the gun of the huntsman; admission to one of 
these sanctuaries is only through the kindness 
of officials in charge, and indeed on some 
reservations human beings are not allowed 
under any circumstances. 

In 1916 a treaty was ratified by the United 
States and Canada providing that no bird 
which helps the farmer by destroying insects 
shall be shot at any time, and that the open 
season for game laws may be restricted to 
three months and a half. 

Game Laws. The wanton and careless de¬ 
struction of wild birds by sportsmen and 
plumage-hunters, which in the past has caused 
the birds to diminish at a deplorable rate, 
has awakened the people of both the United 
States and Canada to the need of protective 
legislation. The loss to farmers from preying 
insects would be much greater than it is but 
for the birds, and it would be a calamity not 
to preserve for mankind the many beautiful 
and sweet-singing creatures of the woodland 


BIRD 


743 


BIRD 





A Suggestive Program 

Do you ne’er think what wondrous beings these? 

Do you ne’er think who made them, and who taught 
The dialect they speak, where melodies 
Alone are the interpreters of thought? 

—Longfellow 



Song, The Skylark . James Hogg 

Roll Call, answered with names of birds 
Who Stole the Bird’s 

Nest? . Lydia M. Child 

(By a Group of Pupils) 

Essay, The Meaning of Bird Day 

The Building of a Nest.. .Margaret Sangster 

To a Water-Fowl . William Cullen Bryant 

The Blue-Bird . Ehen E. Rexford 

Quotations about Birds 

The Sandpiper . Celia Thaxter 

Remorse . Sydney Dagre 

Essay, Birds’ Eggs I Can Recognize 
Song, The Birds’ Ball 

The Whitethroat . Theodore H. Rand 

In April . Emily G. Arnold 

Essay, How Birds Help the Farmers 

Robert of Lincoln . William Cullen Bryant 

What Robin Told . George Cooper 

Robin’s Return . Edith Thomas 

A Dialogue between Mr. and Mrs. Wren 




















































































BIRD 


744 


BIRD 


OUTLINE AND QUESTIONS ON BIRDS 


Outline 


(1) 

( 2 ) 

(3) 

(4) 


( 1 ) 

( 2 ) 

(3) 


( 1 ) 


I. Important Characteristics 

A covering of feathers 
Power of flight 

Possession of a backbone and warm 
blood 

All have two legs 

II. Framework of the Body 


VII. Their Home Life 

(1) The mating instinct 

(2) Hatching of eggs 

(3) Care of the young 

(a) Feeding 

(b) Teaching them how to fly 

VIII. Food 


Hollow bones 

(1) 

Animal and vegetable food 

Air cavities 

(2) 

How birds eat 

Keel-like breastbone 

(3) 

Methods of finding food 

III. How the Birds Fly 


IX. Birds and Mankind 

Wings 

(1) 

Value to farmer 

(a) Modifications of forelimbs 

(2) 

Protection of birds 

(b) Uses of the feathers 

(3) 

Birds as pets 


(2) Tail 

(a) The bird’s rudder 

(3) Long-distance flights 

(4) Rapidity of flight 

(5) Examples for airship-builders 

IV. The Coat of Feathers 

(1) Where the feathers grow 

(2) Why they vary for different birds 
(3 ) Purpose of oil glands 

(4) Why the male is brightly dressed 

(5) Molting 

V. Senses 

(1) Sight 

(a) Compared with that of other ani¬ 

mals 

(b) Sensitiveness to light 

(2) Hearing 

(a) How birds hear 

(b) Acuteness of this sense 

(3) Touch, taste and smell 

(4) Sense of direction 

(a) The carrier pigeon 

(b) Birds that return to last-year’s 

nests 

VI. The Song of Birds 

(1) Their “organ of speech’’ 

(2) Birds most gifted in song 

(3) Birds which cannot sing 


X. Classification 

See lists, fully classified, under the heading 
Related Subjects 


( 1 ) 

( 2 ) 

(3) 


XI. Xests of Birds 

Purposes of nests 
How nests vary 
Nests of special interest 

(a) Burrowed nests 

(b) Mounds 

(c) Nests of clay 

(d) Carpenter nests 

(e) Wooden nests 

(f) Woven nests. 

(4) Birds that steal nests 

XII. Migration of Birds 

(1) Why birds migrate 

(2) How they migrate 

(3) The routes they follow 

XIII. Bird Reservations 

(1) Their purpose 

(2) Location of important reserves 

XIV. Bird Day 

(1) What it means 

(2) Its influence 

(3) How observed 


Questions 

How are birds related to snakes? 

What resemblance is there between a flying bird and a boat? An aeroplane? 
What is the origin of the old saying, “Like water from a duck’s back”? 

Why does the bobolink wear different plumage for different seasons? 















BIRD 


745 


BIRD 



Outline and Questions on Birds—Continued 

What instinct brings the carrier pigeon back home even when it has been sent 
away by train? 

How fast do birds fly? 

How do birds and mankind differ in their method of producing sounds? 

Do birds talk to one another? 

Are the same number of eggs laid at each sitting? 

How do the newly-hatched birds of the lower orders differ from those of the 
higher orders? 

How do baby birds learn to fly? 

Why can birds digest their food without chewing it? 

In what respect are the birds an aid to agriculture? 

What services does mankind owe the birds? 

How ancient is the custom of keeping birds in cages? 

Would 3'ou choose a grain-eating bird for a pet, or one that feeds on insects? 
Why? 

What are the principal classes into which birds are divided? 

Why do some birds build elaborate nests, and others such crude ones? 

What birds dig tunnels for nesting places? 

How are the eggs of the mound-bird hatched? 

What sort of cement does the robin use to hold its nest together? 

What bird travels 16,000 miles a year? 

What are the chief reasons for the periodical flights of birds? 

What is the usual order of arrangement when a flock of birds flies off in a pro¬ 
cession? 

Do the birds travel at the same rate in the spring and fall flights? 

What determine the “trunk lines” followed by migrating birds? 

Why do governments set apart reservations for birds? 

When birds molt do their feathers drop off all at once? 

Do they shed all of their feathers? 

What proof is there that the sense of hearing in birds is acute? 

What senses do they use in seeking out their food? 

Why do birds eat during most of their waking hours? 

How can wild birds be tamed? 

What sort of clothing should one wear on a bird-study excursion? 

If you should find a bird with a broken wing what ought you to do? 

What bird never builds a nest of its own? 

Do mated birds remain together season after season? 

Are birds the only creatures that fly? Do all birds fly? 

Where do their largest and strongest feathers grow? 

Do birds return to their last-year’s nests? 

How many miles can a carrier pigeon fly in an hour? 

How r does the manner in which feathers grow' on a bird differ from the manner 
in which hair grows on a dog, for instance? 

What peculiarity of birds is indicated in the lines “Robert of Lincoln is gayly 
drest” and “Robert of Lincoln’s Quaker wife, pretty and quiet, with plain brown 
v r ings”? 

What difference is there between the manner in which a bird produces its song 
and the manner in which a human being speaks? 

What difference is noticeable between the young of the low r er orders of birds and 
those of the more highly developed orders? 





















BIRD 


746 


BIRD 


so greatly in danger of becoming extinct. 
The most far-reaching law in force in the 
United States, the McLean Act of 1913, gives 
the Federal government control of all migra¬ 
tor birds and game birds which do not 
remain permanently within the limits of one 
state. The Department of Agriculture is em¬ 
powered to prescribe regulations in regard to 
closed seasons, zones and similar matters. 
The various states have also passed protect¬ 
ive laws, no fewer than 240 having- been 
enacted in 1915 by legislatures of forty states. 
There are special laws pertaining to the hunt¬ 
ing of birds in force in nearly all of the Cana¬ 
dian provinces, and in 1915 a law prohibiting 
the importation of wild bird skins for com¬ 
mercial purposes went into effect over the 
entire Dominion. The importation of skins 
or feathers of birds into the United States is 
forbidden by the Underwood tariff law of 
1913. j.b. 

Bird Day is a special day observed by the 
school children of the United States and Can¬ 
ada. It was set apart to teach them the im¬ 
portance of protecting the birds, “the winged 
wardens of the farms.” Not only are they 
taught that the birds save the farmers of the 
country millions of dollars each year by their 
destruction of harmful insects, but they learn 
the equally important lesson expressed so 
beautifully by Coleridge in his Rime o} the 
Ancient Mariner: 

He prayeth best who loveth best 

All thing's both great and small; 

For the dear God who loveth us, 

He made and loveth all. 

Bird Day was first celebrated in the public 
schools of Oil City, Pa., in May, 1894, its 
founder being C. A. Babcock, superintendent 
of schools. Two years later the United States 
Department of Agriculture issued a circular 
urging all public schools to devote a special 
day to the cause of bird protection. The 
observance of the day is left to the schools of 
each state and province, and the movement is 
growing each year. The exercises are similar 
to those used in the celebration of Arbor Day 
(which see), and the two programs are fre¬ 
quently combined. Bird Day in Louisiana 
is observed on May 5, the birthday of that 
great friend of the birds, John James 
Audubon. j.b. 

Consult the books referred to in the body of 
the above article; also, Check-list of North 
American Birds, published by the North Ameri¬ 
can Ornithologists’ Union; Nuttall’s Manual of 
the Ornithology of the United States and Canada. 


Related Subjects. The following classified 
lists will show how fully birds are treated in 
these volumes : 


BIRDS OF PREY 


Butcher Bird 

Lammergeier 

Buzzard 

Marsh Hawk 

Condor 

Owl 

Eagle 

Secretary Bird 

Falcon 

Shrike 

Goshawk 

Sparrow Hawk 

Hawk 

Turkey Buzzard 

Kestrel 

Vulture 

Kite 


CREEPERS AND CPIINKERS 

Cockatoo 

Quetzal 

Creeper 

Sapsucker 

Flicker 

Toucan 

Lory 

Woodpecker 

Macaw 

Wren 

Parrakeet 

Wryneck 

Parrot 

Yellow-hammer 


FISHERS 

Booby 

Frigate Bird 

Cormorant 

Hornbill 

Darter 

Pelican 

Fish Hawk 

% 


PERCHERS 

American Goldfinch 

Lark 

Baltimore Oriole 

Linnet 

Bellbird 

Magpie 

Bird of Paradise 

Martin 

Blackbird 

Meadow Lark 

Bluebird 

Mocking Bird 

Bobolink 

Motmots 

Bower-bird 

Nightingale 

Brown Thrasher 

Nutcracker 

Bullfinch 

Nuthatch 

Bunting 

Oriole 

Canary 

Ortolan 

Cardinal Bird 

Ouzel 

Catbird 

Oren Bird 

Chaffinch 

Pipit 

Chat 

Raven 

Cowbird 

Redbird 

Crossbill 

Redstart 

Crow 

Robin 

Crow Blackbird 

Rook 

Cuckoo 

Snowbird 

Curassow 

Sparrow 

Dickcissel 

Starlings 

Dipper 

Stone Chat 

Finch 

Sunbird 

Flycatcher 

Swallow 

Goldfinch 

Tailor Bird 

Grackle 

Tanager 

Grosbeak 

Thrush 

Halcyon 

Titmouse 

Hoopoe 

Umbrella Bird 

Indigo Bird 

Vireo 

Jackdaw 

Wagtail 

Jay 

Warblers 

Junco 

Waxwing 

Kingfisher 

Weaver Bird 

Kinglet 

Wood Pewee 


PIGEONS 

Carrier Pigeon 

Pigeon 

Dove 

Turtle Dove 

Passenger Pigeon 



BIRDS OF PARADISE 


747 


BIRD’S-EYE MAPLE 


RUNNERS 


Apteryx 

Ostrich 

Cassowary 

Rhea 

Emu 

Road Runner 


SCRATCHERS 

Bustard 

Partridge 

Francolin 

Peacock 

Grouse 

Pheasant 

Guan 

Prairie Chicken 

Guinea Fowl 

Ptarmigan 

Jungle Fowl 

Quail 

Lyre Bird 

Tragopan 

Mound Bird 

Turkey 


SEA BIRDS 

Albatross 

Petrel 

Fulmar 

Scissorsbill 

Gannet 

Skua 

Gulls 

Tern 

Kittiwake 

Tropic Bird 


SWIMMERS 

Auk 

Goose 

Brant Goose 

Grebe 

Canada Goose 

Guillemot 

Canvasback 

Merganser 

Coot 

Penquin 

Diver 

Puffin 

Duck 

Shoveler 

Eider Duck 

Swan 

Gadwall 

Widgeon 

Gallinule 



WADERS 

Adjutant 

Oyster Catcher 

Avocet 

Plover 

Bittern 

Rail 

Crane 

Ruff 

Curlew 

Sanderling 

Egret 

Sandpiper 

Flamingo 

Snipe 

Heron 

Spoonbill 

Ibis 

Stilt 

Jabiru 

Stork 

Jacana 

Turnstone 

Killdeer 

Woodcock 

Lapwing 

Yellowlegs 

Night Heron 



WEAK-FOOTED BIRDS 

Goatsucker 

Swift 

Humming Bird 

Whip-poor-will 

Night Hawk 



BIRD’S-EYE MAPLE, a beautiful form of 
the wood of the sugar maple, which shows a 
variation from the straight grain by having 
numerous small, round spots that resemble the 
eyes of a bird. When smoothed and polished, 
this wood is highly valued in furniture making. 
The hard and red maples are the varieties that 
most frequently yield bird’s-eye wood. It is 
especially prized in the manufacture of choice 
writing desks and bedroom furniture. 

This peculiar formation is the result of an 
irregularity in growth. When the bark of the 
maple is injured, the trunk usually starts to 


sprout, and a multitude of little twigs ap¬ 
pear that have just about enough vitality to 
keep alive. Each twig is the center of a 
series of w r ood rings which give to the wood 
its characteristic appearance under the skilled 
hand of the finisher. Special methods of saw¬ 
ing are necessary, that the beauty of the grain 
may be preserved; a typical method consists 
in taking short lengths of log to a saw which 
pares off a thin layer from the surface as the 
log revolves, a layer 100 feet in length some¬ 
times being thus cut off before the heart of 
the wood is reached. 

Curled Maple. This is another variation 
from the straight-grained wood, and it is quite 
as beautiful as bird’s-eye. Here the wood fibers 
lie upon each other in ripples, and are some¬ 
what longer than those of the ordinary wood. 
When polished, curled maple presents most 
beautiful effects in light and shade. The reason 
for the formation of curled maple is not known. 
Beeches and birches also are subject to this 
irregularity. Aside from its use for furniture, 
curled maple is prized as a wood for stocks of 
guns, as it combines lightness and beauty with 
great strength and durability. See Maple. 

BIRDS OF PARADISE, a family of birds 
that are equaled only by the humming birds 
in their splendor. There are between forty and 
fifty species, in forests of Australia, New 
Guinea and other Pacific islands. Strangely 
enough, they are related to the family of crows, 
which are as remarkable for plainness as their 
famous cousins are for beauty. The name 
was given them by early travelers, who wrongly 
supposed that they were without feet and lived 
in the air, always keeping their eyes turned 
toward the sun, and never touching the earth 
till they died. Europeans first saw specimens 
of them in the sixteenth century, when they 
were carried to Europe by the sailors who 
made the voyage around the world in the 
Magellan expedition (1519-1522). In their na¬ 
tive haunts they live almost entirely in the 
tree-tops. There they build their simple nests, 
and run and play about the branches, a grace¬ 
ful and agile company; the gorgeously-attired 
males sit and plume themselves to attract the 
more soberly-clad females. 

The brilliant plumage of the males presents 
a bewildering variety of form and color, re¬ 
minding one of Thoreau’s statement that Na¬ 
ture made their feathers to show what she 
could do. Among the larger species is the 
twelve-wired bird of paradise, so called because 
out of its short, square tail twelve long, wire- 


BIRDS OF PARADISE 


748 


BIRKENHEAD 


\ 



King Bird of Paradise 


Six-shafted ^ 
Bird of Paradise 


Wilson’s Bird of Paradise 


King of Saxony Bird of Paradise 


like feathers grow, which curve around towards 
the sides of the wings. This bird is a foot 
long, and truly has a coat of many colors, with 
purple-bronze on the head, green, black and 
purple on the neck, bronze-green on the back 
and shoulders, and emerald-green on the edges 
of its violet-purple wings. The tail is also 
violet-purple and the breast a rich yellow. 

Not less splendidly arrayed is the long¬ 
tailed bird of New Guinea, over a yard in 
length and having as a distinctive feature a 
fan-like arrangement of feathers on the sides 
of the breast, which can be raised to form two 
half circles. The ends of these feathers are 
bright blue and green, and the tail feathers 
opal-blue. The great bird of paradise, about 
half the size of the one just described, is a 
superb creature whose chief glory is a spray 
of feathers growing out from under each wing. 
These rise from the body and fall backward 
in a graceful curve, a showery mass of brilliant 
color that seems to envelop the bird like a 
magic fountain. The smallest of the family is 
known as the king bird of paradise, a little 
creature whose two middle tail feathers termi¬ 
nate in spiral disks of beautiful emerald-green. 


The lovely birds of paradise have to pay a 
bitter price for their glorious plumage, for 
thousands upon thousands have been sacrificed 
to man’s greed and woman’s vanity. The birds 
are captured for the millinery trade during 
the mating season, when the males assemble 
in the trees in groups of from twelve to twenty 
to display their splendid garments. The bird- 
catcher shoots them with blunt arrows which 
stun them, thus permitting their capture with¬ 
out injury to the plumage. The United States, 
according to a provision of the Underwood 
Tariff Bill of 1913, now prohibits the importa¬ 
tion of the plumage of these birds, and the 
movement to check their cruel slaughter is also 
progressing rapidly in other countries. See 
Audubon Societies; Bird. b.m.w. 

BIRKENHEAD, bir' kenhcd, a town and 
parliamentary borough of Cheshire, England, 
on the Mersey River, opposite Liverpool, of 
which town it is practically a suburb. Its 
growth has been rapid, caused by the increas¬ 
ing importance of Liverpool, with which it is 
connected by ferry and by a railroad tunnel 
underneath the river. This tunnel is four and 
one-half miles long and cost $6,000,000, 









































BIRMINGHAM 


749 


BIRMINGHAM 


The town has many fine buildings, and all 
public utilities such as water works, electric 
light plant, electric street car service and gas 
plants are municipally owned and managed at 
a substantial profit. It has large shipbuilding 
yards, wagon factories, machine and engineer¬ 
ing works. In the shipbuilding yards of Birken¬ 
head the famous Alabama (which see) was con¬ 
structed for the Confederate States of America. 
Population in 1915, 130,794. 

BIRMINGHAM, bir'ming am or bir'ming 
ham, Ala., one of the most rapidly-developing 
cities of the South, the largest city of the state 
and the county seat of Jefferson County, 
famous for its steel, iron and coal industries. 
It is situated north of the geographical center 
of the state, ninety-five miles northwest of 
Montgomery, the capital, and 168 miles west 
and south of Atlanta, Ga. Nine railroad lines 
enter the city and provide exceptional trans¬ 
portation facilities; they are the Louisville & 
Nashville; Mobile & Ohio; Alabama Great 
Southern; Seaboard Air Line; Central of Geor¬ 
gia; Illinois Central; Atlanta, Birmingham & 
Atlantic; Southern, and Frisco. Interurban 
lines reach the rapidly-growing suburbs and 
near-by cities. An increase of population from 
132,685 in 1910 to 174,108 in 1915 is evidence 
of the rapid growth of the city. The area 
exceeds forty-eight square miles. 

Birmingham is located 608 feet above sea 
level, in a valley abundantly rich in coal, iron 
and limestone; around it lie three famous 
coal fields, the Warrior, the Cahaba and the 
Coosa. Iron Mountain, six miles distant, has 
almost inexhaustible deposits of hematite, a 
valuable iron ore. The city is partly on the 
sloping side of Red Mountain, and is attract¬ 
ively laid out, with wide streets, beautiful 
residences, winding parkways and numerous 
parks, the latter comprising 600 acres; of these, 
Capitol, Avondale, Lake View and East Lake 
parks are especially attractive. 

Buildings and Institutions. The most 
notable of the city’s public buildings are the 
Federal building, the county courthouse, a city 
hall, recently completed at a cost of $200,000, 
the Auditorium, Saint Vincent’s hospital, First 
National Bank building, the $2,000,000 terminal 
station, a Y. M. C. A. building, two excellent 
hotels costing more than $1,000,000 each, and 
several ten-story “skyscraper” office buildings. 
The benevolent institutions include Hillman’s 
hospital, Mercy Home and Jefferson County 
almshouse. Besides the public schools, with 
five high schools, there are Howard College 


(Baptist) at East Lake, Birmingham College 
(Methodist) at Owenton Heights, the Boys’ 
Industrial School, also at East Lake, a normal 
training school (colored) and medical, dental 
and business colleges. 

Industry and Manufacture. Owing to the 
extent of its iron and coal industry, Birming¬ 
ham is sometimes called The Pittsburgh of the 
South; the annual output of iron is estimated 
at 2,000,000 tons. The first steel plant in the 
South was established at Birmingham in 1897, 
with two open-hearth furnaces; at Ensley, in 
the vicinity, the Tennessee Coal and Iron 
Company now owns the largest basic open- 
hearth plant in the United States, excepting 
that of the Carnegie mills in Homestead, Pa.; 
a rail mill and casting plant are operated in 
connection with it. Alabama’s largest yield 
of iron ore is obtained from the Birmingham 
district, and more than one-half of the United 
States export of pig iron is made from this 
city. While coal mining and the manufacture 
of iron and steel products are the chief indus¬ 
tries, the cotton, cottonseed and lumber inter¬ 
ests are important, Birmingham is also one of 
the leading yellow-pine markets of the South. 
Besides all of the above, the city has cement 
factories, fertilizer factories, clay-pipe and 
brick plants, clay being one of the important 
resources of the district. Here, also, are located 
the repair shops of the Southern Railway. 

History. Early in 1871, following the dis¬ 
covery of the rich natural resources of this 
section, Birmingham was founded by the Ely- 
ton Land Company, who named it for the cele¬ 
brated steel and iron manufacturing city of 
England. A small iron furnace was built and 
mining was begun. In the same year the town 
was incorporated. In 1873 it was scourged by 
cholera; it recovered and was again prostrated 
by a panic in 1889. Following this period 
growth was rapid. The Greater Birmingham 
law became effective January 1, 1910, at which 
time the suburbs of North Birmingham, East 
Birmingham, Avondale, Woodlawn, East Lake, 
Wylan, Ensley, Pratt City, West End and 
Elyton became part of the greater city. In 
March, 1911, the commission form of govern¬ 
ment was adopted. c. of c. 

BIRMINGHAM, bir' ming am, England, one 
of the most important manufacturing cities in 
the world, in the county of Warwick, 103 miles 
northwest of London and seventy-eight miles 
southeast of Liverpool. In addition to enjoy¬ 
ing the position of acknowledged center of the 
world’s hardware industries, Birmingham is a 


BIRTHDAYS OF FAMOUS PEOPLE 750 


BISBEE 


striking example in favor of municipal owner¬ 
ship of utilities. Its water supply, street rail¬ 
ways, gas works, electric lighting plants, mar¬ 
kets and slaughter houses are the property of 
the municipality and are run at substantial 
profit. Its water supply is derived from two 
lakes in Wales and is conveyed seventy-three 
miles by pipes and aqueducts. A recently- 
installed sewage system has made this the 
best-drained city in England. In 1876 the 
municipality also acquired a larger district in 
the most populous part of the city at a cost 
of $8,000,000, and after condemning it as in¬ 
sanitary rebuilt and made it the leading busi¬ 
ness section. 

The manufactures consist of steam and gas 
engines, motors, hydraulic presses, machinery, 
cutlery, screws, nails, railway cars and firearms, 
in addition to which there are numerous glass 
works, breweries and chemical works. There 
are many fine buildings, the chief of which is 
the town hall, in Greek style of architecture, 
completed in 1850. Here is annually held the 
Birmingham Musical Festival, one of the most 
notable events of the English musical world. 
In 1846 Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah was here 
presented to the public for the first time. As 
much as it is possible for a city to owe its 
prosperity to one man, Birmingham is indebted 
for its present position to Joseph Chamberlain 
(which see), who became mayor in 1874 and 
inaugurated an era of progress. It is now the 
fourth city of England, with a population of 
525,830 in 1911. 

BIRTHDAYS OF FAMOUS PEOPLE. Lists 
of birthdays of hundreds of the world’s men 
and women will be found in the articles relating 
to the months of the year. To these the reader 
is directed. 

BIRTHSTONES, certain precious gems that 
through custom, imagination and sentiment 
are associated with the twelve months of the 
year, each month having dedicated to it a 
special stone. Thus the stone of any month is 
the birthstone of every person whose birthday 
falls in that month, and the belief that a natal 
stone is more intimately associated with one’s 
personality than any other stone is very wide¬ 
spread. This belief may be traced to the 
writings of Josephus, a Jewish historian of the 
first century of the Christian Era, who found a 
connection between the twelve stones of the 
high priest’s breastplate (see Exodus XVIII, 
15-20, also article High Priest), and the yearly 
circle of months. Yet the custom of wearing 
birthstones is comparatively of recent date, as 


it is supposed to have originated in the eight¬ 
eenth century, in Poland. 

The list of birthstones given below was 
adopted by the American National Retail Jew¬ 
elers’ Association at their convention held in 
August, 1913. A comparison of this list with 
the gems mentioned in the adornment of the 
high priest’s breastplate will suggest the changes 
that the centuries have produced in the popular 
beliefs about birthstones: 


January .Garnet 

February.Amethyst 

March .Bloodstone or aquamarine 

April .Diamond 

May .Emerald 

June .Pearl or moonstone 

July .Ruby 

August.Sardonyx or peridot 

September .... Sapphire 

October .Opal or tourmaline 

November .... Topaz 

December ....Turquoise or lapis-lazuli 


Each gem named in the above list is described 
in its place in these volumes. 

BISBEE, Ariz., a prosperous copper-mining 
and smelting center, with a mixed American, 
English, Mexican and Slavonian population, 
which in 1910 numbered 9,019. It is situated 
in the extreme southeastern part of the state, 
in Cochise County, about eight miles from the 
Mexican border, thirty miles from Tombstone, 
the county seat, and ninety miles southeast of 
Tucson. Bisbee is the terminus of the El Paso 
& Southwestern Railway, which connects with 
the Southern Pacific Railroad at Benson. This 
branch line was constructed to Bisbee in 1902. 
The city was founded in 1877 and incorporated 
as a city in 1901. 

Bisbee is picturesquely located in the heart 
of the Mule Pass Mountains, in a famous cop¬ 
per region; its Copper Queen and Calumet and 
Arizona mines are among the richest in the 
world. The industries are dependent upon the 
extensive copper, gold, silver and lead resources 
of this district; in a period of three months, 
18,000,000 pounds of copper were produced 
from its ores. About 5,000 people are engaged 
in mining, and the annual output of this indus¬ 
try is valued at $18,000,000. An excellent 
school system for a city of its size and a public 
library offer educational advantages, and the 
Young Men’s Christian Association and the 
Young Women’s Christian Association have 
branches here. The buildings of these associa¬ 
tions, with the Elks Club, comprise the most 
notable structures of the city. Shattuck Crys¬ 
tal Cave and Tombstone Mountain Boulevard 
are scenic points in the vicinity. j.h.g. 











BISCAY 


751 


BISMARCK ARCHIPELAGO 


BISCAY, bis'kay, a great bay indenting 
France, is an eastern arm of the Atlantic 
Ocean, called by the old Romans the Canta¬ 
brian Sea. It is bounded on the east and 
northeast by France, and on the south as far 
as Cape Ortegal by Spain, and forms a fairly- 
regular curve about 400 miles long and 300 
miles wide. The rugged Spanish coast is in¬ 
dented by bays, but the low and sandy French 
coast is broken by the great mouths of the 
Loire, Garonne, Adour and Charente rivers. 
Bordeaux, Bayonne, Nantes, Rochefort and 
Brest are the principal French ports; the cities 
on the Spanish coast include San Sebastian, 
Santander, Bilbao and La Rochelle. The peo¬ 
ple who live on the Spanish shore are called 
Basques, and are industrious and active, raising 
crops of nectarines, barley and maize in spite 
of unfertile soil along the coast. From the 
Basques the bay takes its name. 

On account of its exposed position and 
diverse currents the bay is noted for storms 
and is especially trying to voyagers. In 1588 
the great Spanish Armada, as it was starting 
on its career of conquest, encountered a terrible 
storm on the Bay of Biscay, in which the un¬ 
wieldy vessels were scattered in all directions, 
and were assembled again only after several 
days. Byron in Childe Harold says of the bay: 

On, on, the vessel flies, the land is gone, 

And winds are rude in Biscay’s sleepless bay. 

BISHOP, bish'up. In the Roman Catholic, 
Anglican, Greek and some other Eastern 
churches, the title is given to one who has 
jurisdiction over the local churches which con¬ 
stitute his diocese. The office of bishop in the 
churches named is considered as descending 
without interruption from the Twelve Apostles, 
but this order of succession is not accepted by 
most Protestant churches. In the Methodist 
Episcopal Church the authority of a bishop 
is recognized; in this Church the bishops are 
elected by the General Conference, and after 
reaching a certain age they are placed upon 
the retired list. 

The duties of the bishop vary with different 
denominations. In general, he has authority 
over the clergy and various church interests 
within his diocese. He may call conventions of 
the clergy, at which he presides, and he may 
appoint clergymen to churches and for cause 
may remove them from their positions. 

BISMARCK, biz'mark, N. D., the state 
capital and county seat of Burleigh County. It 
is south and west of the center of the state, 
and is 194 miles east of Fargo, 446 miles north¬ 


west of Saint Paul and 685 miles east of Helena, 
Mont. The city is situated on the east bank 
of the Missouri River, a wide stream at this 
point and navigable 1,500 miles farther north, 
to Fort Benton, Mont. River commerce is 
extensive. Bismarck is on the Northern Pa¬ 
cific, which crosses the river on a steel and 
iron bridge near the city, and on the Minne¬ 
apolis, Saint Paul & Sault Sainte Marie and 
the Chicago, Milwaukee & Saint Paul railroads. 
The population, largely American, in 1910 was 
5,443; it increased to 6,344 in 1915. The for¬ 
eign-born inhabitants are largely Germans and 
Scandinavians. 

Bismarck is an important trade center for a 
large part of the great wheat country of its 
section of the United States and Canada. It 
has more than fifty large jobbing and wholesale 
houses. Manufactories are increasing rapidly; 
grain elevators, a twine plant, flour mills, 
foundries and assembly plants for farm imple¬ 
ments and automobiles are the chief industrial 
establishments. Near the city are rich clay 
fields and the largest coal mine in the state. 

Fort Lincoln, an army post four miles from 
town, has a plant valued at $1,000,000. The 
property of the United States Indian School, 
located in this city, is worth $150,000. These 
two institutions and other posts and Indian 
agencies are supplied through Bismarck. The 
North Dakota state capitol, a building costing 
$750,000, the Federal building, costing $150,000, 
Bismarck hospital, Saint Alexius hospital, the 
municipal auditorium, the National Guard Ar¬ 
mory and the Masonic Temple are noteworthy 
buildings. A Methodist college, a business 
college and a school of music supplement the 
public school system. There are two parks 
which together contain nearly 200 acres. 

In 1804-1805 Lewis and Clark spent the win¬ 
ter on or near the site of Bismarck. A prom¬ 
inent settlement was made in 1873, and three 
years later a city charter was granted. Bis¬ 
marck, named for the great German statesman 
of that name, was made the capital of Dakota 
Territory in 1883 and in 1889 became the cap¬ 
ital of the state of North Dakota. The city 
adopted the commission form of government 
in 1912. g.l.p. 

BISMARCK ARCHIPELAGO, biz'mark arkt 
pel' ago, the name given to New Britain, New 
Ireland and other islands in the Pacific in 
honor of the first chancellor of the German 
Empire, in 1885, when they were declared 
German territory. At the commencement of 
the War of the Nations in 1914 they were 


BISMARCK-SCHdENHAUSEN 


occupied by a combined force of Australian 
and New Zealand troops and annexed to Great 
Britain. They are situated about sixty miles 
east of New Guinea and cover a total area 
of 18,200 square miles. The principal products 
are copra, coffee, cotton, rubber and copper. 
Population, consisting chiefly of Papuans, about 
189,000. 

BISMARCK - SCHONHAUSEN, bis' mark 
shoen' how zen, Karl Otto Eduard Leopold 
von, Prince (1815-1898), the greatest German 
statesman of the nineteenth century and one of 
the most commanding figures in all history. 
Through his 
genius the Ger¬ 
man people, after 
centuries of dis¬ 
union and op¬ 
pression, were 
brought together 
to begin their his¬ 
tory anew under 
the government 
of a united 
Empire. He was 
born of a noble 
Prussian family 
of Schonhausen, 
in the district of 
Magdeburg. At the age of seventeen he began 
the study of law and political science at the 
University of Gottingen, completed his studies 
at Berlin and was admitted to the bar in 1835. 
After serving his term in the army as lieutenant 
of the Life Guards, he began to take an interest 
in local affairs and in 1846 became a member of 
the provincial diet, or legislative assembly, of 
Saxony; in 1847 he was elected to the Prussian 
diet. 

The following year was the time of a great 
revolutionary outbreak that swept over all 
Europe. In Prussia peace was secured only 
when King Frederick William IV granted the 
people a constitution and promised to rule 
according to its provisions. During this critical 
period Bismarck had been coming to the front 
as a strong advocate of increased power for 
the king, and his speeches in the new Prussian 
Parliament elected in 1849 brought him favor¬ 
ably to the attention of Frederick William. 
Accordingly, in 1851 his sovereign appointed 
him representative of Prussia in the Germanic 
diet at Frankfort, the most important event 
thus far in his career. 

During eight years of service at Frankfort, 
Bismarck established in his mind the policy 


752 BISMARCK-SCHoNHAUSEN 

which was later to bring about such tremen¬ 
dous changes. He clearly saw that Prussia and 
Austria, rival leading states in the Germanic 
Confederation, could never remain in that 
league on equal terms, and the only hope for 
German unity and freedom was to form a new 
confederation, with Prussia at the head and 
Austria excluded from it. How he accom¬ 
plished this belongs to the story of the birth 
of the German Empire. 

The Making of an Empire. Between 1858 
and 1861 Bismarck represented Prussia at the 
court of Alexander II, czar of Russia. In the 
latter year he was transferred to Paris by 
William I, who had just succeeded to the 
throne of Prussia, and in 1862 he was sum¬ 
moned to Berlin by that monarch to become 
his Prime Minister and Secretary of Foreign 
Affairs. “With that day,” wrote one historian, 
“a new era did in truth begin for Prussia and 
Germany, and so for Europe.” From that time 
Bismarck worked with one end in view—the 
unification of the German fatherland. When 
the Prussian diet refused to work with him in 
the reorganization of the army he dissolved 
that body and carried out his policy without 
parliamentary authority. In a speech made in 
1862 he said, “Not by speeches and resolutions 
of majorities are the mighty problems of the 
age to be solved, but by blood and iron.” This 
often-quoted expression was his way of saying 
that only by war could the jealous German 
states be brought together, and, in truth, three 
wars were fought within the next ten years 
before his great purpose was realized. 

In 1864 Prussia and Austria united against 
Christian IX of Denmark, forcing him to resign 
all claim to the duchies of Schleswig and Hol¬ 
stein. No sooner was this war ended than 
Prussia and Austria began to quarrel over the 
provinces wrested from Denmark, a dispute 
that gave Bismarck just the opportunity he 
craved. Having secured the neutrality of 
France and made an ally of Italy, he sent, the 
army of Prussia, disciplined to the highest 
point of efficiency, against the Austrians, and 
in a brief war of seven weeks Austria was com¬ 
pletely defeated. 

The next step in Bismarck’s program was the 
establishment, in 1867, of the North German 
Confederation, a league of the German states 
north of the Main River, under the presidency 
of Prussia. In this union Austria had no place. 
Bismarck realized, however, that the states 
south of the Main must come into the Confed¬ 
eration before German unity could be accom- 



PRINCE BISMARCK 


BlSMARCK-SCHoENHAUSEN 


753 


BISMUTH 


plished. He foresaw, too, that a war with 
France must come sooner or later, for Na¬ 
poleon III, emperor of the French, fearful of 
losing his leadership in European affairs, was 
jealously watching every move in the great 



BISMARCK MEMORIAL IN HAMBURG 
This is one of the most massive and most im¬ 
pressive monuments on the continent of Europe. 


historic drama across the Rhine, and was 
openly opposed to the unification of the Ger¬ 
man states. 

In 1869 France and Prussia became involved 
in a dispute over the succession to the throne 
of Spain, and in 1870 they began war. The 
states north and south of the Main joined 
together under the standard of William I, and 
in the triumph of the German arms in that 
war Bismarck saw at last the realization of 
the greatest dream of his life. 

The Iron Chancellor of the Empire. Just as 
Bismarck’s personality had dominated affairs 
throughout the preceding period, so his was 
the guiding hand in the organization of the 
Empire, of which he became first chancellor, 
with the title of prince. In this office he 
revealed the same strength of will and purpose 
that had characterized him as Prime Minister, 
fittingly expressed in the title that historians 
give him—“The Iron Chancellor. 

His genius was conspicuous in home and 
foreign affairs. He originated those measures 
in behalf of the working classes that are the 
foundation of modern state socialism in Ger- 
48 


many, the system known as paternalism. He 
inaugurated Germany’s colonial policy and did 
much to extend his country’s trade throughout 
the world; the conference which met at Berlin 
in 1884 to arrange for the recognition of the 
Congo Free State in Africa was suggested by 
him. His one great mistake was his opposition 
to the Catholic party in Germany, for in this 
he took an extreme position from which he 
had to recede. 

In foreign relations his policy was one of 
peace. He kept Germany from becoming in¬ 
volved in the troublesome Eastern Question, 
and endeavored to promote its security by 
forming the Triple Alliance, which guaranteed 
him the support of Austria and Italy in case of 
aggression on the part of Russia or France. 
The Triple Alliance remained in force until 
the great conflict that set all Europe aflame 
in 1914, for in the War of the Nations Italy 
joined the allies and fought against Germany 
and Austria. 

Bismarck remained at the head of affairs 
throughout the reign of William I and during 
the short period when Emperor Frederick III 
ruled. In 1888 William II came to the throne, 
a ruler possessed of as dominating a per¬ 
sonality as Bismarck himself. Numerous dis¬ 
agreements followed, and in 1890 Bismarck 
tendered his resignation and retired to his 
estates at Friedrichsruh. Later the two became 
reconciled, and when in 1895 the great chan¬ 
cellor’s eightieth birthday was celebrated 
throughout Germany, the emperor visited him. 
Bismarck is one of the great characters of his¬ 
tory, for the results of his achievements have 
been lasting. The simple epitaph which he 
wrote for himself reflects his own estimate of 
his life and character—“a faithful German 
servant of the Emperor William I.” There are 
many statues of him in the cities of the Em¬ 
pire. B.M.W. 


Related Subjects. The following- articles in 
these volumes will throw much light on the life 
and work of Bismarck: 


Franco-German War 
Germany, subhead 
History 

Schleswig-Holstein 


Seven Weeks’ War 
Triple Alliance 
William I 
William II 


BISMUTH, biz' rnuth, a grayish-white metal 
with a slightly red tint. Small quantities are 
found in the pure state, but most of that used 
in the arts is obtained from the ores bismite 
and bismuthinite and from cobalt. Bismuth is 
purified by heating on an inclined shelf, so 
that the metal will drain away from the impuri- 

























BISON 


754 


BITTERN 


ties. It is brittle, harder than lead, and 9.9 
times heavier than water. One of its chief 
uses is in the manufacture of “fusible metals,” 
or mixtures that melt at a low temperature. 
For example, fusible metal, formed of eight 
parts bismuth, five parts lead and three parts 
tin, melts at 202° F., or ten degrees below the 
boiling point of water. This metal can be 
melted in a piece of stiff paper held over the 
flame of a candle or lamp without burning 
the paper. Fusible metals are used for plugs 
in steam boilers to prevent explosions, in auto¬ 
matic sprinkler systems designed for fire pro¬ 
tection in large buildings and for various other 
purposes. 

Some compounds of bismuth are used in the 
manufacture of paint, and the subnitrate, a 
white powder, is sometimes used as a remedy 
for dyspepsia. 

BISON. See Buffalo. 

BITHYNIA, hi thin' i ah, an ancient country 
of Asia Minor, bounded on the north by the 
Euxine, the old name for the Black Sea, and 
separated from Europe by the Sea of Mar¬ 
mora and the Bosporus. In early times the 



Greeks established in this region the colonies 
of Chalcedon and Heraclea. Later, Nicaea, 
Brusa and Nicomedia were flourishing cities, 
the last-named being the royal residence of the 
Emperor Diocletian. Bithynia became a Ro¬ 
man province in 74 b. c., and under Trajan 
was governed by Pliny the Younger. The lat¬ 
ter wrote a famous letter to Trajan respecting 
the treatment to be given the Christians of the 
province, which shows that Christianity gained 
a strong foothold there. 


BIT'TERN, a marsh bird of the heron fam¬ 
ily, the most familiar species being the com¬ 
mon bittern of North America, whose 
remarkable, dismal cry, sounding like the 
blow of an axe on a stake, has given it vari¬ 



ous local names, as stake-driver, mire-drum, 
bog-pumper, thunder-pump, etc. This bird 
nests in lonely marshes and swamps, and in 
summer is found north of Virginia as far as 
the fur-bearing sections of Canada; in winter 
it ranges from Virginia southward to the West 
Indies. It is from twenty-five to thirty inches 
in length, having a shorter neck and shorter 
legs than the heron, but longer toes. The 
upper parts of its body are brownish-buff, 
spotted with reddish-brown and black, whence 
its occasional name of freckled heron. Its 
under parts are pale buff striped with brown, 
and its legs are yellowish-green. The three 
to five brownish-drab eggs are laid in a crude 
nest that is merely a thick mat of coarse grass 
placed on the ground. 

The bird is a solitary creature of many pecu¬ 
liar habits. In the daytime it sometimes 
stands motionless for hours, on the lookout 
for frogs, lizards, large-winged insects and 
meadow mice, on which it feeds, and at night 
it becomes most active. Its gruesome call of 
pump-er-lunk, pump-er-lunk, which comes 
sounding over the marshes with solemn regu¬ 
larity each evening, has given rise to many 
absurd stories concerning it. Though its flesh 
is prized by some, the bittern is not an im¬ 
portant game bird. In Utah, where wild game 
is not found in abundance, this bird is pro¬ 
tected by law throughout the year, but most 
















































BITTERNUT 


755 


BIZET 


states do not find it necessary to enact laws 
regulating the hunting of the bird. In the 
Canadian provinces of British Columbia and 
Nova Scotia, the bittern may be hunted from 
September to March and from August to 
March, respectively. 

BIT'TERNUT, a tall, handsome variety of 
the hickory group, so called because of its 
bitter-tasting kernel. This tree is usually 
found in low, wet woods and swamps, from 
which fact its other name, swamp hickory, 
is derived. It is found in latitudes of Onta¬ 
rio and Maine to Florida, and west to Min¬ 
nesota, Nebraska and Texas. 

The bitternut grows to a height of from 
sixty to 100 feet, and has several marked 
peculiarities that set it apart from other hick¬ 
ories. Its flattened, tapering, yellow buds are 
borne the year round, and it has the smallest 
leaflets and the slenderest twigs of all the 
hickory family. The nut is smooth and round, 
its thin shell enclosing a plump, white kernel, 
which is so bitter that no creature of the 
woodland will touch it, but it is relished by 
some people. The wood of the tree is hard, 
tough and close-grained, of use in making 
ox yokes and hoops, and as a fuel. The at¬ 
tractive appearance of the bitternut and its 
value as a shade tree are bringing it more and 
more into use in parks and landscape gardens. 
See Hickory. 

BIT'TERROOT, a plant of the dogbane 
family which grows- in Canada and North¬ 
western United States. The name bitterroot 
comes from its long, fleshy, tapering root, 
which, though bitter, is a nutritious article 



BITTERROOT 


of food, esteemed both by the whites and the 
Indians. It is locally known as tobacco root, 
because of its tobacco-like odor while cook¬ 
ing. The plant has juicy, green leaves and a 
fleshy stalk bearing a single rose-colored blos¬ 
som that remains open only in the sunshine. 

This plant has given its name to a range 
of mountains between Montana and Idaho, 
to a forest and a river in Montana and to a 
fertile and beautiful valley in Montana east 
of the Bitterroot range, ninety miles long and 


seven miles in width. The bitterroot is also 
the state flower of Montana. 

BITTERS, a term usually applied to liquid 
compounds containing tonic properties, taken 
to aid digestion or as appetizers. The most 
generally used bitters are angostura, quassia, 
cinchona, orange and wild cherry. They are 
usually taken with spirits or wine—a few drops 
of the bitters in a small glass of the liquor. 
Many so-called bitters are composed mainly 
of alcohol, and have little or no medicinal 
value. They should never be used except on 
the advice of a physician. 

BITTERSWEET, or WOODY NIGHT¬ 
SHADE, an interesting member of the potato 
family, native to Europe and Asia, but now 
grown generally throughout Eastern United 
States and in Canada. Its stem is a weakling, 
choosing for its dwelling place moist thickets 
or edges of ponds, where it may climb upon 
the surrounding vegetation or lazily creep 
along the ground. The dark green leaves 
show a variety of form, some being heart- 
shaped, others having ear-like leaflets at the 
base, and still others having wing-like lobes. 
The blossom much resembles that of the 
potato, though it is smaller, and is blue or 
purple, with a yellow center. 

The special attraction of the plant, however, 
is its fruit, or egg-shaped berries that change, 
as they ripen, from green to yellow and then 
to ruby-red. Berries in all stages of growth 
appear in the same cluster, and the mingling 
of the different colors seen against the deep 
green of the leaves is delightful to the eye. 
No one should be tempted by the beauty of 
the fruit, however, as the berries are poison¬ 
ous. The twigs of bittersweet yield a fluid 
that helps to deaden pain; this is used in 
medicine as a remedy for certain skin diseases. 

BITUMEN, hi tu' men, a name given a num¬ 
ber of mineral substances which are composed 
chiefly of hydrogen and carbon, such as naph¬ 
tha, petroleum, mineral pitch or mineral tar, 
and asphalt. Bituminous coal, or “soft coal,” 
contains a large proportion of bitumen. All 
forms of bitumen burn, producing a great vol¬ 
ume of smoke unless abundantly supplied with 
air. Bitumen, in the various forms mentioned, 
is widely distributed over the earth. See 
Asphalt; Coal, subhead Bituminous Coal; 
Petroleum. 

BIZET, be za', Georges (1838-1875), a French 
music composer whose real name was Alexan¬ 
dre Cesar Leopold. He is remembered almost 
entirely for his brilliant and popular opera, 


BLACKBERRY 


BJoRNSON 756 


Carmen. Bizet studied at the Paris Con¬ 
servatory, where he distinguished himself in 
1857 by winning the Prize of Rome, the high¬ 
est honor the institution could award. After 
further study in Italy he began the composi¬ 
tion of operatic music, but Carmen, produced 
in 1875, shortly before his death, was the only 
work that received permanent recognition. 
This bright and melodious opera has enjoyed 
uninterrupted popularity to the present time. 
See Carmen. 

BJoRNSON, byurn son, Bjornstjerne 
(1832-1910), one of the most distinctively 
national of all Norwegian writers, famous 
especially for his tales of Norse peasant life. 
For him his countermen have a respect that 
is little less than 
worship, for he is 
to them the 
personification of 
their nation. 

Critics of other 
lands recognize 
in him the great¬ 
est novelist of 
Norway, one of 
its greatest poets, 
if not its very 
greatest, and its 
foremost drama¬ 
tist except Ibsen. 

He has none of the pessimism of Ibsen, but 
shows in all his works a persistent, though not 
a sentimental, optimism. A patriotic politician 
as well as a literary artist, he took an active 
part in every movement for the advancement 
of his county, and was very influential in 
bringing about the separation of Norway from 
Sweden, in 1905. 

He was born at Kvikne, studied at the Uni¬ 
versity of Christiania, and after leaving that 
institution earned a reputation as a journal¬ 
ist before the appearance of his first play, 
Between the Battles, and his first peasant 
novel, Synnove Solbakken. From 1857 to 1859 
he was director of the Bergen theater; from 
1860 to 1863 he traveled in Europe, and in 
1880-1881 he visited the United States on a 
lecture tour. He wrote, besides the works 
mentioned above, the novels Arue, The Fish- 
ermaiden, A Happy Boy, The Bridal March, 
Dust, The Heritage of the Kurts and In God’s 
Way; the dramas Mary s Stuart in Scotland, 
The Newly Wedded Pair, The New System, 
A Glove and Dagelannet; and many poems. 
For his works, many of which have been 


translated into English, he was awarded the 
Nobel prize for literature in 1903. 

Nearly every child finds in his school read¬ 
ers The Tree, which begins— 

The Tree’s early leaf-buds were bursting their 
brown : 

“Shall I take them away?” said the Frost, 
sweeping down. 

“No, leave them alone 
Till the blossoms have grown,” 

Prayed the Tree, while he trembled from root¬ 
let to crown. 

BLACK, commonly referred to as the darkest 
of all the colors. In the theory of color, white 
is produced by all the colors mixed in the 
proportion in which they are found in the 
solar spectrum and the rainbow, and black 
is produced by the absorption of all colors; 
in other words, then, black is really the absence 
of color. Of course, in practice this does not 
hold; all objects absorb some color and reflect 
some, but black objects reflect the smallest 
proportion. Black is the emblem of sorrow 
and mourning in Europe and America, but 
not throughout the world, for in some Asiatic 
countries, particularly in Chosen (Korea), 
white is so used. See Color; Solar Spectrum. 

BLACK ART. See Necromancy. 



BLACKBERRY 
Leaves, fruit and flower. 


BLACKBERRY, a vine-like shrub, one of the 
most important and profitable of small fruits. 
It is cultivated in most fruit-growing localities 



BJORNSON 

The greatest of Norway’s 
novelists. 







BLACKBIRD 


757 


BLACKBURN 


of America for jams, jellies, preserves, wine 
and dessert, but it also grows wild in cool cli¬ 
mates. The leaves are three or five, round- 
pointed; the blossoms, pink or white. The 
berries are plump and juicy, somewhat longer 
and more solid than a raspberry. Most varie¬ 
ties are black, but a new Burbank creation 
is a beautiful transparent white. And in his 
thornless blackberry Burbank has developed a 
blackberry stalk as smooth as velvet. 

Blackberries thrive on well-drained soil. 
The weak and diseased stems of the shrubs 
should be cut off each spring, and the outer 
stems cut back about one-third of the length. 
The early Harvest, Snyder and Agawam are 
three favorites. 

Blackberry Jam. Although fresh berries can 
be obtained only during a short season, yet 
the delicious flavor of blackberries may be 
enjoyed all the year. Pick over and wash a 
quantity of berries. Weigh the fruit and 
measure an equal weight of sugar. Put the 
berries into a preserving kettle, mash them as 
they are being heated, and when considerable 
juice has been pressed out add the sugar grad¬ 
ually. Let the mixture boil up well, then 
skim out the fruit or strain it. Boil the juice 
again until it is thick and will jelly. Put the 
fruit back and boil once more. Then pour 
into jars and seal. 

BLACKBIRD, the family name of several 
species of birds whose distinguishing feature 
is the glossy black coat of the male birds. Of 
the North American blackbirds none is more 
familiar than the red-winged variety, known 
also as the swamp blackbird, red-winged oriole 
and red-winged starling. The red wings are 
from seven and one-half to ten inches in 
length, and receive their name from the scar¬ 
let, yellow-tipped shoulders of the male, which 
otherwise is as black as coal. The female, 
as is true of most birds, is somewhat common¬ 
place in appearance, with blackish-brown 
upper parts streaked with rusty black and gray, 
and dusty-white under parts streaked with 
reddish-brown. 

These birds breed throughout the United 
States, and in the summer are found in East¬ 
ern Canada, west to the Saskatchewan valley 
and north to Great Slave Lake. They begin 
their southward migration in October, or early 
in November, traveling in large flocks, and are 
often winter residents of Mexico. Some, how¬ 
ever, are brave enough to endure the hardship 
of a New England winter, and refuse to join 
the autumn migration parties, 


The favorite nesting place of blackbirds is 
a low bush on the edge of a pond or the moist 
grass of the marshes. In the nest, which is 
made of grass, leaves and mud, are deposited 
from three to five eggs, pale blue in color, with 



A slender young Blackbird built in a thorn tree: 
A spruce little fellow as ever could be; 

His bill was so yellow, his feathers so black, 

So long was his tail, and so glossy his back, 
That good Mrs. B., who sat hatching her eggs, 
And only just left them to stretch her poor legs, 
And pick for a minute the worm she preferred, 
Thought there never was seen such a beautiful 
bird. ^ —D. M. Mulock. 

streaks and spots of black or purple. They 
are cheerful, sociable birds, given much to 
noisy chattering, and for this reason are some¬ 
times regarded as a nuisance. Yet their liquid 
warbling would be very delightful if they did 
not perpetually interrupt their singing with 
discordant notes which sound like fretful com¬ 
plainings. They feed upon worms, insects, 
fruit and grain, and their frequent raids upon 
the unripe corn of the farmer have given 
them an undesirable reputation. On the other 
hand, they more than offset the damage done 
to the corn by the service they render in de¬ 
stroying immense numbers of harmful insects. 

For other familiar species of blackbirds, see 
Cowbird; Crow Blackbird. See, also, Bird, 
subtitle Migration oj Birds. 

BLACKBURN, next to Manchester the most 
important center of the cotton industries of 
England. It is twenty-four and one-half miles 
northwest of the latter city, and 210 miles 
northwest of London. It is an ancient city, 
at one time the capital of a district named 
Blackburnshire but now incorporated in Lan¬ 
cashire. The cotton industries give employ¬ 
ment to many thousands of men, women and 
girls, and the town also has important manu¬ 
factures of hardware and machinery. The mill 
operatives of Blackburn earn higher wages 
than any others of the laboring classes in 
England, and they form large clubs among 
themselves, to which they subscribe weekly; 
the total sum subscribed is drawn annually 
in order to spend a week at the seaside, 


BLACK DEATH 


758 


BLACK FRIDAY 


Blackpool, one of the finest watering places 
in England, receives annually several hun¬ 
dred thousand pounds sterling in this way 
from Blackburn operatives. In 1557 a gram¬ 
mar school was founded here by Queen Eliza¬ 
beth, and it now occupies extensive modern 
buildings. Population in 1911, 133,064. 

BLACK DEATH. See Plague. 

BLACK-EYED SUSAN, or YELLOW 
DAISY, is a sunshiny wild flower found in dry 
fields and along the byroads and highroads 
almost everywhere. The flowers have orange- 
yellow rays, or 
petals, so gaily 
they advertise 
to the bees and 
butterflies the 
wealth of nectar 
and pollen in 
their purple- 
black centers. 

Just one flower 
grows at the top 
of each rough, 
hairy stem. The 
leaves, too, are 
stiff and hairy, 
and placed alter¬ 
nately along the 
stems. It is diffi¬ 
cult to pick these 
inviting flowers 
without pulling 
up the whole 
plant, because 
the stems are 
tough and rigid. 

Cut them, and 
you will be re¬ 
warded for your 
care, as the roots are perennial and they will 
come up year after year. See Perennial. 

BLACKFOOT, a tribe of Indians who are 
supposed to have received their name from 
white men, who noticed that the tops of their 
moccasins were blackened by the burnt grass 
and brush through which they passed. The 
Blackfoot are a branch of the great Algon- 
quian family, and formerly occupied all the 
region from the North Saskatchewan River in 
Canada to the head waters of the Missouri 
in Montana. They were restless, aggressive, 
and frequently at war with other tribes, but 
never with the United States or Canada. 
They became noted for their large herds of 
horses. They now live on reservations in 


Alberta and Montana, where they are acquir¬ 
ing the customs of civilization. In all they 
number about 4,700. Tourists in Glacier Na¬ 
tional Park and in Rocky Mountains National 
Park, north of the former, in Alberta, may see 
many camps of these Indians. 

Illustrations will be found with the articles 
Indians and Galcier National Park. 

BLACK FOREST, a mountainous district in 
the southwestern part of Germany, covering 
an area of 1,844 square miles. It runs almost 
parallel with the River Rhine for eighty-five 
miles and forms an elevated chain of plateaus 
rather than a series of isolated peaks. The 
highest summit is Feldberg, 4,900 feet above 
sea level. The slopes contain many lakes and 
streams, in which the Danube, Neckar, Kinzig 
and many smaller rivers have their sources. 
The principal mineral found is iron. The re¬ 
gion is noted for its mineral springs, which 
have led to the establishment of numerous 
watering-places and health resorts, of which 
Baden-Baden (which see) is the most famous. 
The forests yield much timber, especially the 
pine of the black fir, from which the forest 
takes its name. The region is being contin¬ 
ually reforested by the best-known, thorough 
German methods. 

The manufacture of wooden toys, clocks, 
and musical instruments is the most impor¬ 
tant industry of the section, employing about 
40,000 persons. The inhabitants of the forest 
preserve a quaint simplicity in habits, and the 
district is rich in old legendary associations. 
The trade is centered in the towns of Frei¬ 
burg, Rastatt, Lahr and Offenburg. 

BLACK FRIDAY, in the United States the 
name given to two days that ushered in many 
panics. The first Friday was on September 
24, 1869, when Jay Gould and James Fisk, Jr. 
attempted to create a “corner” by buying all 
the gold contained in the New York City 
banks. The value of gold had been steadily 
rising for several days, and speculators were 
aiming to carry it still higher. On Friday the 
whole city was in a state of tremendous ex¬ 
citement, when gold rose to 162 1 /2 and was 
still rising; a possibility seemed imminent 
that business houses would be closed, as no 
one knew what prices goods should bring. 
At this exciting time $4,000,000 was taken 
from the United States Treasury and placed 
on the market by Secretary Boutwell to break 
the “corner,” and the value of gold imme¬ 
diately fell, not, however, without leaving the 
speculators richer by almost $11,000,000. 











BLACK GUM 


759 


BLACK HILLS 


The second Black Friday was on September 
19, 1873, when the New York Stock Exchange 
reported numerous failures, which precipitated 
what is known as the panic of 1873. 

BLACK GUM, an American tree of which 
there are two well-known species, one yielding 
a tough, close-grained wood, used for hubs of 
wheels; the other yielding a light, soft wood 
employed chiefly for such articles as berry 
crates and fruit boxes. Both are handsome 
trees from eighty to ninety feet in height, with 
twisted branches and bright green leaves which 
turn crimson in autumn. The black gum is 
native to America, but has been introduced 
into Europe as an ornamental tree. Just why 
it should be called a gum tree is uncertain, 
for there is no gum connection in any way 
with it. 



BLACK HAW, or STAG-BUSH, 


small tree belonging 
to a family of most 
valuable ornamental 
plants. The buds, 
reddish and downy, 
appear in winter. 
This shrub grows 
sometimes to a 
height of fifteen 
feet and has spread¬ 
ing, rather stout 
branches. The flow¬ 
ers are attractive and 
pure white; the fruit, 
nearly half an inch 
long, is oval, bluish- 
black and covered 
with a soft bloom. 
The black haw grows 
well in dry places. 


a shrub or 


BLACK HAW 


BLACK HAWK (1767-1838), a chief of the 
Sac Indians, one of the most persistent ene¬ 
mies of the white men in their westward 
progress. He was born at Kaskaskia, Ill., be¬ 
came chief of his tribe in 1788, and from the 
first showed himself strongly opposed to any 
concessions to the whites. Despite his in¬ 


fluence, the Sacs and Foxes in 1804 agreed to 
give up to the United States then lands east 
of the Mississippi River, but Black Hawk 
repudiated the contract, declaring that the 
chiefs had been made drunk before they signed 


the documents. 

During the War of 1812 Black Hawk, 
tempted by British agents, joined them with 
about 500 warriors, but soon retired from Brit¬ 
ish service. In 1823 most of the Sacs and 



'it®-/' 


BLACK HAWK 


Foxes, under the leadership of Keokuk, re¬ 
moved to their reservation beyond the Mis¬ 
sissippi River; but Black Hawk, with part of 
his tribe, refused 
to emigrate and 
fought with the 
whites what is 
known as the 
Black Hawk War. 

After several en¬ 
counters, the In¬ 
dians were de¬ 
feated, and Black .rW&E™ 

Hawk and his V\ wfMlm 
two sons were 
taken captive. 

The three were 
confined in Fort¬ 
ress Monroe until 1833, and afterward joined 
the tribe in the reservation near Fort Des 
Moines. 

In 1911 there was erected near Oregon, Ill., 
on a bluff which 
overlooks the pic¬ 
turesque valley of 
Rock River, a 
massive rein¬ 
forced concrete 
statue to this in¬ 
domitable Indian 
chief. The figure 
is fifty feet in 
height and was 
constructed by 
Lorado Taft. It 
is not a portrait 
statue, for it pre¬ 
sents features 
from more than 
one Indian tribe, 
but its simple 
strength and 
majesty and its 
prophetic gaze 
down the valley 

once dominated THE GREAT STATUE 

This majestic figure, the 
by this grim war- wor k of Lorado Taft, is of 
rir.r it n vprv concrete and stands fifty feet 

noi S lves 11 a ver > in height. 

real personality. 

BLACK HILLS, a name that describes one 
of the richest gold-mining sections in the 
United States. It is a low, mountainous dis¬ 
trict, covering an area of 6,000 square miles 
in South Dakota and extending into Wyoming. 
The territory was purchased from the Indians 
in 1876, and mining operations were begun 














BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA 


760 


BLACKMORE 


the year following. Gold, silver, copper, lead, 
iron and a number of valuable building stones 
are obtained in the region. The great Home- 
stake mine, one of the largest in the United 
States, is located at Lead, in the Black Hills. 
See South Dakota. 

BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA, a small 
room, 14 feet 10 inches wide and 18 feet long, 
in the old English fort of Calcutta, India. 
On June 20, 1756, Surajah Dowlah and his 
men, after forcefully robbing the city, cap¬ 
tured the fort. On that intensely hot night 
in June, 146 men were thrust as prisoners into 
that one small room with but two tiny windows, 
and by morning only twenty-three were alive 
to tell of their terrible experience. See India, 
subhead History. 

BLACKING, for shoes, is commonly formed 
of ivory black, bone black or lamp black, in 
a liquid mixture of oil, vinegar, molasses or 
sugar dissolved in water, and sulphuric acid. 
The chemical combination of the acid, the 
sugar element and the black gives the black¬ 
ing its power to adhere to the leather. The 
difference between liquid and paste blackings 
is in the amount of vinegar contained. After 
blacking is applied to leather a high polish 
may be imparted by rubbing briskly with a 
cloth or soft brush. 

BLACK LAKE, Que., a town in Megantic 
County, four and one-half miles south of 
Thetford Mines and forty-six miles south of 
Quebec, on the Quebec Central Railway. The 
town is of importance chiefly for its valuable 
mines, which yield asbestos, chrome and iron. 
The mines of Black Lake and the vicinity 
furnish about eighty per cent of the world’s 
supply of asbestos (which see). The town was 
incorporated in 1908. Population in 1911, 
2,645; in 1916, estimated, 4,000. 

BLACK'LIST, a list of names of persons 
thought deserving of censure or punishment, 
or considered as untrustworthy as workmen, 
or classed as delinquent debtors. Lists of the 
latter are sometimes published by mercantile 
agencies and others for the protection of em¬ 
ployers or tradesmen; to a very general ex¬ 
tent general blacklists were formerly used by 
employers who wished to warn others against 
the employment of persons whom they con¬ 
sidered objectionable. As used in connection 
with labor problems the term refers to lists 
of persons considered undesirable by labor 
unions or by employers as workmen. Activity 
in the cause of unionism by a prospective em¬ 
ployee is frequently objected to by an em¬ 


ployer, while the unions object to men for 
exactly the opposite reasons, namely, that 
such persons have refused to join the union 
or obey its orders or have assisted as strike¬ 
breakers. Blacklists are usually distributed 
secretely, because the persons responsible for 
such lists do not care to be known. 

The Dominion of Canada and more than 
one-half of the states of the American Union 
have passed laws against the use of blacklists, 
but it has been found difficult to enforce these 
because employers often discharge workmen 
without stating any reason other than that 
their services are no longer needed, and also 
because it is easy to conceal the exchange of 
information on which these blacklists are based. 
Better understanding between employers and 
laborers of late years has decreased the tempta¬ 
tion to maintain such lists, even without the 
pressure of law. See Labor Organizations. 

Trading with the Enemy. The term black¬ 
list also refers to enemies at war. In the War 
of the Nations, for example, Great Britain and 
others of the allies published lists of persons 
and firms who were “by reason of enemy na¬ 
tionality, sympathy or association, found to 
be zealous to advance the cause of the enemy 
and to make their trading or profits in trade a 
means to this end.” Trading with the enemy is 
illegal under English common law, and the 
effect of these lists was merely to add certain 
persons nominally neutral to the class of those 
with whom trade was prohibited. The publica¬ 
tion of these lists, which included some firms in 
the United States, was regarded by many as an 
invasion of neutral rights, and called forth a 
protest from the United States government. 

BLACK'MAIL, a term legally applied to an 
attempt to extort money from a person under 
threat of exposure of an alleged past offense 
or of some damaging secret. Whether suc¬ 
cessful or not, blackmail is an offense punish¬ 
able in the United States and Canada by 
imprisonment or fine, or both. The laws of 
Great Britain are exceptionally severe on black¬ 
mailers, a sentence of twenty years’ imprison¬ 
ment having been pronounced on a person 
proved guilty of even an attempt to blackmail 
another. In olden times blackmail was a cer¬ 
tain amount of money, corn, cattle or some 
other thing of value, paid to men allied to 
robbers for protection from pillage; from that 
ancient usage the present meaning of the term 
was derived. 

BLACKMORE, Richard Doddridge (1825- 
1900), an English novelist whose name would 


BLACK MOUNTAINS 


761 


BLACKSTONE 


now be forgotten were it not for his Lorna 
Doone, a vigorous and beautifully-written story 
of Exmoor and the neighboring district, the 
home of the Doone family. He was born at 
Longworth, in Berkshire, educated at Oxford 
and began the practice of law in 1852. Failing 
health forced him to abandon his chosen pro¬ 
fession, and settling on a fruit farm up the 
Thames from London he devoted his time to 
writing. Among the several novels from his 
pen are Cradock Nowell, The Mai4 of Sker, 
Alice Lorraine and Kit and Kitty, none of 
which has the charm or literary merit of Lorna 
Doone. 

BLACK MOUNTAINS, a range of mountains 
extending across North Carolina into the north¬ 
ern parts of Georgia and North Carolina. 
Their direction is nearly east and west, and 
they contain the highest peaks in the Appa¬ 
lachian system, among which are Mount 
Mitchell, 6,710 feet, and Clingman’s Peak and 
Guyot’s Peak, the latter two exceeding 6,500 
feet in altitude. Their sides are covered with 
evergreen forests, from which they take their 
name. Many of the valleys are highly fertile. 
See Appalachian Mountains. 

BLACK PRINCE, The. See Edward, The 
Black Prince. 

BLACK SEA, called by the ancients Pontus 
Euxinus, is a sea situated between Europe and 
Asia, bounded by Russia, Bulgaria, Rumania 
and Turkish dominions in Europe and Asia. It 
is connected with the Mediterranean by the 



Very important commercially, though subject 
to violent storms and dangerous breakers. 


historic Bosporus, the Sea of Marmora and the 
Dardanelles, and by the Strait of Kertch with 
the Sea of Azov, which is, in fact, only a bay 
of the Black Sea. It has a length of 750 miles, 
a greatest width of 380 miles, a maximum depth 
of 7,000 feet and covers an area of 180,000 
square miles, more than the combined area 


of Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin. The water is 
not so clear as that of the Mediterranean, and 
it is less salt, on account of the many large 
rivers flowing into it, among which are the 
Danube, Dniester, Dnieper and Don. 

During January and February the shores 
from Odessa to the Crimea are ice-bound. The 
Black Sea contains few islands and those of 
small extent. The most important ports are 
Odessa, Kherson, Sebastopol, Batum, Trebi- 
zond, Sinope and Varna. The sea is of great 
commercial importance to Russia, as it fur¬ 
nishes an outlet for the agricultural region of 
the south, but its exit to the Mediterranean 
Sea and the ocean has long been closed by 
the Great Powers of Europe to the battle fleet 
of Russia. At the outbreak of the War of the 
Nations this great sea assumed first importance, 
and on it many battles occurred between Rus¬ 
sian and Turkish vessels. The attempted forc¬ 
ing of the Dardanelles by the allies to allow 
free access to the Mediterranean for Russian 
warships failed utterly, though it was one of 
the most gigantic undertakings in the history 
of military and naval operations. 

Related Subjects. Connected more or less in¬ 
timately with the Black Sea are the following 
topics : 

Azov Marmora 

Bosporus War of the Nations 

Dardanelles 

BLACK SNAKE, or BLUE RACER, the 

most agile and swift of all snakes. It is com¬ 
mon in North America, and often reaches a 
length of five or six feet. It is comparatively 
harmless, as it has no poison fangs, but it 
possesses the power of destroying its prej' by 
the contraction of its folds—in other words, by 
squeezing it to death. It is a deadly enemy of 
the rattlesnake, in destroying which it shows 
great skill. It is said to follow its prey by 
scent, and, being quicker in its movements, is 
able to seize the rattlesnake by the back of the 
neck and quickly crush it to death. The black 
snake is usually bluish above and slate color 
beneath, though in South America it is more 
often an olive-green. Birds’ eggs and small 
animals, like mice, frogs and birds, comprise 
its principal food. 

BLACKSTONE, Sir William (1723-1780), a 
distinguished English judge and writer on law, 
whose most famous work, Commentaries on the 
Laws of England, has had a wider influence 
than any other treatise on law in the English 
language. He was educated at Oxford Uni¬ 
versity and was admitted to the bar in 1746. 
He first attracted attention by a course of 





BLACKWELL 


762 


BLAINE 


lectures delivered at Oxford in 1753, and when 
five years later a new professorship of law 
was established at the university he was given 
the appointment. The lectures delivered at 
this time established his fame, and his progress 
thereafter was rapid. He resigned his professor¬ 
ship in 1766, and four years later was knighted 
and appointed justice of the court of common 
pleas. Until his death he was occupied with 
his duties as judge and as an advocate of prison 
reform. 

Blackstone’s Commentaries, made up of his 
Oxford lectures, furnished the model for all 
later English and American commentaries. For 
a century at least after Blackstone’s death it 
was practically the only text-book on law, and 
to-day is regarded as a leading authority. 

BLACKWELL, Elizabeth (1821-1910), the 
first woman to receive a medical diploma and 
take up the profession of medicine in the 
United States. When she was ten years of age 
her parents moved from Bristol, England, her 
birthplace, to New York, and later settled in 
Cincinnati, where she was engaged for several 
years in teaching. After numerous difficulties, 
due to prejudice against women in the profes¬ 
sion, she was graduated in medicine with the 
highest honor, in 1849. She continued her 
studies in Paris and London, and on her return 
to America settled in New York, where she 
acquired an excellent practice. In 1854 she 
opened a hospital for women and children, and 
in 1868, with her sister Emily, also a physician, 
she founded the Woman’s Medical College of 
the New Y r ork Infirmary. Miss Blackwell lec¬ 
tured to women on health and physical devel¬ 
opment, and published several books relating 
to women and medical education. 

BLACKWELL’S ISLAND, a narrow island 
in East River, between Manhattan and Long 
Island, a part of the territory covered by New 
York City. It is about one and one-half miles 
long and one-eighth of a mile wide. It is 
devoted exclusively to penal institutions and 
hospitals of New York City. Among these are 
the workhouse, to w’hich petty criminals are 
sentenced and for which “the Island” is most 
noted; the city hospitals, asylums for the insane 
and blind, the almshouse, the home for the 
aged and infirm and the hospital for consump¬ 
tives. The island in summer is carpeted with 
grass and the buildings are well kept. All 
vessels which sail out upon Long Island Sound 
pass Blackwell’s. On the rocks at the north 
end of the island a lighthouse rises fifty-four 
feet above the water. 


BLADDER. See Kidneys. 

BLADDERWORT, blad' er wert, a curious, 
slender water plant, found in ditches, pools and 
marshes throughout the world. About a dozen 
kinds, yellow and blue in color, are natives of 
the United States or Canada. The leaves have 
little bladders that fill with air at flowering 
time and raise the plant in the water suffi¬ 
ciently to bring the blossoms above the surface. 
From this fact the name is derived. These 
bladders have a valve-like door, through which 
insects enter when looking for food or shelter 
and so are trapped. If the ditch or pool dries 
up, the bladders hold moisture enough to keep 
the plant alive for some time. 

BLAINE, blane, James Gillespie (1830- 
1893), an American statesman whose personal¬ 
ity, keenness of intellect, power in debate and 
profound knowledge of history and of human 
nature made him one of the most influential 
political leaders 
for nearly two 
decades. He was 
born at West 
Brownsville, Pa., 
of Scotch - Irish 
ancestry, at the 
age of seventeen 
was graduated 
from Washington 
College, in Wash¬ 
ington, Pa., and 
during the next 
few years taught 

school and en- JA MES G. BLAINE 

gaged in the Named the “Plumed Knight” 

s t u d y o f 1 a w. by Robert G. Ingersoll in his 

KC speech in the 1876 nominating 

After settling m convention at Cincinnati. The 

Mninn ics/i name electrified the audience 
lviaine in he and clung to Blaine as long 

became editor of as be lived, 
the Kennebec Journal, soon accepted a more 
influential position on the Portland Daily Ad¬ 
vertiser, and in 1858 was elected to the lower 
house of the state legislature. 

Blaine’s Public Career. Four years later, 
upon election to Congress, Blaine began his 
long career as a national Republican leader. 
Between 1869 and 1874 he was Speaker of the 
House, and his constructive ability and genius 
in debate were conspicuously revealed in the 
consideration of the various measures for the 
reconstruction of the Southern states (see Re¬ 
construction). As the Presidential election of 
1876 drew near it was apparent that Blaine 
would be a candidate for the Republican nomi¬ 
nation, but he failed to secure that honor by 








BLAIRMORE 


763 


BLAKE 


twenty-eight votes. Charges of corrupt prac¬ 
tices in securing legislation in favor of certain 
railroad projects had been made against him 
by his political opponents, and his defense was 
not satisfactory to many of his own political 
faith. Therefore he never again had the un¬ 
divided support of the Republicans, and the 
great ambition of his life was never realized. 

In 1877 Blaine entered the United States 
Senate, where he zealously championed the 
cause of protective tariff, and labored for the 
advancement of American shipping and for 
subsidies for American industries (see Sub¬ 
sidy). In the Republican convention of 1880 
his friends fought for his nomination through 
thirty-six ballots, finally giving their support to 
the “dark horse” of the convention, James A. 
Garfield. After the latter’s inauguration Blaine 
was appointed Secretary of State, but he held 
office only eight months because of the death 
of the President and the consequent reorganiza¬ 
tion of the' Cabinet by the new President, 
Chester A. Arthur. 

After three years of retirement Blaine re¬ 
turned to public life as the Republican candi¬ 
date for the Presidency, but was defeated in 
the election by Grover Cleveland, after a cam¬ 
paign unequaled up to that time in bitterness 
of personal attack. He thereupon devoted him¬ 
self to literary work, publishing in 1886 the 
second volume of his Twenty Years in Con¬ 
gress, the first volume having appeared in 1884. 
It is a valuable historical record. 

Refusing to permit his friends to press his 
candidacy for the nomination of 1888, he en¬ 
tered President Harrison’s Cabinet as Secre¬ 
tary of State in 1889 and served with distinc¬ 
tion until his resignation in 1892. With his 
administration of the State Department are 
connected the treaty with Germany concerning 
the Samoan Islands (see Samoa) and the as¬ 
sembling of the first Pan-American Congress 
(which see). He also negotiated a large num¬ 
ber of reciprocity treaties for the encourage¬ 
ment of American commerce (see Reciprocity), 
and vigorously upheld the dignity and honor 
of his country in its foreign relations. A last 
and unsuccessful attempt was made to secure 
his nomination for the Presidency in the Re¬ 
publican convention of 1892 which renominated 
Harrison. Six months later he died. b.m.w. 

Consult Blaine’s Twenty Years in Congress; 
Peck’s American Party Leaders. 

BLAIRMORE, a village in Alberta, on the 
Crow’s Nest River and the Canadian Pacific 
Railway, thirteen miles east of Crow’s Nest 


Pass and eighty-three miles west of Lethbridge. 
Blairmore has a number of coal mines, and is 
also the distributing point for the coal fields 
of the region. Cement and brick clay are 
found in the neighborhood, and bricks, lime 
and lumber are shipped. The population in¬ 
creased from 239 in 1901 to 1,137 in 1911, and 
to about 1,800 in 1916. 

BLAKE, Edward (1833-1912), a Canadian 
lawyer and statesman, for twenty years a mem¬ 
ber of the Dominion House of Commons, one 
of the foremost orators who ever addressed that 
body, and predecessor of Sir Wilfrid Laurier as 
leader of the Lib¬ 
eral party. Blake 
was born at Ade¬ 
laide, Ontario, on 
October 13, 1833, 
but to the day of 
his death he was 
undeniably Irish. 

His father had 
emigrated from 
County Galway 
to Ontario in 
1832, and the son 
exactly sixty 
years later reversed the process. After winning 
fame in the Dominion he removed to Ireland 
and was elected a member of the British Par¬ 
liament, where he sat as an Irish Nationalist 
until 1907. Failing health then led him to 
resign and return to Canada, and the scene of 
his early triumphs. 

After graduation from Upper Canada Col¬ 
lege and the University of Toronto, he was 
called to the bar in 1856, and in a few years 
won a large practice. He was elected to the 
first Dominion Parliament in 1867, and at the 
same time sat in the Ontario legislature. He 
led the Liberal opposition in the legislature 
until 1871, when he was prime minister for a 
few months. He declined the leadership of the 
Liberals in Parliament, but in 1873 accepted a 
ministership without portfolio in Alexander 
Mackenzie’s Cabinet. His health was uncertain 
during the next few years, but he held the 
portfolio of Minister of Justice from 1875 to 
1877, long enough to take the chief part in 
planning the organization of the Dominion Su¬ 
preme Court. From 1880 to 1887 he was leader 
of the Liberal Opposition in the Dominion 
House of Commons. Though he resigned this 
leadership in 1887 he still sat in the House until 
1891, when he withdrew from Canadian public 
life. 




BLAKE 


764 


BLANK VERSE 


In the field of imperial politics, which he 
entered in 1892 at the request of the Irish 
Nationalists, he rendered good service to the 
cause of Home Rule. He was conspicuous in 
1896 as one of the committee to investigate 
South African affairs. In early life Blake was 
a strong supporter of imperial federation, but 
he later became less outspoken and even ques¬ 
tioned the wisdom of such a plan. In addition 
to his political activities he practiced law most 
of his life and appeared in many important 
cases, both in England and in Canada. He was 
vitally interested in education, founded several 
scholarships in political science in the Uni¬ 
versity of Toronto and served a term as chan¬ 
cellor of that institution. g.h.l. 

BLAKE, Robert (1599-1657), a famous Brit¬ 
ish admiral who distinguished himself in the 
naval battles of the seventeenth century that 
wrested the supremacy of the seas from the 
Dutch. During the civil war between Charles I 
and Parliament, in which he aided Cromwell, 
he destroyed the squadron of the Royalist gen¬ 
eral, Prince Rupert, and as a reward for his 
services was made sole admiral of the English 
fleet. Between 1652 and 1653 he won a series 
of victories over the Dutch Admiral Van 
Tromp, and forever ended Holland’s claim to 
being mistress of the seas. 

In 1654 Cromwell sent Blake to the Mediter¬ 
ranean, where he succeeded in upholding the 
dignity of the British flag in contest with the 
Dutch, the Spanish and the French. He at¬ 
tacked Tunis, the dey of which had insulted the 
British flag, routed an army of 3,000 Turks, and 
at Algiers and at Tripoli set free all the English 
held there as slaves. 

BLAKE, William (1757-1827), an English 
engraver and poet who occupies a unique place 
among English poets by reason of the unusual 
character of his writings. His poetry, which 
he himself illustrated with drawings of great 
beauty and originality, has the imaginative 
quality of Spenser’s work, the spirit and ring 
of the Elizabethan lyrics, and also many ele¬ 
ments of the writings of the Romantic poets 
who followed him—love of children and ani¬ 
mals, and an appreciation of the beauty that 
lies in ordinary life. His best-known poems are 
found under the titles So?igs of Innocence and 
Songs of Experience. 

Charles Lamb regarded him as one of the 
most extraordinary men of his age, and Swin¬ 
burne has characterized him as “the single 
Englishman of supreme and simple poetic 
genius of his time.” 


BLANC-MANGE, blah manzh', a popular 
dessert having the appearance of jelly. It is 
whitish in color and is made of Irish moss, 
cornstarch, arrowroot and other starchy sub¬ 
stances, boiled with milk and flavored. Fre¬ 
quently chocolate and various fruit juices are 
added. Served with cream or sauce, blanc¬ 
mange is a wholesome and agreeable dessert, 
pleasing to the eye as well as the taste. The 
name comes from the French blanc, meaning 
white, and manger, meaning to eat. 

BLANC, Mont. See Mont Blanc. 

BLAND, Richard Parks (1835-1899), for 
many years the leader of free coinage senti¬ 
ment irf the national House of Representatives 
and the author of the famous Bland-Allison bill 
of 1878, which was passed over President Hayes’ 
veto. He was born near Hartford, Ky., and 
after wandering as far west as California finally 
returned to Missouri to practice law. He was 
elected to the lower house of Congress in 1872, 
where he served until his death, -frith the ex¬ 
ception of the years between 1895 and 1897. 

The Bland-Allison bill, through which his 
name became famous, provided for the pur¬ 
chase by the government of not less than 
$2,000,000 nor more than $4,000,000 worth of 
silver bullion a month. 

This bill was in effect until repealed by the 
passage of the Sherman Law in 1890. Bland 
was a prominent candidate for President at the 
Democratic convention in Chicago in 1896, but 
he withdrew in favor of William Jennings 
Bryan, who was nominated because of a bril¬ 
liant appeal on the silver issue, known as the 
“cross of gold’’ speech. However, Byran was 
defeated in the ensuing election by William 
McKinley, after which the coinage of silver 
ceased to be a political issue. 

BLANK VERSE, poetry written without 
rhyme, a form employed in some of the noblest 
and sweetest poems. The name blank here 
refers to the lack of the rhyme at the ends 
of lines of poetry, which the ear expects to 
hear. The first English poet to employ blank 
verse was Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, who 
in the sixteenth century translated into un- 
rhymed verse two books of Virgil’s Aeneid. 
Marlowe and Shakespeare brought this form 
of verse to perfection, and since their time it 
has been used by practically all the English 
poetic dramatists except Dryden, and by Mil- 
ton, Tennyson, Browning, Wordsworth and 
other writers in many different forms of poetry. 

A familiar example of blank verse is Bryant’s 
Thanatopsis, in which is used the typical blank 


BLARNEY STONE 


765 


BLASTING 


verse line—a ten-syllable line having five feet 
of two syllables each, the second of which is 
accented. Such a line is an example ©f iambic 
pentameter, and is divided and accented thus: 
To him' | who in' | the love' | of na' | ture holds' | 

The concluding stanza of Thanatopsis very 
well illustrates the effects produced by blank 
verse, which critics agree is admirably adapted 
to use in poems that combine harmony of 
sound- and dignity of music with nobility of 
thought: 

So live, that when thy summons comes to join 
The innumerable caravan, that moves 
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of death, 

Thou go not, like the quarry slave at night, 
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and 
soothed 

By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, 
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. 

BLARNEY, blahr'ni, STONE, a stone much 
kissed because of the superstitious belief that 
it will give to those who kiss it the power of 
saying easily things which flatter, compliment 
or persuade. From this has come the expres- 



BLARNEY CASTLE 

The stone on the highest point of the corner in 
center of picture is the Blarney stone, and bears 
date of 1703. It is held in place by two iron bars. 

sion blarneying. This stone is in a wall near 
the top of Blarney Castle, Blarney, Ireland, a 
village of about 1,000 people, near the city of 
Cork. Tourists from every part of the globe 
visit the castle just to kiss the stone. It is 
commonly believed that the Blarney Stone 
legend originated because the first owner of 
the castle delayed its surrender in medieval 
times by promises and flattering speech. 

BLASHFIELD, Edwin Howland (1848- ), 

an American artist whose wall paintings, adorn¬ 


ing some of the finest buildings in the United 
States, have brought him into the front rank 
of decorative painters. He was born in New 
York City. After studying in Paris under the 
famous French painter, Leon Bonnat, he spent 
several years in France, Italy, Greece and 
Egypt, returning to the United States in 1881 
and beginning work as a figure painter. Of his 
early canvases, the best known are Christmas 
Bells and The Angel with the Flaming Sword. 
Since 1892 he has given his time entirely to 
decorative painting. Some of his splendid 
achievements in this field are the central dome 
of the Library of Congress in Washington, 
picturing the Development of Civilization; in 
the Baltimore courthouse, Washing ton Resign¬ 
ing His Commission and Lord Baltimore’s 
Edict of Toleration; and the ceiling of the great 
ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New 
York, representing Dance and Music. 

Blashfield’s work is characterized by delicate 
and beautiful coloring. He is a member of the 
National Academy of Design, and with his 
wife has written Italian Cities and edited 
Vasari’s Lives of the Painters. 

BLASPHEMY, biass' fee mi, a term, orig¬ 
inally meaning profanity, but now applied to a 
spoken or written insult to the Diety. From 
the earliest days blasphemy has been an of¬ 
fense against man’s laws, and once was punish¬ 
able with death or other severe penalty. In 
England until 1547 blasphemous persons were 
whipped and imprisoned; until 1825 the legal 
punishment in Scotland was death, and by the 
present laws of that country the offense is 
punishable by imprisonment. In the United 
States and Canada the punishment for blas¬ 
phemy was formerly imprisonment and whip¬ 
ping, but, as in England, the law has fallen 
gradually into disuse. The Bible declares that 
at the final day there shall be a strict account¬ 
ing for blasphemy. 

BLAST FURNACE, the name given to the 
common smelting-furnace, used for obtaining 
iron from its ores with the aid of a powerful 
blast of air. This device is fully described in 
the article Iron, under the subhead The Blast 
Furnace. 

BLASTING, the operation of breaking up 
masses of rock or other hard substances, by 
means of explosives. Previous to the inven¬ 
tion of gunpowder the usual method of blasting 
was by heat, followed by quick cooling. Hanni¬ 
bal in forcing his way over the Alps is supposed 
to have employed this method by lighting fires 
against rocks and then dashing cold water on 











BLAVATSKY 


766 


BLEACHING 


them. This caused them to crack, when they 
could be moved or further broken by the tools 
at his command. In ordinary blasting oper¬ 
ations, such as occur in railroad construction 
and mining, holes are bored to the requisite 
depth by means of drills, the explosive is intro¬ 
duced, the hole is tamped or filled up with 
broken stone, clay or sand, and the charge is 
exploded by means of a fuse or by electricity. 
In larger operations, mines or shafts- of consid¬ 
erable diameter take the place of the holes 
above described. 

In the construction of the Panama Canal 
blasting was resorted to on a scale which sur¬ 
passed all previous operations. The largest 
single blast was used at the blowing up of 
the Gamboa dyke at the northern end of the 
Culebra (now Gaillard) Cut. Here forty tons 
of dynamite were used, placed in 1,000 holes 
each containing about eighty pounds of the 
explosive. When all was ready for blasting, 
on October 10, 1913, President Wilson, in Wash¬ 
ington, touched an electric button which com¬ 
pleted a circuit with the explosive, more than 
2,000 miles distant. Instantly a huge explosion 
took place, tearing down the dyke and removing 
the last obstacle to the joining of the waters 
of the east and west. 

BLAVATSKY, blavahts'ke, Helena Pe¬ 
trovna Hahn-Hahn (1831-1891), a famous 
Russian spiritual leader whose teachings em¬ 
body the doctrines held by modern theosophists 
(see Theosophy). During twenty years of 
travel in various parts of the world she made a 
special study of the mystic factor in religion, 
and in 1858 became a famous spiritualistic 
medium in Russia. Later she moved to the 
United States, where in 1875 she founded the 
Theosophical Society. Four years afterward a 
branch society was organized in Bombay, India. 
Though her claims as a worker of miracles were 
disproved, she is regarded by theosophists as 
their greatest leader, and when she died she 
had nearly 100,000 followers in England, 
France, the United States and Canada. Her 
most important work, Isis Unveiled, is the text¬ 
book of the theosophists. 

BLEACHING, bleech' ing, from the German 
bleichen, meaning to whiten, is the process of 
making cotton, linen, wool, silk and other fab¬ 
rics white by removing from them their natural 
coloring matters. Bleaching is practiced in its 
simplest form by the housewife who spreads 
her washing on the grass to whiten in the 
sunlight, a custom that originated many cen¬ 
turies ago. The process of bleaching is sup¬ 


posed to have been known to the Egyptians, 
Babylonians and Hebrews. The ancient 
method, which was in use until the eighteenth 
century, consisted in spreading the cloth on a 
stretch of grass, and leaving it exposed to the 
air and sunlight for several months, with 
sprinklings of water each day. 

In the eighteenth century the Dutch discov¬ 
ered a new method, and Holland became a 
very important center of the bleaching indus¬ 
try. The fabrics were steeped repeatedly in 
potash lye, soaked in buttermilk for about a 
week and then washed and spread on the 
ground to whiten. The Hollanders obtained 
such good results that the name hollands, 
still in use, was given the excellent fabrics 
bleached in this manner; also, a very desirable 
quality of linen, which was spread on plots of 
grass, came to be known as lawn. The Scotch 
and Irish still bleach their fabrics by spreading 
them on the grass, a process called crofting, 
from the Scotch word croft, meaning a small 
tract of meadow land. 

Bleaching as carried on at the present time 
is a complicated process requiring the special 
machinery of the modern factory. It consists 
of steepings, boilings, washings and dryings 
and the use of various chemicals, particularly 
the bleaching powder called chloride of lime. 
The operations vary according to the materials 
of which the fabric is composed, and according 
to the fineness or coarseness of the yarn. Cot¬ 
ton bleaches more quickly than linen and re¬ 
quires fewer operations, for the latter must 
be subjected first to a series of alkaline boil¬ 
ings to dissolve the impurities that are present 
in the flax fiber. Linen fabrics are often 
exposed to the action of air, light and moisture 
for several days, as this is supposed to make 
the fiber retain its strength, and it adds to the 
life of the cloth. This step of the process is 
called grassing. ' 

Wool and silk goods in the process of bleach¬ 
ing are subjected to the fumes of burning 
sulphur; the sulphur combines with the color¬ 
ing matters in these fabrics to form a colorless 
compound without destroying the coloring mat¬ 
ters. Washing bleached silk or wool goods sev¬ 
eral times with soap containing potash makes 
them turn yellowish, for the soap destroys the 
colorless compound. Hydrogen peroxide is 
coming into general use as a bleaching agent 
for silk. 

Straw, beeswax, feathers, hair, ivory, oils, 
sponges and the rags and paper used in paper 
making are also bleached. b.m.w. 


BLEEDING 


767 


BLEEDING HEART 


BLEEDING, or HEMORRHAGE, hem' o rayj, 
is the escape of blood from the body, or from 
one part of the body into another. In pop¬ 
ular use the term sometimes signifies a more 
sudden and severe flow of blood than ordinary 
bleeding, but there is no real distinction. 
Bleeding may be caused by a cut or tear in 
a vein or artery, or it may be the result of 
bruising a new surface or a mucous membrane. 

Under abnormal conditions blood may also 
escape into the lungs, the stomach and other 
cavities and remain concealed for a considerable 
length of time. This is called internal bleeding. 

Arterial Bleeding. This may be recognized 
by the fresh red color of the blood and by the 
way it issues from the wound—that is, in jets 
or spurts. The cutting of a large artery some¬ 
times results fatally with the first gush of 
blood, and in other cases the shock is suffi¬ 
cient to cause unconsciousness. Fainting, in 
which the supply of blood to the brain is 
greatly diminished and the blood pressure re¬ 
duced, favors the formation of a blood clot, 
one of the best possible checks to bleeding (see 
Blood, subhead Clotting). In case of a super¬ 
ficial wound, too, the cut usually closes quickly 
by the formation of a clot, but where no such 
clot is formed artificial methods must be used 
to arrest the flow of blood. In many cases this 
can be done by applying clean hot water or 
clean ice water to the wound, or by using direct 
pressure with a small piece of clean cotton. If 
the bleeding seems to be excessive, place one 
or both thumbs over the place from which the 
blood issues, and press firmly. This will check 
bleeding until a better remedy can be em¬ 
ployed. Wounds about the face and neck can 
be treated especially well with thumb pressure. 

In case of serious cuts it is best to tie a 
handkerchief or a strip of strong cloth loosely 
around the limb above the cut, and to slip a 
short stick into the loop; by twisting the stick 
sufficient pressure is secured to check the bleed¬ 
ing. This device has become known as a 
tourniquet. A tourniquet should not be left 
twisted for more than a half hour at a time, as 
it may cause congestion. In many cases a 
blood clot will have formed by the time the 
doctor has arrived. Tying the artery, that is, 
applying a ligature to each end of the cut 
vessel, is a reliable method of stopping hemor¬ 
rhage. 

Venous Bleeding. A hemorrhage from the 
veins is ordinarily less dangerous than arterial 
bleeding. It may be recognized by the dark 
red color of the blood and the even flow. Pres¬ 


sure over the wound is usually enough to stop 
the flow, but in extreme cases a ligature or 
other method may be necessary. 

Other Forms. All forms of bleeding, if they 
continue, cause death. A serious hemorrhage 
demands the attention of a physician. Some 
persons, known among physicians as bleeders, 
have a natural tendency to bleed. The blood 
clots with difficulty, and a slight wound may 
cause death. The normal person, however, 
need not fear death from this cause. Internal 
hemorrhage should have immediate medical 
attention. Chiefly in young children hemor¬ 
rhages sometimes occur through the skin. The 
only remedy in severe cases seems to be the 
transfusion of blood from some other person, 
and this is not a certain cure. Bleeding of the 
nose may sometimes be stopped by applying 
cold water to the back of the neck, forehead 
and bridge of the nose. w.a.e. 

BLEEDING HEART, a hardy, late spring 
flower, rich with home associations and mem¬ 
ories of old-fashioned gardens. The flowers are 
irregularly heart-shaped, deep rosy red, with 
the inner petals white. The structure of stem 



BLEEDING HEART 


and flower is so delicate that it seems the little 
rosy blossoms are dripping toward the ground. 
With its wealth of fresh foliage and interesting 
flowers, the bleeding heart makes an attractive 
border. This plant was brought from Japan 
and introduced into England about 1850, after 
which it spread to all home gardens and is now 
a favorite everywhere. It is easily cultivated, 




BLENHEIM 

and if lifted in the fall and potted will grow 
very successfully with gentle heat. 

BLENHEIM, blen' im, a village in Bavaria, 
on the Danube, twenty-three miles northwest 
of Augsburg, which gave its name to a cele¬ 
brated battle of the War of the Spanish Suc¬ 
cession, fought near the place on August 13, 
1704. In this battle the allied forces of Eng¬ 
land and Germany, under the Duke of Marl¬ 
borough and Prince Eugene, gained a decisive 
victory over the French and Bavarians. The 
residence of the dukes of Marlborough at 
Woodstock, Oxfordshire, known as Blenheim 
House, was erected at public expense as a token 
of gratitude to the English hero of Blenheim. 

In Robert Southey’s poem, The Battle of 
Blenheim, three stanzas of which are here 
given, an old man is supposed to be telling his 
two grandchildren the story of the battle: 

“They say it was a shocking- sight, 

After the field was won, 

For many thousand bodies here 
Lay rotting in the sun ; 

But things like that, you know, must be, 

After a famous victory. 

“Great praise the Duke of Marlbro’ won, 

And our good Prince Eugene.” 

“Why, ’twas a very wicked thing!” 

Said little Wilhelmine. 

“Nay, nay, my little girl,” quoth he, 

“It was a famous victory. 

“And everybody praised the Duke, 

Who such a fight did win.” 

“But what good came of it, at last?” 

Quoth little Peterkin. 

“Why, that I cannot tell,” said he, 

“But ’twas a famous victory.” 

BLENNERHASSETT, blen'er hass et, Har¬ 
man (1764-1831), an English emigrant to the 
United States who gave aid and encouragement 
to Aaron Burr (which see) in the latter’s plan 
to establish an empire in the Southwest. He 


BLIGHT / 


768 BLIGHT 

was born in Hampshire, England, and was edu¬ 


cated in London and Dublin. In 1797 he emi 
grated to America, settling on an island in the 
Ohio River below the present city of Parkers¬ 
burg, W. Va. It was there that Aaron Burr 
visited him and persuaded him to become a 
fellow-conspirator. When the plan failed Blen- 
nerhassett was arrested on the charge of trea¬ 
son. Though not convicted of this crime he 
lost the greater part of an ample fortune. He 
died on the island of Guernsey, in the English 
Channel. 

The experiences of Blennerhassett form the 
basis of a novel by Charles Felton Pidgin, en¬ 
titled Blennerhassett, or Decrees of Fate. 

BLEWETT, blew'et, Jean McKishney 
(1862- ), a Canadian poet, sometimes called 

the sweetest of Canada’s poets. She was born 
at Scotia, Ont., and was educated at the Saint 
Thomas Collegiate Institute. At seventeen she 
wrote Out of the Depths, a book of some merit 
but inferior to her later works. Her success 
in literature began with the publication of 
Cabinet Articles, a series of pen pictures which 
appeared in various magazines and newspapers. 
These sketches were unique and attracted wide 
attention. Among Mrs. Blewett’s poems, which 
are her chief claim to distinction, are Margaret, 
Spring and She Just Keeps House for Me. 

BLIGHT, blite, a term commonly given to 
the effects of disease upon plants, or the effect 
of any other conditions which cause them to 
wither or decay. Rust and smut are frequently 
known as blight among farmers. Sometimes 
the term is applied to the effects produced by 
insects, but its use by botanists is restricted 
to effects produced by fungi and germ diseases 
within the plant. Remedies and preventive 
measures are given in the article Insecticides 
and Fungicides. See, also, Fungi; Rust; 
Smut, and references there suggested. 


: Jh 


\ 


End of Volume One 






















































































































































































































































































































































